Back in New York, I began to take stock of myself as a Party leader. I had risen rapidly in the Party hierarchy during the four years since my return from the Soviet Union. I was now a member of the Politburo and head of the National Negro Department.
I )cspite the importance of my post, I was dissatisfied with my own personal development. True, I was regarded as a promising young theoretician. But I felt a lack of experience in direct mass work.
Although the general orientation of the Negro Commission was towards promoting mass activities in the field of Afro-American work, I found my job mainly confined to inner-Party activities. My actual work included checking on the work of the districts, particularly the Negro Commissions that existed on each district level, consulting with district leaders, training cadres, organizing education on the Afro-American question for national and district training schools and preparing resolutions and articles on the question. I had little contact with the masses outside the Party. Therefore, I had originally welcomed the decision to build the LSNR with myself as national secretary. I had expected it to be an opportunity to get into mass work. The failure of the LSNR, however, had eliminated that opportunity.
I was increasingly tied down to the office on the ninth floor of the Party’s national headquarters on Twelfth Street in lower Manhattan and faced the specter of becoming an internal Party functionary or bureaucrat.
In this situation my relations with James Ford became strained. Ford was the only other Black Politburo member and now headed the Party’s Harlem organization, a major concentration point in the Party’s work among Blacks. Ford and I had disagreements over such things as assignments of cadres, but I felt the main cause of friction was Ford’s personal ambition. Ford was a man of considerable organizational ability, but Browder was able to play on his weaknesses and use him as a vehicle for winning the Black cadre to his developing liquidationist line on the Afro-American question. Thus, Ford, supported by Browder, built a power base—almost a clique—in Harlem.
I felt it was impossible to work in this atmosphere. Thus I requested to be transferred to Chicago, something I had thought about before these tensions had matured. My request was approved in late 1934 and I left New York for Chicago. After my departure, Ford, with Abner Berry’s assistance, took over as responsible head of the Negro Department.
As head of the Negro Department, I had kept in close touch with the Chicago comrades. The Party in Chicago was beginning to grow. A large number of recruits were from the disintegrating Garvey movement, obviously attracted by the Party’s work among the unemployed, Scottsboro, and its program in favor of the right to self-determination.
Chicago was the country’s second largest Black city and had the greatest concentration of Black industrial workers. In the early thirties, the city was the scene of some of the fiercest battles of the unemployed.
In the summer of 1930, the city was the site of the founding convention of the National Unemployed Councils. Led by communists, the councils fought for relief in cash and jobs, unemployment insurance, public works jobs at union wages, hot lunches for school children, a moratorium on evictions and an end to discrimination against Blacks. Chicago’s first Unemployed Council was formed on the Southside in the fall of 1930, with Black workers playing a leading role. Blacks constituted eleven percent of the city’s population, but were one-fourth of all the relief cases in the city. Chicago’s Southside Blacks were among the worst
sufferers of the Depression.
Chicago’s unemployed, led by the Communist Party, were exemplary in carrying out energetic activities and demonstrations. Some 50,000 marched through the Loop to Grant Park in the summer of 1931, halting traffic and forcing police to back off from a planned confrontation. Earlier that summer there was a mammoth march on the state capital in Springfield demanding that relief cutbacks be restored.
But the real growth and consolidation of the movement followed the police murder of four Black workers (Abe Gray, John O’Neil, Thomas Paige and Frank Armstrong) as they attempted to prevent the eviction of a seventy-year-old Black widow, Dianna Gross. This event—known as the Chicago massacre—occurred when police opened fire into a large crowd which was trying to put the woman’s furniture back into her home.
A local Party leader who was on the spot at the time described the tremendous demonstrations and actions that surrounded these brutal murders. The funeràl of Gray and O’Neil was the greatest demonstration of Black add white solidarity that she had ever witnessed. Crowds of white people poured into State Street in solidarity with their Black brothers. They marched from Thirty-first Street, behind the coffins, south to the Englewood Station where the bodies were put aboard a train to return to their homes in the South.
The crowd just took over State Street—there wasn’t a cop in sight. As people walked, they carried open sheets with them; the crowds watching on the sidewalk threw money into the sheets, to help defray the families’ expenses. We estimated over 30,000 people were there. For a considerable period of time following this march, the evictions were halted and the unemployment movement grew in leaps and bounds.1
There was a direct relationship in Chicago between this growth and our work on Scottsboro. The case had a tremendous impact on the Black community there. White comrades doing work among the unemployed told us that the case was really an entrée into the community. Once people knew that they were communists, they were accepted because communists were always associated with
Scottsboro. The normal suspicion of whites in the Black community was greatly lessened.
The city administration’s answer to this growing movement was unbridled police terror. A tool of the corrupt city government and allied with gangsters, Chicago’s police force undoubtedly held the record for terror and lawlessness against workers. They were unsurpassed for sadism and brutality, regularly raiding the halls and offices of the Unemployed Councils, revolutionary organizations and the Party—smashing furniture, beating workers in the halls, on the streets and in the precinct stations. Hundreds were arrested.
In 1930, the police murdered Lee Mason, a Black communist candidate for Congress. Harold Williams, a Party organizer in the Southside and an old schoolmate of mine from Moscow, was viciously beaten. Although hospitalized, he never fully recovered arid died a few years later in New York.
It took courage and on occasion ingenuity to thwart the police terror aimed at forcibly stifling and demoralizing the workers’ movement. One example of both was Herbert Newton, a Black member of the Central Committee and Party organizer in the Southside. On one occasion he was speaking before a large crowd in Ellis Park. The police arrived, determined to stop Newton from speaking and to break up the meeting. But Newton, moving quickly, climbed up an old oak tree and kept right on talking. As the Daily Worker reported: “Some of the uniformed killers tried to climb up after him, but their graft-swollen bellies interfered.”2 The crowd laughed as they left and Newton climbed down.
When I arrived in Chicago late in 1934, the Depression was in its fourth year. The determined mass struggle had wrung some concessions from the Roosevelt government and the spirit of the people was raised by these victories.
I stepped off the train on a wintery day in late fall. I was greeted by a surprise welcoming committee including Claude Lightfoot, Katy White and John Gray. They informed me of a banquet they had planned for that evening to welcome me to the district. During the day I visited with my family.
The hall that evening was filled. There were comrades from the
dial riot -many of whom I already knew and with whom I was to Work in the coming months. There was Morris Childs, district organizer and former Lenin School classmate; Bea Shields, »(locational director; and Joe Weber, leader of the unemployed movement. From the Southside came Claude Lightfoot, a YCL |»adcr;'David Poindexter from the LSNR; Brown Squire, from the packing houses; Delia Page, active in. the unemployed work; Oliver Law, head of the Southside ILD; and other stalwarts. I knew I was among old friends. The speakers were enthusiastic, pledging support for the work on the Southside. They called on all (lie comrades to intensify their efforts and give me their full »upport. I was somewhat embarrassed by the overwhelming warmth and comradeship shown that evening and left in high Iplrits.
Greetings from another source came the next morning. I was »peaking at a demonstration in front of the “Fortress of Misery” relief station at 505jEast 50th Street. A police patrol wagon drove Up, several cops jumped out and rushed the speaker’s stand. They dragged me off and hustled me, along with Tom Trent (Hyde Park YCL organizer) and Edelman (a young white University of ('lilcago student), off to the Forty-eighth Street Precinct Station. They booked us on disorderly conduct or some such ridiculous (•harge. We then were taken to the Twelfth Street Detective Bureau for fingerprinting and “mugging.” Here was my first encounter Willi Lt. Murphy of Chicago’s Red Squad.
"()h, you’re the new nigger red from New York who they’ve been banqueting. Well, when we get through with you, you’ll wish you Were back east. By the way, how’s old Williams doing?” (He was referring here to the severe beating that Harold Williams had received in 1931.)
They drove us back to the Forty-eighth Street Station and threw U» In a cell. Shortly after, two plainclothesmen appeared. “You Haywood?” they asked. “Captain Mooney wants to see you.” They guided me towards the office and on the way one asked, “You ever Uiel Captain Mooney? Well, you’re going to meet him now and I’d hale to be in your shoes.” (Mooney later led the Republic Steel MnNNncre of 1937.)
As they led me through the door, I saw Mooney—big, red-faced and brutal looking—sitting behind the desk. “So you’re Haywood—you goddamn nigger son-of-a-bitch, we’ll banquet you all right! Now take him away!”
A few hours later I was taken back to see Mooney and the same scene was repeated. In late afternoon we were taken out and lined up in front of the guards as the shift changed. There were several Black cops among them. “Now get a good look at these three,” Mooney told them. “They’re around here trying to stir up the poor colored people. Whenever you see them, I want you to run ’em in.”
After spending the day in jail we were brought before the magistrate, fined and released.
The greetings were over, it was now time to get down to work. Chicago District Eight included all of Illinois, parts of Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa and Missouri. I was installed as Southside regional organizer. My region included the Southside Black Belt wards, Hyde Park and Englewood. At the same time, I was elected chairman of the Cook County Committee of the Party.
When I first arrived the mass struggles, particularly of the unemployed, had ebbed from the peak reached a year or so earlier. Strikes and unemployed marches throughout the country had wrenched limited concessions in the form of the first round of New Deal legislation—the National Industrial Recovery Act, Agricultural Adjustment Act, etc. The national economy had improved somewhat—profits had risen significantly, production was fifteen percent higher than the low point of 1932, and unemployment had dropped three million, although over thirteen million remained jobless. These factors all helped to ease the situation of the masses somewhat. But this upturn didn’t affect Southside Blacks much. Last hired, fifty percent were unemployed, as compared with only twenty-four percent of whites.
At the same time, these improvements signaled a new offensive by monopoly capital. With the depth of the crisis behind them, they were now confident they could put an end to the reforms they had temporarily accepted and move the country in a fascist direction. The Supreme Court declared key New Deal programs unconstitutional. Roosevelt chose to move a “little left of center”
to strengthen his position among the workers, and presented the Congress with a second round of New Deal legislation—Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act, which guaranteed labor’s right to organize), the Social Security Act (which established small federal benefits for the 'aged and the unemployed).
The lull in mass activity, the growing conflicts in the ruling class, and the rapidly changing international situation marked the beginning of a new period. All the struggles of the future would be marked by the growing threat of fascism—at home and abroad— and our tactics would change accordingly.
We felt that what was needed was a clear program of action embracing the Black masses together with white toilers, aimed at building a broad united front movement. After much discussion in the region, a plan of action was adopted. It called for concentration on the three most pressing issues of the time: relief, high rents and the high cost of living. We called for a special focus on the rights of Blacks for whqlrn, because of Jim Crow, suffering was particularly sharp. We organized around the slogans of “Drive down rents!” “Abolish rent differences in Negro and white neighborhoods!” “Increase cash relief!” “Smash Jim Crow methods of relief distribution!”
HANDS OFF ETHIOPIA
On July 25, 1935, the historic Seventh Congress of the Communist International opened in Moscow and met in session until August 21. The U.S. Party sent a strong delegation, including an impressive group of Black comrades. Among them were Ben Careathers, Pittsburgh’s “Rock of Gibraltar”; Claude Lightfoot (I was happy to see him go to further his political experience); the sharecropper leader and organizer A1 Murphy.
From Chicago, we followed the proceedings of the congress closely. How to prevent fascism, and how to overthrow it where it already had come to power, were the questions facing the Congress. In his main report, Georgi Dimitrov, hero of the
Reichstag fire trial, defined fascism as “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.”3
The congress called upon the parties to build broad people’s fronts against war and fascism. These anti-fascist fronts would include workers and farmers, intellectuals .and all democratic sections of the population. The parties were urged to take into consideration the changed conditions in the world situation, and to apply the united front tactics in a new manner. While pointing out the need for such broad unity, at the same time Dimitrov warned against the communist parties’ losing their independence and freedom of action and abdicating their leading role within the anti-fascist front.
In February 1935, Italian troops were already massing in Eritrea, obviously preparing to invade. By summer, Italy openly proclaimed its goal of annexing Ethiopia. The fascist threat to Ethiopia aroused deep anger in the Black communities throughout the country. Anticipating the call of the Seventh Congress, we Southside communists seized the initiative to build a broad united front struggle against the growing threat of war and fascism, An emergency Southside conference was held on July 10,1935, to plan a campaign to defend and support Ethiopia. The response was overwhelming. Over 1,100 delegates attended, representing all manner of Black community organizations: churches, lodges, clubs, Black nationalist groups and the Black YWCA, as well as a number of Italian anti-fascist groups.
Revolutionary-led organizations such as the ILD, the Unemployed Councils and the League Against War and Fascism, as well as the Communist and Socialist Parties, took part. It was a genuine citywide people’s front with the Southside as its base.
From this enthusiastic conference, the Joint Committee for the Defense of Ethiopia was formed. Plans were immediately launched for a mass “Hands Off Ethiopia” parade on August 31, 1935, and a petition drive for 500,000 signatures calling upon Congress to invoke the Kellogg Peace Pact and embargo arms shipments to Italy. A demonstration was also called in front of the Italian Consulate on North Wells Street before the August 31
parade.
For Black Americans, Ethiopia had always been a symbol of freedom and independence in history and folklore. Masses of Black people strongly supported Ethiopia. Their readiness to defend Ethiopia from fascist invasion was linked to the struggle against the enemy at home. The defense of Ethiopia inevitably became a fight against the growth of fascism right in Chicago, against every petty persecution, Jim Crow degradation, misery and discrimination.
The city administration made this strikingly clear by immediately refusing to grant a parade permit for the “Hands Off Ethiopia” march. Mayor Kelly, who had just received an award from Mussolini himself, sought to justify this denial on the political grounds that the parade would be an affront to Italy—a “friendly power.” (Ethiopia, while) friendly, was not considered a power.) But the underlying reasoti for their fear was what might happen if the Black masses took to the streets—the specter of the massive 1931-32 unemployed upsurge which had shaken Chicago’s Southside was still with them. The police and administration knew only too well that the deep-rooted emotion of the Blacks in Chicago for defense of Ethiopia could very quickly develop into a new wave of mass actions among the jobless starving families around the relief stations and against their domestic oppressors in the steel mills and stockyards.
It was evident that the Kelly administration brought pressure upon the joint committee and caused a number of ministers to bolt the coalition. Among them was the Reverend J.O. Austin, minister of the Pilgrim Baptist Church, one of the largest Black churches in the city and host to the July conference. The reformist leaders were afraid of the “red menace,” afraid that they could no longer control the movement.
This temporary setback caused us to make a closer evaluation of our united front activity. We had relied too much on building the united front through negotiations at the top and had not emphasized mobilizing the Party to work in the reformist-led mass organizations—churches, lodges and unions. We had clearly underestimated the importance of work within these organi-
zations. After a sucessful fight against these tendencies, we were able to rebuild the joint committee on a new basis, continuing our efforts to organize for the August 31 demonstration.
Our plan for escalating actions began on August 14, when more than 2,000 Black and white workers attended three mass rallies on the Southside. I remember that on this occasion, young comrades in the YCL and the Young Liberators (a communist-led predominantly Black youth organization), hanged an effigy of Mussolini to the cheers of hundreds in the crowd.
A planning conference on August 19 at Lincoln Center drew together more than sixty-five delegates and many more unofficial observers and visitors from forty organizations. Rev. Kinsley of the Church of the Good Shepherd was elected chairman of the joint committee and Arthur Falls, prominent young Black surgeon, became its secretary. Delegations were chosen to visit leading churches and community organizations on the Southside to mobilize thousands for the upcoming parade. Everyone attending got copies of the call and “Hands Off Ethiopia” buttons to take back to their organizations.
The following day, a delegation chosen at the planning meeting once again visited Mayor Kelly to demand a permit to march. Once again, we were refused. The coalition had by now received the endorsements of the local Socialist Party and executive council of the Chicago AFL.
The actions continued with a protest at the Italian Consulate. I was among a delegation who met with the consul to demand immediate withdrawal of Italian troops from Africa.
The young comrades on the outside who were very adept at this type of dramatic action carried on a demonstration during lunch hour. Two young girls, one white and one Black, were handcuffed to a light pole in front of the consulate. They wore white sweatshirts on which were printed the slogans, “Down with Mussolini, Hands Off Ethiopia!” It took the police ten or twenty minutes to file through their chains, enough time for a huge lunch hour crowd to gather and for them to make speeches and shout slogans. Sidewalk as well as street traffic was blocked. To add to the confusion of the police, others showered the crowd with
leaflets from the nearby elevated station.
We had other flash actions in the downtown area. A hundred or so of us would blend in with the crowd in the busy Loop area and at a signal from the leader would draw out hidden placards and leaflets. I could see the looks of amazement and disbelief on the faces of the cops when this happened. Having received no instructions from their superiors, the police were shocked to see a full-sized sidewalk parade suddenly materialize seemingly from nowhere. After a few blocks, the demonstrators would discard their signs and disperse. All of these were build-ups for our August 31 parade.
This groundwork was successful. The entire Southside community was in a state of anticipation and in addition the Chicago Party organization had mobilized support from all sections of the city. But there was still one hitch. Mayor Kelly and Chief of Police Allman continued to reject our application for a parade permit. The joint committee sent delegation after delegation of prominent people, Black and white, but the chief was adamant—there would be no permit.
Such was the situation at the final meeting of our joint committee on Friday, the eve of the demonstration, where we were to make the final preparations for the parade. Lincoln Center was packed with people. Spirits were not dampened; we were determined to go on with the parade. As the Party’s Southside spokesman, I was told that I made one of the most spirited speeches. It was unanimously decided that we would “assert our democratic rights” and march in defiance of the police ban.
Parade marshals were appointed and the line of march mapped out. The meeting adjourned amid defiant speeches. But we communists were under no illusions. We knew that the police would not even allow us to assemble. Our intelligence had informed us that 2,000 cops would concentrate in the assembly area, that all leaves had been canceled and extra duty assigned. They were preparing for a real showdown. The defense of Ethiopia had now become a fight for the streets of Chicago.
After the meeting adjourned, we communists got together. As I remember there was Morris Childs, David Poindexter, Oliver
Law, Tom Trent and myself. (Claude Lightfoot was in Moscow attending the Seventh Congress of the CL) What we feared might happen was that the crowds would be dispersed without any kind of demonstration. We felt that this would be a demoralizing setback. Therefore we planned alternate demonstrations, dramatic actions of all sorts, including speaking from rooftops, burning of effigies of Mussolini, blocking traffic and other actions. In order to carry this out, our people had to get into the assembly area that night (it was already midnight when the meeting adjourned) and stay. We knew that no known communists would be allowed into the area the next day.
I chose to speak from the roof of a five-story hotel on the southwest corner of Forty-seventh and South Parkway. I went straight from the meeting and rented a room on the fifth floor of the hotel, concealing a megaphone in my bag. I woke early, went to the roof and surveyed the scene of the upcoming battle. It was a bright, warm day and I could see that the police—hundreds of them—were already forming their lines. A string of patrol wagons were visible near the “L” station, waiting to be filled. I went back to my room and a comrade brought me coffee and a newspaper and reported on what was going on. Around one o’clock I went back up to the roof. The streets were filled with shoppers, men and women returning from work.
Then the demonstrators began arriving; streams of them, striding expectantly down the steps from the “L” station. And the action began. The police assumed most whites getting off the “L” in this part of town, the heart of Black Chicago, must be there for the demonstration. They began indiscriminately herding them into patrol wagons and hustling them off to the station. They limited the arrests among Blacks to a few well-known leaders. The whole police plan was orchestrated by Mike Mills of the Chicago Red Squad. Their strategy was to spare Blacks the brunt of the attack because a direct attack in this part of town could set off a full-scale riot. In this way, they hoped to split the demonstrators and thus make it easier to disperse them.
From my vantage point, I could see the scene unfolding. Pandemonium broke loose—the streets were crowded with
demonstrators and shoppers alike. As arrests were made, people began shouting protests and slogans. I saw Oliver Law jump up and begin addressing the crowd from a roof very near the “L” station.
This caught the police off guard and it took some time before they could get to him. But as soon as Law was pulled down and arrested, another speaker began on a roof across the street. This was repeated five or six times as the police moved frantically to Nilence the speakers. By this time, the crowd had grown considerably and the streets and sidewalks were jammed. Every time we would outsmart the police, a great roar would go up from the crowd—and every time another arrest was made, they would jeer the cops. Milton Howard, the Daily Worker’s man-on-the-spot, described the scene.
There were 2,000 uniformed police with revolvers and clubs lined up through a quarter mile radius from the corners where the demonstration was to have begun.
But the 10,000 Negro and white enemies of war who gathered to raise their voices in solidarity with the independent Negro country facing the war menace of fascist troops were not easily intimidated. Driven and herded from one corner to another, dispersed by proddings from clubs and revolver butts, scattered groups held stubbornly the immediate neighborhood from the early afternoon far into the night so that hundreds of police had to set a ring of isolation around the area several blocks on either side, blocking all traffic in their fear of a demonstration. Despite provocations, the assembled thousands permitted no breach of their peaceful discipline.
The only violence was the slugging of helpless prisoners by the police and detectives in police cars and vans.
For many blocks on either side of Prairie and Forty-seventh Streets police cars guided by members of the “Red Squad” cruised everywhere, stopping and searching cars, seizing every white person in sight, chasing “suspicious” Negroes'and whites down the alleys, swinging clubs and blackjacks in an organized sweep of brutality under the leadership of the “Red Squad” leader Lieutenant Mike Mills.
At various corners, Forty-seventh Street and Calumet, Forty-seventh Street and South Park, Forty-sixth Street and other places, speakers arose to speak to crowds only to be dispersed and seized.4
All this time the police were pushing the crowd in my direction. Now the crowd was below my building. Just as they arrested the speaker on a rooftop opposite me, I leaped up and began speaking. Because of the huge crowd and the increasing confusion and frustration of the police, I remember speaking for ten, maybe even fifteen minutes. I exhorted the crowd that they had the right to march and parade, scoring Chicago’s Mayor Kelly and Chief Allman for importing Mussolini’s tactics into the Southside. Indeed, Kelly had merited the decoration bestowed upon him by his friend Mussolini.
Then I felt a blow on the back of my head and spun around to face four plainclothes cops with riot clubs. They started to beat me but one said, “Careful, don’t bloody him up. We have to get back through that crowd down there.” They gave me a few kicks and dragged me down the back stairs outside the hotel. On the last flight, my spirit rose when I caught sight of an angry crowd of Blacks milling around the alley. “Look at that crowd!” exclaimed one of the cops as they nervously drew their guns.
A big Black woman in the crowd hollered out, “Don’t you hit him, you sons-of-bitches!” The cops waved their revolvers menacingly.
The crowd in the alley pulled back grudgingly. The police pushed me out the Forty-eighth Street side of the alley, commandeered a passing taxi and ordered the cabbie to drive to the Wabash Avenue Station. I remember their sighs of relief as the cab got under way. They turned their attention to me, methodically beating my legs and knees, cursing me with every blow.
When we arrived at the precinct station, I was flung into the bull pen, which was already filled with demonstrators, all white, excepting three or four Blacks. I received a few parting kicks as the cops shouted, “Here’s Haywood, your leader.”
To one side, I could see bloodied people staggering and limping through the door. They were being herded from the patrol wagons,
forced to run through a gauntlet of club-wielding, sadistic goons. I glimpsed a woman named Anna, our Chicago district office manager, with blood cascading down her forehead. A Chicago Defender reporter witnessed the incredible scene:
If the people who saw the police break up the parade were surprised at the brutality that went on all afternoon on 47th Street they would have been astonished at the downright savageness with which the police amused themselves at the Wabash Avenue Station. The patrol wagons gathered in such numbers in front of the station to hold up traffic on 48th Street. Prisoners were unloaded in the middle of the thoroughfare. On each side of the wagon formed a long double line of 15-30 police. The unfortunate prisoners were pulled out of the vehicle and forced to run the gauntlet. Their heads, shins and bodies were clubbed by policemen who yelped in glee at the bloody sight.5
In the cell, my legs suddenly fell out from under me. It was a delayed reaction to the beating I had received in the taxi. I could no longer stand. My fellow cell mates began yelling and chanting, demanding that they take the more severely injured out to the hospital.
Finally we were taken to the city hospital. Expecting some relief from my injuries, I was greeted by another hellish scene. The emergency room was filled with people injured in the demonstration. The student doctors attending the injured were having a great time.
“Hey, look at this one! What a beaut! Hey, you have to give them cops credit, they sure know how to swing a billy. Look here, cut wide open but no skull fracture—perfect!”
I was given a quick going-over. I was unable to walk but the doctor mumbled, “He’ll be all right, now get him out of here.” I was taken back to the cell block. By this time the Red Squad was busy screening out the over 500 arrested. Two cops were swaggering back and forth taunting us. “Goddamn Jews—stirring up all this trouble around here!” “There oughta be a Hitler over here.”
“He’s already here,” someone yelled back.
A white man with his head in a bandage and blood stains on his shirt was explaining, “I’m just an insurance collector. I came over here on my regular rounds and look what happened.”
Murphy, the Red Squad lieutenant, responded, “Oh, you don’t look so bad, you’ll be all right. We were protecting you—we just made a mistake. They must have thought you were one of those reds. You can go.”
But there must have been a lot of “mistakes” that afternoon. When they finished, only thirty-five of us were charged with an offense. Late that night, bail was made and we were released. A Russian comrade, a huge man, picked me up and carried me like a baby to a waiting car and then to my apartment.
I was released on Saturday night. In its usual flamboyant and sensationalist style, the Chicago Defender reported that I was “beateii so badly that he may lose the use of his legs.”6 In fact, I did h^ve to walk on crutches for a month as a result of the scientific beating from the Chicago police.
The Party immediately took the offensive against this attack, linking it directly with the growing fascist menace abroad. Morris Childs, the district organizer, made a militant statement to the press in which he declared that the people of Chicago were against the “imperialist plunder of an independent country,” and would stand up for their right to say so freely. He called for a “united people’s front against fascist reaction in this city,”7 and urged the people of Chicago to flood the city with telegrams demanding the release of all demonstrators and an end to police suppression of political activity.
The Party called for a huge protest meeting the following Wednesday at Boulevard Hall on Forty-seventh Street. Despite the Red Squad’s attempts at intimidation, it was packed with people. Speaking to the audience from a chair, as I was unable to stand, I told the audience that our demonstration had been a brilliant success in showing that the people of Chicago were ready to unite against war and fascism, both foreign and native, and in defense of their right to speak for peace.
committee of prominent citizens, including Dr. Arthur G. Falls, chairman of the Interracial Commission; attorney Edith Sampson, who later became a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations; A.L. Foster, secretary of the Chicago Urban League; and Robert Morse Lovett of the University of Chicago—was formed to investigate the police brutality. The committee urged that people send protest letters and phone calls to the mayor and to prominent members of the city administration.
The thirty-five of us who had been charged with inciting to riot demanded a jury trial. When we arrived in court, it was packed with our supporters. The prosecutor, on seeing the crowd, asked for the trial to be postponed. During the following weeks and months the D.A. asked for postponements each time our case came up. It was clear that they were trying to drag things out, hoping that the momentum of/our support would die down.
This tactic of theirs impose4 a hardship on us, for we had thousands of dollars tied up in bail which would not be returned until after the trial. The money was desperately needed for defense work elsewhere. Finally, we accepted the deal they offered of pleading guilty in exchange for settling the matter quickly and reducing the charges to disorderly conduct, thus releasing the bail money. This went along with the understanding that the sentence would be a fine of one dollar and one day in jail, which we had already served.
THE NATIONAL NEGRO CONGRESS
Our campaign in defense of Ethiopia helped lay the basis for the greatest Black united front movement of the period—the National Negro Congress. Founded in Chicago in mid-February 1936, the Congress brought together representatives of all classes in the national Black community, promoting unity in the struggle around the burning issues of Black rights.
Our activities on Ethiopia merged with preparations for the Congress. We were glad that Chicago had been chosen as the host city because it provided impetus for consolidating arid extending
A white man with his head in a bandage and blood stains on his shirt was explaining, “I’m just an insurance collector. I came over here on my regular rounds and look what happened.”
Murphy, the Red Squad lieutenant, responded, “Oh, you don’t look so bad, you’ll be all right. We were protecting you—we just made a mistake. They must have thought you were one of those reds. You can go.”
But there must have been a lot of “mistakes” that afternoon. When they finished, only thirty-five of us were charged with an offense. Late that night, bail was made and we were released. A Russian comrade, a huge man, picked me up and carried me like a baby to a waiting car and then to my apartment.
I was released on Saturday night. In its usual flamboyant and sensationalist style, the Chicago Defender reported that I was “beateri so badly that he may lose the use of his legs.”6 In fact, I did h^ve to walk on crutches for a month as a result of the scientific beating from the Chicago police.
The Party immediately took the offensive against this attack, linking it directly with the growing fascist menace abroad. Morris Childs, the district organizer, made a militant statement to the press in which he declared that the people of Chicago were against the “imperialist plunder of an independent country,” and would stand up for their right to say so freely. He called for a “united people’s front against fascist reaction in this city,”7 and urged the people of Chicago to flood the city with telegrams demanding the release of all demonstrators and an end to police suppression of political activity.
The Party called for a huge protest meeting the following Wednesday at Boulevard Hall on Forty-seventh Street. Despite the Red Squad’s attempts at intimidation, it was packed with people. Speaking to the audience from a chair, as I was unable to stand, I told the audience that our demonstration had been a brilliant success in showing that the people of Chicago were ready to unite against war and fascism, both foreign and native, and in defense of their right to speak for peace.
committee of prominent citizens, including Dr. Arthur G. Falls, chairman of the Interracial Commission; attorney Edith Sampson, who later became a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations; A.L. Foster, secretary of the Chicago Urban League; and Robert Morse Lovett of the University of Chicago—was formed to investigate the police brutality. The committee urged that people send protest letters and phone calls to the mayor and to prominent members of the city administration.
The thirty-five of us who had been charged with inciting to riot demanded a jury trial. When we arrived in court, it was packed with our supporters. The prosecutor, on seeing the crowd, asked for the trial to be postponed. During the following weeks and months the D.A. asked for postponements each time our case came up. It was clear that they were trying to drag things out, hoping that the momentum of/our support would die down.
This tactic of theirs imposed a hardship on us, for we had thousands of dollars tied up in bail which would not be returned until after the trial. The money was desperately needed for defense work elsewhere. Finally, we accepted the deal they offered of pleading guilty in exchange for settling the matter quickly and reducing the charges to disorderly conduct, thus releasing the bail money. This went along with the understanding that the sentence would be a fine of one dollar and one day in jail, which we had already served.
THE NATIONAL NEGRO CONGRESS
Our campaign in defense of Ethiopia helped lay the basis for the greatest Black united front movement of the period—the National Negro Congress. Founded in Chicago in mid-February 1936, the Congress brought together representatives of all classes in the national Black community, promoting unity in the struggle around the burning issues of Black rights.
Our activities on Ethiopia merged with preparations for the Congress. We were glad that Chicago had been chosen as the host city because it provided impetus for consolidating and extending
our contacts and associations. The National Sponsoring Committee for the Congress, headed by John P. Davis who was then secretary of the Joint Committee on National Recovery, set up headquarters in Chicago. We also established a local sponsoring committee with Charles Wesley Burton, a well-known leader in Chicago’s Black community, as chairman.
An office was opened on Chicago’s Southside. We set up a speakers’ bureau and organized canvassing teams which distributed throughout the city the congress call and thousands of copies of the pamphlet “Let Us Build the National Negro Congress.” We approached local organizations for delegates to the congress. We were active in this preparatory work, and the result was reflected in an extremely large Chicago delegation.
The congress opened on Friday, February 15, at the Eighth Illinois Regiment Armory (my old World War I regiment). There was a large crowd milling around the entrance as Claude Lightfoot, Hank Johnson and I arrived, flanked by several Black notables.
I recognized our old Red Squad enemies, Mills and Murphy, standing off to the side and watching the scene. Not only hatred, but frustration and surprise showed on their faces. And why not? It had been their job to isolate and discredit us communists. Instead we had become respected members—even leaders—in the Black community. The overwhelming turnout and broad united front character of the Congress were testimony to their failure. But we were to learn that they were not yet finished with us.
The armory was jammed with over 5,000 delegates and visitors. Some 585 organizations from twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia were represented, sharecroppers and tenant farmers’ unions, 246 trade unions, eighty church and civic organizations, youth groups, political parties, cultural and fraternal groups, and women’s organizations. About eighty-five percent of those attending were Black.
A. Philip Randolph, Black trade unionist and president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, gave the keynote address. He linked up the various issues in the Black community with the need for a united front organization. He pointed out the special
significance of developing the anti-fascist movement and the need for special focus on organizing Blacks in industrial unions. He called for continuing and strengthening the “fight to break down the color line in the trade unions which now have it.” He also urged independent political action in the form of a farmer-labor party.8
John P. Davis, secretary and a key organizer of the congress, stated its purpose and outlined the agenda for the meeting. Greetings of solidarity from many revolutionary movements throughout the world were read.
The one that excited me the most was that from Mao Tsetung, then provisional chairman of the Chinese Soviet Republic. The message read in part, “I greet...the First National Congress of the fighting Negro people, 12,000,000 strong in America against every form of national and racial oppression.” He went on to condemn the fascist invasion of Ethiopia and add that “this struggle must spur you on to strengthen your ranks in a united fighting front, guided by the program of the militant Negro leaders which today raises its voice for a determined struggle for freedom.” Chairman Mao concluded by sending greetings from Chou En-lai and Chu Teh.9
The next day was devoted to panel discussions and workshops. The large armory floor was covered with groups meeting to discuss particular issues and hammer out resolutions. The largest workshop was on the trade unions, reflecting the significant working class composition of the congress. The crucial importance of Southern Blacks was emphasized by Robert Wood, ILD organizer from Birmingham, and by Ozzie Hart, president of the Sharecroppers’ Union.
Special sessions were held on fascism and war, civil liberties and police terror. One of the highlights of the congress was the appearance of Lij Tesfaye Zaphiro, special envoy of Ethiopia’s London legation, who addressed the gathering.
The militant spirit and determination of the delegates was continually brought out on the floor. At every mention of the Scottsboro Boys and Angelo Herndon there were prolonged cheers. Tim Holmes, communist delegate from New York, led three cheers for the defense of Ethiopia, which shook the vast
auditorium. When a resolution condemning the Hearst press and urging its boycott was unanimously adopted, the delegates staged a spontaneous demonstration in which every visible copy of the local Hearst sheet—the Herald Examiner—was torn to shreds and tossed in the air. Silence greeted the telegram from Mayor Kelly who conveniently found that he had scheduled an out of town meeting and would be unable to attend. When his replacement, Judge Burke, telegrammed that he was suddenly called to the bedside of his dying sister, the audience responded with prolonged derisive laughter.
On Sunday, the closing session established the congress as a permanent organization and called for the formation of local councils throughout the country. The thrust of the program was basically as outlined in the keynote address by Randolph, centering on active support of industrial unionism and the need to combat the growing threat of war and fascism.
The congress passed resolutions calling for the formation of Negro labor committees to oppose discriminatory practices in trade unions and to undertake organization of unorganized Black workers. The resolution read in part: “These Committees can be a powerful factor in the cause of Industrial Unionism and especially in mass production industry where there are many Blacks.” Other resolutions supported sharecroppers’ and tenant farmers’ unions and called for social security benefits and improved unemployment relief.
On the front against war and fascism, the congress called for increased support of Ethiopia, passed a strong resolution opposing lynching and supporting the revised Costigan-Wagner Anti-Lynch Bill and calling for continued support of the Scottsboro Boys and Angelo Herndon.
The speakers at the closing session included Norman Thomas of the Socialist Party, Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, Lester Granger, chairman of the Urban League, and Angelo Herndon, who received an enthusiastic ovation. Randolph was elected president of the new organization.
Throughout the congress, we communists played an active role, participating on the numerous panels. James Ford stressed Black
peoples’ stake in the struggle for independent political action in the form of a farmer-labor party. Communists were on the local and national sponsoring committees. The seventy-member national council of the National Negro Congress elected at the conference included about ten communists.
Our participation during the entire three-day session was, however, somewhat hampered by continual harassment from the Chicago Red Squad. They set up a loose dragnet around the armory and jailed a number of comrades on their way to or from congress sessions. They held them without booking until the congress closed on Sunday. These comrades were mostly second-line leaders. The police knew any arrest of a well-known leader would have provoked larg^: demonstrations and protests.
The Red Squad’s disruptive activities were not confined to harassment outside, or to just the communists. They clearly sought to disrupt the work of the congress itself. Congress leaders faced daily threats of being thrown out of the meeting hall. In this, the Red Squad had an amenable accomplice in Col. Warfield, Black commander of the Eighth Illinois Regiment. He had obviously swallowed whole hog the Hearst propaganda accusations that the conference was organized and manipulated by the “reds” and was part of the “general plot” to overthrow the government by force and violence.
Col. Warfield had even escorted friends of his around the armory, showing them hidden machine guns with stand-by crews to back up any ultimatum to clear the hall. The colonel, whom I remember as a lieutenant during my Army days, was a “back-door relative” of Wallis Warfield. The old Virginia slave-holding family had recently gained some notoriety through their daughter’s marriage to the Duke of Windsor. This connection had undoubtedly been helpful in the colonel’s climb to eminence in Black bourgeois circles.
While this form of harassment failed, Warfield and his officers were successful in preventing Earl Browder from speaking at the closing session. Browder had been requested by the session’s chairman to speak, but was prohibited by order of the Eighth Regiment officers. This announcement was received with strong
disapproval by the assembled delegates. The issue, however, was not forced because it was the last session and just before adjournment.
In all, the conference was a huge success. All our local activities were given a real boost, especially so in Chicago with its large turnout at the conference. The Party’s prestige was also bolstered and this was to be reflected in later campaigns like the steel drive and the electoral campaign of 1936.
THE NINTH PARTY CONVENTION
The Ninth Party Convention was held in New York City, June 24-28, 1936. The regular Party convention occupied the first three days and the last session, held in Madison Square Garden, was devoted to ratifying the national election platform and nominating candidates for the 1936 elections.
The 1936 elections, held in the midst of the continuing economic crisis, saw some of the most bitterly fought campaigns in American history. The dominant Wall Street monopolists, the Hearst papers, the most reactionary and fascist-minded sections of the ruling class, united behind the Alfred M. Landon/Col. Frank Knox slate in a determined effort to defeat Roosevelt and reverse the New Deal programs and gains made by the popular mass movement.
At the same time, agents of big business formed the Union Party which was designed to take votes away from Roosevelt and spread confusion among the populist-oriented voters. Self-declared fascists, Father Coughlin and Gerald L.K. Smith, were its major leaders, and William Lenke was its presidential candidate. Roosevelt, running on a pledge to continue the New Deal reforms, had substantial middle-class support and aid from more liberal-minded and anti-fascist sections of the ruling class.
This sharpening of contradictions in the U.S. ruling class was a reflection of the growing threat of fascism on a world scale. The fascist offensive at home was part of a similar offensive abroad: the formation of the Hitler-Mussolini-Hirohito axis, the invasion of
northern China, the invasion of Ethiopia, the strengthening of Hitler’s power in Germany and the growing threat of civil war in Spain.
In order to remain in the presidency, Roosevelt was forced to take a more progressive posture, moving to the left of the “economic royalists,” as he dubbed his opponents, and establishing a new alignment of forces in the ruling circles.
It was in this context that over 750 delegates met in New York for the Ninth Party Convention. I arrived with the large Chicago delegation in which Southsiders were well represented. In preconvention discussions we had made a self-critical evaluation of our work. We pointed to our strength in united front activities and our success in organizing in the lighter industries. But our most serious weakness lay in the work in basic industry—steel and meat packing—where we had few contacts and had made little progress. But we looked forward to overcoming this in the coming period with the opportunities opened up by the CIO drive for industrial unions.
William Z. Foster, Party chairman and head of the trade union department, made a brief speech, outlining the objectives of the convention and the aims of the Party in the struggle against reaction: strengthen the mass movements, fight against fascism and war, develop our trade union work and the drive for industrial unions, build our unemployed work and work among Blacks, youth and women. He linked all these areas together with the election campaign. It was Foster’s first appearance since his heart attack which had occurred during the 1932 campaign. We were happy to see him back, anticipating his advice and participation in the coming steel drive. We gave him a stirring ovation.
Browder, the general secretary, gave the keynote speech, a report of the Central Committee. By correctly building the united front against fascism, he noted, the Party had been greatly strengthened. He stressed that the Party’s dramatic growth— membership was up sixty percent in two years to 40,000, with an additional 11,000 YCLers—was an indication of the growing influence and correctness of our policy. Browder pointed to the progress made by the National Negro Congress and stressed that communists had earned an unchallenged place in the Black movement through their efforts around Scottsboro and the Angelo Herndon defense.
He noted that Blacks expected from communists the greatest sensitivity, the greatest energy in their defense, and the closest solidarity. The Communist Party, Browder emphasized, was proud to be spoken of as “the Party of the Negroes.” He concluded that the Party must use the 1936 election campaign as a means of further building the American people’s united front against fascism.
Browder was the Party’s candidate for president; Ford again ran for vice-president. The Party’s platform gave implied support for Roosevelt, however, by focusing on Landon as the main danger. The platform correctly emphasized a minimum program which linked demands for more jobs, for social security, relief and foj Black rights, with the key political struggle of the period—the defeat of the fascist offensive. To carry this out, we had to build a people’s front in the form of a farmer-labor party.
While the convention under Browder’s leadership showed the Party’s basic strength, it also revealed certain rightist tendencies. Browder advanced the formulation of communism as “Twentieth Century Americanism,” a perspective which saw socialist transformation simply as a continuation of American democratic traditions. It was a classless proposition, which failed to make distinctions between bourgeois democracy and proletarian democracy, and obscured the need for revolution. With hindsight, Browder’s statements were actually a forewarning of what was later to become an entire theory, the justification for dissolving the Party as a Marxist-Leninist vanguard. In practice it hinted at the submerging of the Party in the united front, abdicating its independent role and tailing after Roosevelt and the New Deal labor leaders.10
At the time I doubt that any of us understood the full implications of Browder’s formulations. Still, there was some struggle with Browder. He was defeated in the Politburo when he proposed the Party run its candidates as a farmer-labor ticket rather than as communists.
I was concerned about a tendency to downgrade the importance of the right of self-determination. Browder failed to place it as the basic principle upon which we based our fight against Black oppression and for Black-white unity. Further, it was completely absent from the election platform. The minimum demands were placed, but to the exclusion of the maximum program.
I felt this was wrong, particularly because the large increase in Party membership had brought in many new cadres who were not fully aware of the theoretical foundations for our position on the question. I made a speech at the nominating convention which was described in the Daily Worker as follows:
Harry Haywood, Negro leader in Chicago, after emphasizing that the “denial of land and the denial of freedom is at t he root of inequality,” pledged the Southside delegation to the carrying forward of the Party banner in Chicago.
“It is because we carry our stand for equality to its logical conclusion that we can lead the Negro masses,” he declared.
“It is not chance that we are the ones who spread the infamy of Scottsboro to every corner of the world. It is not chance that from our ranks came Angelo Herndon.”
The education of Party forces to a real understanding of the Party position on the Negro question was urged by Haywood who said that “it is we who have to demonstrate in theory and practice how the struggle for self-determination is at the very heart of the struggle for unity of Negro and white.”
Self-determination must be explained, he stated, to white workers. “Always on the basis of unity...on the basis of their common interests with the Negro people. We must convince them that the possibility of their own freedom depends on unity, and that unity demands equality in the deepest sense— self-determination.”"
Back in Chicago, I was the Communist Party’s candidate for Congress from the First Corigressional District on the Southside. My opponents, both Blacks, were incumbent Congressman Mitchell, a Democrat supported by the Kelly machine, and Republican Oscar DePriest. The congressional district included the Southside Black wards. In the campaign, I scored both of my
adversaries for being responsible for hundreds of evictions on the Southside and I urged my audiences to vote communist. Following the Party’s line of indirect support for Roosevelt, I centered my main attack on Landon and his fellow Republican Oscar DePriest. Mitchell won the election, part of the great pro-Roosevelt landslide which witnessed the first nationwide breakaway of Blacks from the Republican Party. The Chicago Democratic machine, dominated by Mayor Kelly, rode to victory on Roosevelt’s coattails. I picked up a scant 899 votes on a straight communist ticket.12 Though it was the highest vote ever received by the Party in that district, it was still quite small relative to our strength for the Southside. Doubtless this was a result of the Party’s policy in the 1936 elections, which, as Foster uncritically remarked, amounted to “objective, but not official support for Roosevelt.”13