Worldwide, the summer months are a time of political training and struggle for the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). Last summer, we returned to the city of Boston—50 years later—to commemorate the 1975 Boston Summer Project, a watershed moment in PLP history, and to honor the antiracist and communist workers who volunteered in that fight.

Just a few years later, PLP led another major summer project in 1979, this time confronting racist Klansmen in Tupelo, Mississippi. The following article is a reprint from CHALLENGE, originally published in 1979, documenting that crucial battle.

With fascism resurging around the globe, sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry between the U.S., China, and Russia, and a rise in racist kidnappings and attacks targeting migrant workers, there’s no better time for antiracist education—and for learning from our history to fight back.

For this issue, we look at the Tupelo Project of ’79. Lessons include:
In the face of the Ku Klux Klan and the racist capitalist government, we must be bold and have confidence in the working class to take the lead of communists.

Multiracial unity is our class’s weapon and the bosses’ greatest fear.

To sustain our gains, we must grow the Party and train more Black, Latin, Asian, and white young people in leadership.

Significance of Mississippi

To many who remember the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s, Mississippi symbolizes the most extreme racism, the most brutal murders of Black workers and antiracists, and the stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan.

For Progressive Labor Party, Mississippi signified a base for revolution among Black and white workers, spreading the ideas of multiracial unity and the fight for communist ideas in the South. Today, we celebrate the heroic struggle of the Tupelo Summer Project of ’79. About 100 communists and friends—Black, Latin, Asian, and white—took part in this struggle.

Though relatively small (population of 20,000), Tupelo, Mississippi was an industrial center with over 14,000 workers. The South was important to the ruling class as an industrial area because its carefully-nurtured tradition of racism made it the citadel of low-wage, non-union labor, where the bosses have been able to keep the working class divided and weak in order to extract extra profits.

The project showed that masses of white workers and students in Tupelo and throughout the South are winnable to antiracism.
Below is an edited excerpt from PL Magazine (Fall 1979) analyzing an aspect of the Tupelo Summer Project:

The great July demonstration

Sixty-five antiracist marchers, organized by Progressive Labor Party and its [then-mass organization] International Committee Against Racism (InCAR), were marching through the streets in Tupelo, Mississippi chanting, “Death to the Klan.”  

Shots rang through the air.

As the bullets grazed two marchers, a disciplined group of people, Black and white, rushed out of line, isolated the racist who wielded the gun, and beat him to the ground. In the fight that ensued with this Klansman, or Klan supporter, the antiracists broke his neck. While this was happening, the marchers, maintaining a tight discipline that won them the respect of Tupelo’s working class, continued the march. The marchers, encouraged by the friendly faces that lined the streets and by the workers who joined the march, were able to withstand the menacing threat of the Tupelo police, who aimed their cocked guns at them.

From the start, it was clear that the racist local rulers wanted to stop this march. A new ordinance was created by the city government banning sound devices (in response to successful PLP-led rallies in the past). The police and their flunkies systematically tore down posters in the housing projects; and a permit for the march was not granted until the very last minute.

As the march gathered in front of the courthouse, the bosses’ seat of power, a militant rally began, attracting a lot of people in the area who joined in chanting, “The cops, the courts, the Ku Klux Klan, all a part of the bosses’ plan.”

‘Before I was scared, now I’m mad’

Many militant workers in Tupelo have come to see InCAR as the main mass organization that can lead workers in the fight against racism and the resurgence of fascist groups like the Klan. One Black woman worker said, “Before I was scared, but now I’m mad.” This represents the feeling of many people here, that there is no longer the luxury to sit back and watch the ruling class and its flunkies hold power, that they have to get active and build a movement that has as its goal the destruction of the ruling class ideas of racism and fascism, and in the final analysis, the ruling class itself.

The political climate is changing rapidly in the South, and only groups like PLP are prepared to respond to the changes, to give leadership and organize the multiracial, antiracist fightback that is necessary to move workers to the left.

The United League (UL), a Black reformist group, recently cancelled a march scheduled for Okolona (a town not far from Tupelo) today, because its leader, Skip Robinson, essentially chickened out of the struggle. More and more people are realizing that the leadership of UL cannot stand up to the rigors of the class struggle.

Workers put themselves on the line

Respect for PLP was growing in Tupelo. Two residents of Tupelo put up their houses as collateral so that our comrade could be bailed out of jail. When the two marchers who had been wounded were treated in the hospital, they were warmly received and treated by white doctors and other hospital workers. After the march stopped to rally, hundreds of Black workers surrounded the marchers to protect them from the cops (who would have been only too glad to be trigger happy).

This was the first time a racist had been beaten by an antiracist march in Tupelo. The leadership of the UL had always guaranteed the safety of the KKK and the cops by holding back the anger and hatred of Black workers in the fight to liberate themselves from the racism they faced every day. The bosses always think that they can destroy a worker’s movement by getting its leaders, but little do they know that leaders always spring up in the midst of struggle. There were  many, many people right in Tupelo, and other cities North and South, and there still are today, who can develop as working-class leaders in the fight against racism and fascism, and they were and are being trained by Progressive Labor Party.

This was readily proven by the response not only of the marchers, in their determination to continue the march, not to be intimidated  by the cops’ harassment, but also by the tremendous support of the local people. Over 200 copies of InCAR Arrow and CHALLENGE were sold, 4 people joined InCAR on the spot. Another demonstration was planned on the spot.

The main lesson PLP learned in Tupelo, as everywhere, is to be bold. The bolder we were, the more seriously people took us and the more willing they were to respond to us. Workers understand that the system will come down hard when you try to fight it. They are also ready to understand that you only win on the offensive.

The day after the US Supreme Court allowed the Trump Administration to terminate TPS (Temporary Protected Status) for over 350,000 Haitians and over 6,100 Syrians, PLP members joined with others from the Haiti Action Committee and NorCal TPS Coalition to protest in front of the SF California Court House. Many TPS holders were terrified to come out in public and it was last minute, so not many people turned out.  PLP members distributed CHALLENGE with a TPS article to participants and to some people walking by. It explained the long history of TPS and how it fit in with capitalism’s demand to maximize profit from the labor of the working class.  

PLP members and friends have been actively supporting TPS workers from more than 17 countries for years; always emphasizing that we can not be divided by our country of origin or the revolving dates that TPS programs expire. 

Bosses profit from immigrant labor

Here are examples of what “temporary” means and the turmoil the TPS program creates. 1) DHS (Homeland Security) is in charge of renewing TPS status every 18 months and issuing work permits.  2) DHS collects millions yearly from TPS beneficiaries from this process.  3)As of now, like Haitians and Syrians, workers from Honduras and Nicaragua cannot renew.  4) Workers from El Salvador have an expiration date of 09\09\26. BUT their renewal is not being processed. . 5) The result is chaos: With no process in place to renew, these TPS holders cannot collect their Social Security, Medicare or other benefits that they have paid for through years of taxes. Without a work permit, many are removed from their jobs. (See USCIS web site for more information.) TPS groups and other organizations continue to lobby and to try legal maneuvers to delay these terminations but most people have no confidence in these processes.

Spokes-people in the Health Care Industry around the country, have lamented that Haitian workers, in particular, are the backbone of care in many hospitals and clinics. The NYT and NPR have both reported on the pending staffing crisis caused by the potential deportation of Haitian workers.  Fellow health care workers and patients have rallied in defense of TPS workers around the country. 

Our community in the SF Bay Area is organizing to protect any TPS holders who choose to go “underground” if their status expires. 

More needs to be done 

PLP members will continue to support TPS workers at any and all levels, but we recognize that we need to destroy the U.S. capitalist system that divides and exploits workers around the world to maximize profits and to stay ahead of other capitalist, imperialist, countries like China, Russia, European, Japan,etc. Immigrant workers who seek a better life are a life-blood of capitalist profits around the world.

In the weeks and days leading up to the World Cup games being hosted in Mexico City, education workers from the Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educacion (CNTE) union ramped up class struggle. To protest the pro-capitalist policies of the Morena government of President Claudia Sheinbaum, they blocked major roads in Mexico City -- including those leading to the stadium where the football games were played – to leverage resistance and workers’ power. Comrades from the international Progressive Labor Party (PLP) connected with and supported these brave workers’ efforts, while distributing our leaflet explaining our revolutionary communist analysis and goals.

Below are the verbatim comments of education workers who participated in the recent teachers’ strike regarding the CHALLENGE leaflet distributed during the day of action. They highlight the points to strengthen and the importance of raising the political consciousness of our class to intensify the struggle against the system. These are important lessons for us. 

Class consciousness rising 

“Well, for me it was good at that moment when the national strike began. Now our position will change based on the results and the future of the CNTE’s struggle with other sectors.”

“I find the information interesting. It would have been important to add that corporatism continues with Alfonso Sepeyada Salas, just like during the PRIAN era with Elba Esther Gordillo (notoriously corrupt former union leader, ed. CHALLENGE), and that the government continues to employ double standards and criminalize social protest.”

“It’s a good strategy to raise awareness, first and foremost, as a teachers’ union. Unfortunately, the younger generations have normalized the fact that their right to a solidarity-based pension system is being taken away. When we truly become aware of this, then we can raise awareness in society. I mention this because of the low participation of the rank and file. I remember that on January 16, 1997, when I joined the national education system, the union was actively involved in all union activities. I participated for the first time in May of that year in a march that went from Oaxaca to Mexico City, joining in Izúcar de Matamoros and continuing to Mexico City. I remember well that in each community where we arrived in the afternoons to rest, the people welcomed us with joy and great support. I don’t understand at what point we began to lose society as our allies. However, we still have time to reorient our social struggle and demonstrate that we are pursuing a class and collective interest.”

“I think this is a document that society needs to know about, but especially education professionals, in a political workshop or union training.”

“We should have included in the flyer the specific names of the Mexican and foreign capitalists who are stealing education workers’ savings through banks using the pension fund scam.”

“It was very helpful in giving a general idea of what’s happening.”

“It helped to encourage more teachers and workers from other sectors to participate in the general strike.”

Fightback goes on

We appreciate these contributions and insight and applaud the workers’ unwavering spirit to learn and fight. We understand that we need to build a fighting movement that can take the offensive of millions of workers against the capitalist state in revolutionary struggle, while we simultaneously win the masses to see Sheinbaum and all politicians as the misleading frauds that they are. Building the mass PLP is the best way to work towards both goals, and we are eager to win these workers to that fight. In the next issue, we will report on a meeting held with residents of a community involved in the struggle regarding the teachers’ strike. Onward to victory!

The following is an excerpt from an oft-reprinted PL magazine article titled “Black Workers Key to Revolution.” From standing on the frontlines with Black workers during the Harlem Rebellion to fighting the Klan in Tupelo, Mississippi, PLP has long made fighting racism a core part of our struggle to smash this rotten capitalist system and build an antiracist, communist world in its place. This summer, PLP continues that proud legacy as we resist the racist ICE gestapo and the fascist rulers’ concentration camps.

This key work showcases our Party’s understanding that racism and capitalism are bound together — one cannot exist without the other. Only an international communist revolution can liberate the world’s working class from the ravages of racist imperialism, and only a united, multiracial working class can win the fight for communism. Black workers are central to that struggle.

In 2026, as was the case over 500 hundreds years ago, Black workers remain the most brutally attacked section of our class. Now, as then, they must help take the lead in building an international communist movement. U.S. history is a chronicle of genocide, slavery, segregation, and enduring racist oppression. Black workers have less invested in the capitalist status quo. Since racism infects all relations within the profit system, they stand to hold fewer illusions about “justice” or “democracy” under the bosses’ dictatorship. 

Though not immune to the false hope of reformism, Black workers are better equipped to understand its limits. As the young rebels in Ferguson, Missouri declared after Mike Brown was killed: “The whole damn system has to go!” And so: Black workers are a key revolutionary force because of their basis for class consciousness—for class solidarity with all workers and class hatred of all capitalist rulers. 

Workers in general are degraded by capitalism. As a class, we have nothing to lose but our chains. Latin, Muslim, Asian, and women workers all suffer under special oppression by the U.S. ruling class. From the U.S. and Mexico to Europe and the Middle East, immigrant workers—most of them dark-skinned—are terrorized and scapegoated at the fault lines of rising fascism. 

Anti-Black racism is a global epidemic. Black workers have an especially urgent case to revolt and smash the bosses’ state. Throughout U.S. history, from the time they were brought from Africa by force as a pool of no-wage labor, they have served at the forefront of every working-class movement: the war against slavery, the struggle for civil rights, the mass strikes against the industrial bosses, the fights for jobs and housing and decent schools, and led the fight in Vietnam against the U.S. military. Wherever workers have confronted the profit system and its parasites, Black workers have stood at the front lines. 

Black workers have always fought back

Workers everywhere have always fought back against the bosses, with Black workers frequently leading the way. This tradition dates to the time of enslaved workers running away, many of whom fled to the mountains. They created self-sufficient communities and defended themselves with armed violence, as necessary. 

In 1739, the Stono Rebellion involved as many as 60 enslaved workers in the British colony of South Carolina. The colony’s legislature was so terrified that it placed a costly 10-year moratorium on the import of Black slaves from Africa. The bosses’ property and lives were at risk. 

In the 1790s, the Haitian Revolution defeated Napoleon Bonaparte’s army and repelled British and Spanish invaders, abolishing slavery in the richest colony in the Caribbean. These Black liberators spread fear among enslavers throughout the Western Hemisphere. They inspired hundreds of rebellions throughout the Americas, all of them violent.

In 1831, Nat Turner led more than 60 slaves and Black freedmen in blazing a bloody trail through Virginia. The rebels did away with Turner’s master and the master’s family, then terrorized the owners of 15 other plantations. Turner inspired John Brown, who led a multiracial group in an 1859 attack on a federal arsenal in West Virginia. The raid on Harpers Ferry sparked the American Civil War to end chattel slavery. 

Over the two centuries preceding the Civil War, historians have documented more than 250 uprisings involving 10 slaves or more on U.S. territory alone.

In the Caribbean, rebellions like the First Maroon War in Jamaica (1728-1741) grew into all-out military combat. After the Maroons repeatedly defeated British forces, the imperialists were forced to sign a peace treaty.

In 1760, an even larger rebellion in Jamaica called Tacky’s War became “a massive shock to the imperial system.” Black workers from the North and newly freed slaves from the South played a vital role in the U.S. Civil War (see “Marx and Du Bois,” p. 18). In the aftermath, the victorious Union capitalists—Rockefeller, Morgan, Vanderbilt, Carnegie—relied on racism to keep workers divided.

In the North, mainly white and immigrant workers waged fierce battles against steel, railroad, and coal industrialists. In the South, mainly Black workers—often led by women like Ida B. Wells, a former slave—fought against lynching and other racist abuses throughout the Jim Crow era. 

Between 1898 and 1902, rising U.S. imperialism defeated Spain and then attacked Filipino independence fighters in the Philippine-American War.The Filipino warriors, many of whom identified as Black, made antiracist, class-conscious appeals to Black U.S. soldiers. As one wrote, “Why don’t you fight those people in America who burn Negroes, that make a beast of you, that took a mother’s child and sold it?” In a foreshadowing of the Vietnam War, many Black U.S. soldiers deserted.

Black workers are a key revolutionary force because of their role in the U.S. military, where they represent 17 percent of active-duty enlisted men and 30 percent of active-duty enlisted women. They will play a major part in the next global war—and in turning an imperialist war for profit into a class war for communist revolution. Black workers are a key revolutionary force because of their disproportionate numbers in basic U.S. industry and transportation. Within major U.S. cities and metropolitan areas, Black workers are concentrated in mass transit, health care, education, the U.S. Postal Service, UPS, and FedEx. They retain the potential to shut down major population centers and critical infrastructure.

If our class is to seize and hold state power throughout the world, Black workers and their leadership are essential for another fundamental reason. Our class cannot possibly destroy racism—the lifeblood of capitalism—without their leadership.