Then was then and now is now; anyways, DRUM was hardly typical of black nationalist organization and it streches the word nationalist to apply it to a radical challenge to trade union leadership; it was certainly an autonomous black action and not the only autonomous challenge of its time. But it never developed alliances outside of detroit and fell apart. It cannot be proposed as a model of action unless we know why it failed.
Getting to the present...
Black nationalist organizations are more willing to counsel against radicalizing the workers movement beyond conservative and objectively racist trade union leadership and instead challenging companies to do more minority franchising. It's clear that Jesse Jackson was more cynical than almost anybody but Reed believed.
Even the definition of radical black action has been defined down, to paraphrase Moynihan: radicalism is staying in the Demo Party and supporting the AFL CIO despite Farakhan's move to the Republicans.
But even then DRUM was limited to Detroit so the question of why they were not able to form broader alliances needs to be raised (Alkalimat reports that internal divisions also did them in--what were they?)
Today black nationalism is monopolized by new organizations and faces--jackson, farakhan, chavis, woodson, etc. The black militance was unleashed by black autoworkers who turned against trade union leadership and today would have to be turned today against black nationalists as well who delegitimize strikes and boycotts to win minority franchises. For such militance to be successful where DRUM was not, workers of several hues have to be willing to cooperate if they are going to challenge trade union leadership, and they will probably have to reject cooperation with and also attempt to discredit black nationalist leadership, including probably the clergy, as it exists at the end of the century.
The other thing that has changed is that after three decades of union busting (from the air traffic controllers to the caterpillar workers) there are a whole bunch of workers who may be willing to engage in such militance cooperatively and inter-racially (a lot of them are not black and not white). An autonomous blacks only challenge to trade union leadership that is not consciously designed to encompass other workers may well be a bitter failure. Wildcatting can't be blacks only wildcatting. And I don't think anyone here is willing to use black people as sorties in the war against capital. There will be no going it alone in the 21st century.
yours, rakesh