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"Black Star was the publishing arm of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, a powerful insurgent political group that existed in Detroit from about 1969 to 1972. They organized mainly in factories, where black workers often worked in the most physically demanding jobs. The League’s position was that black workers, whose labor was critical to keeping a factory running, would play a vanguard role in bringing about revolutionary change. If black workers organized and withheld their labor, they could bring a factory to a halt. The first plant at which the League began organizing was the Dodge Main plant, where they started the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM). “RUM” groups spread to factories and workplaces across the metro area, including Chrysler (ChRUM), UPS (UPRUM), and Ford (FRUM). These were workers organizing within already unionized workplaces, often against both the employer and white union leadership. They produced flyers and newsletters specific to each location and came together under the umbrella of the League. Mike Hamlin, a League co-founder, wrote that their analysis focusing on the revolutionary poten-tial of the black worker differed from the Black Panther Party and others in Detroit, like Grace and James Boggs, who instead identified unemployed black youth (the “lumpen proletariat”) as key agents for bringing about change.1In 1970, the League expanded their activities from strictly organizing within the factories to developing “revolutionary political consciousness among all black people,” corresponding to their analysis that black workers occupied a key strate-gic position within the North American economy.2They did this by establishing Black Star, an educa-tional enterprise that included Black Star Publishing, which put out books and pamphlets, Black Star Productions, which produced the classic film, Finally Got the News, and Black Star book-stores.3 They had a print shop with a press and modern typesetting equipment on Fenkell Ave. in Detroit. The lead printer at Black Star was Helen Jones.4League member Carl Smith helped get the large Harris offset press up and running at the Co-op and, together with Lorraine and Fredy Perlman, learned how to make halftones and plates. Smith prepared a plan for a black-owned publishing house in Detroit, which would operate as Black Star Publishing. James Forman, an influential black socialist, had called on black workers to wrest control of the means of produc-tion. The formation of Black Star Publishing and Black Star Productions was a response to that call. Smith put together a budget and identified models of presses they should acquire. He pro-posed that if Black Star were to set up a rotary press with the capacity to print newspapers, they could provide printing for a number of under-ground papers in the Detroit metro area, such as Fifth Estate, Inner-City Voice, and r.p.m., which would help them sustain their enterprise. Many of these newspapers had difficulty finding commer-cial printers who would work with them, due to their political content. In the meantime, Smith printed at least one larger scale publication at the Detroit Printing Co-op on the shared equipment. While the Black Star print shop, headed by Helen Jones, was very active, the more ambitious plans for acquiring large presses for a Black Star Publishing arm did not take off. This may have had more to do with the fact that by 1971 and 1972, the League was stretched thin in several directions." The Detroit Printing Co-op by Danielle Aubert.