There were a number of factors, particularly social and political developments, throughout the 1950s and 1960s which created the foundation upon which a revolutionary Black workers movement was formed.
The Detroit insurrection was led by Black working class youth, some of whom were adopting the teachings of Marxism-Leninism and incorporating this ideology into their writings and actions.
Many of those who would later lead the League of Revolutionary Black Workers were involved in the insurrection, including John Watson, who began publishing a radical ghetto newspaper called "The Inner City Voice" in September 1967, following the intense repression of the uprising.
The rally and wildcat strike brought together a number of Black community groups and radical white organizations, and was deemed a success by the leadership of DRUM.
[3] This idea is perhaps most clearly articulated in the League's constitution, which stated: We must act swiftly to help organize DRUM type organizations wherever there are Black workers, be it in Lynn Townsend's kitchen, the White House, White Castle, Ford Rouge, the Mississippi Delta, the plains of Wyoming, the mines of Bolivia, the rubber plantations of Indonesia, the oil fields of Biafra, or the Chrysler plant in South Africa.
Additionally, they viewed media, in the form of films and newspapers, as a vital instrument for educating the masses of workers and building a movement which could combat capitalism.
Additionally, they were concerned about either of the other two tendencies becoming too ambitious without first laying the groundwork for what they viewed as key to developing a revolutionary workers movement supported by the community.
[3] The beginning of a party split began in 1970 with the creation of the Black Workers Congress, which, while making a strong presence at their initial conference, existed basically as a paper organization and eventually burned out.
Many of the Black Workers Congress resigned over ideological differences concerning conceptual frameworks, location of priorities, and social relations.
This latter tendency and later disputes about the merits of aspiring to build a vanguard party may be overlooked influences of the Pan Africanist and Trotskyist CLR James, whose Facing Reality group was based in Detroit and mentored many members of the League.
They were not one intellectual tendency but represented aspects of Maoism, Black Nationalism, a contempt for sexism, and an autonomous Marxism projecting a type of direct democracy, that was resisting the increasing arbitrary and centralized behavior of the core leadership of the League.
[citation needed] According to the book Detroit, I Do Mind Dying by Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin, the split within the Detroit-based League of Revolutionary Workers became public on June 12, 1971.
The former was expressed as activists like the anti-war veteran Frank Joyce and the later by Shelia Murphy who would later win numerous elections as Councilperson in Detroit and marry Kenneth Cockrel, a leader of the faction within the LRBW that did not join the Communist League.