The evil system of colonialism and imperialism grew up along with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the thorough emancipation of the black people.
Mao Tse-tung1
By the late fifties, those of us who had defended the revolutionary position on Black liberation had been driven from the CP—either expelled or forced to resign. The Party’s leaders insisted that Blacks were well on the way to being assimilated into the old reliable American “melting pot.”
But the melting pot suddenly exploded in their faces. In the sixties, the Black Revolt surged up from the Deep South and quickly spread its fury across the entire country. Advancing wave upon wave—with sit-ins, freedom marches, wildcat strikes, and, finally, hundreds of spontaneous insurrections—the Black masses announced to their capitalist masters and the entire world that they would never rest until their chains of bondage were completely smashed.
This new awakening of the Afro-American people evoked the greatest domestic crisis since the thirties and it became the focal point for the major contradictions in U.S. society, the most urgent, immediate and pressing questions confronting the U.S. corporate rulers and the revolutionary forces. In its face, the ruling class employed counter-revolutionary dual tactics, both terrorist attacks on Black people, especially in the deep South, and reformist legal maneuvers in Washington.
First developing as a civil rights struggle against Jim Crow, the Revolt increasingly took on a nationalist character, culminating in the Black Power movement and projecting into the heart of modern U.S. society the demands of the unfinished democratic revolution of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
In a decade of mass movement, which saw demonstrations and uprisings in virtually every ghetto in the country, the Afro-American people put all existing programs for Black freedom to the test. Their struggle shattered the myth of peaceful imminent integration, revealing the bankruptcy of the “Free by ’63” program of the old reformist leaders and their supporters in the revisionist CPUSA.
The Black upsurge had its fueling sources domestically in the combined influences of the failure of legal democratic integration and the catastrophic deterioration of the economic position of the Black masses, both absolute and relative to whites. In the fifties, the further monopolization and mechanization of agriculture had precipitated a deep agrarian crisis, throwing tens of thousands of rural Blacks off the land in the South. At the same time, the impending economic crisis, together with growing automation of industry, created an entire generation of ghetto youth in the urban areas, a “lost generation”—both north and South—with no work or prospects for work within the existing economic system. With the dispossessed Black population growing by leaps and bounds, the potential of the movement for Black Power escalated.
VThe Revolt was further fueled and inspired by the successes of the anti-imperialist movements of the third world, especially in the newly independent nations of Africa. This worldwide revolution of color broke the age-old feeling of isolation among the Black masses. As Malcolm X put it, “The oppressed people of this earth make up a majority, not a minority.”2
Thus the struggle was transformed from an internal, isolated one against an apparently “invincible” ruling class, into a component part of a worldwide revolutionary struggle against a common imperialist enemy. U.S. defeats in Korea, China, Cuba, and then,
Vietnam, further exploded the myth of U.S. “invincibility.” Many Black Power militants drew upon the experiences of the third world liberation struggles in developing a strategy for the movement here, as well as in many instances openly expressing solidarity with liberation struggles in Vietnam, Palestine and Africa.
This anti-imperialist outlook reflected the rising mood of the times. Thus the Revolt’s development confirmed our thesis that the Black movement would inevitably take a national-revolution-ary, anti-imperialist direction, culminating in the demand for political power in the areas of Black concentration. Far from being simply a fight for reforms, as the revisionists claimed, the Black liberation movement became a spark, a catalyst pushing forward the whole working class and people’s struggle in the U.S.
This latter point underscored the treacherous depths of the revisionist betrayal. The CPUSA did not even attempt to mobilize labor support for the Black struggle, and the labor aristocracy maintained hegemony over the workers’ movement. Thus abandoned to the leadership of the chauvinist bureaucrats, sharp divisions were sown between Black and white workers. This was in clear contrast to the unity built by communists in the thirties when the Party and the working class had played a leading role in fighting for the special demands of Blacks, making the Scottsboro Boys a household word from the tenements of New York to the ghettos of Watts.
Though the revolutionary outlook and organization of communists never became the leading factor in the Revolt, the movement nonetheless made considerable gains in the course of its development. As I see it, the Revolt developed in three periods. The first began with the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56 and ended with the 1963 March on Washington. This latter protest event brought in its wake a widespread disillusionment with the reformist, legalistic and non-violent strategy of such organizations as SCLC, the Urban League and the NAACP.
The growing isolation of these “responsible” leaders and the break-up of the Kennedy-backed civil rights coalition (the “Big Five”—SNCC, SCLC, CORE, Urban League, the NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund) ushered in the second phase of militant open revolt. This period was marked by widespread rebellions in the cities and the demand for Black Power. But lacking a Leninist vanguard linked to the masses, the movement at this point was unconsolidated. Its nationalist leadership splintered into a variety of petty bourgeois tendencies— separatist, pan-Africanist, cultural nationalist and even some terrorist tendencies. Thus the bourgeoisie was able to usher in a third phase by buying off the right wing of the Black Power movement and establishing its own brokers within it. The 1969 Black Power Conference in N ewark, which was generously funded by the Ford Foundation, was the signal that this phase of the movement had begun in earnest.
FROM THE COURTROOM TO THE STREETS (1955-63)
The stage for the Black Revolt was set in 1954, the year of the Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation. This decision, historic in its effects upon the future of the Black movement, was a tactical concession forced by the rising movement at home and especially by criticism of Jim Crow from third world and socialist countries. NAACP leaders, however, hailed the decision as a vindication of their legalistic policies.
For its part, the federal government gave hardcore Southern reactionaries the opportunity to organize and unleash the most planned and purposeful campaign of anti-Black terror since the defeat of Reconstruction.
In response, the Black movement in the South burst out from under the wraps of the old elite leadership of the NAACP and took on a mass character—defying segregation laws and directly attacking the Jim Crow system. The spark was ignited in the Montgomery, Alabama, Bus Boycott of 1955-56 under the leadership of Martin Luther King. The flames spread. In 1960, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) began sit-in demonstrations which swept the South.
Freedom riders under the leadership of the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) took over the spotlight in 1961 and won national support for their campaign to integrate transportation facilities. In the spring of 1963, the struggle reached a high point in the Battle of Birmingham and from there leaped over regional boundaries and spread throughout the country, uniting various classes and strata of Black people under the slogan of “Freedom Now”!
The movement exerted tremendous attractive power on all sections of the population, especially the youth, drawing sections of the white community into support and participation. The summer of 1964 saw hundreds of college students travel to Mississippi to participate in a voter registration project.
It was also in the South that the armed self-defense movement was initiated in North Carolina by Robert Williams, whose NAACP local was suspended for these activities. Based upon Black workers and war veterans, other armed groups like the Deacons for Defense and Justice in Louisiana and Mississippi won important victories against the Ku Klux Klan in the mid-sixties. It was during the Meredith March through Mississippi, which was protected by the Deacons, that the slogan of Black Power first gained national prominence in 1966.
As Chairman Mao wrote, the movement became “a new clarion call to all the exploited and oppressed people of the United States to fight against the barbarous rule of the monopoly capitalist class.”3 Movements developed among students and women, Chicano, Native American and Puerto Rican people, as well as among activists against the Vietnam War.
Alarm bordering on panic struck the ruling circles. Time magazine expressed the fear that the civil rights movement “will crash beyond the framework of passive resistance into new dangerous dimensions.”4 U.S. efforts to build a neo-colonial empire in the third world were further impaired as the grotesque contrast between its high-flown moral posture and the brutal reality of an organized system of racist barbarism nurtured within its own borders was further exposed. Racist police employing such methods as electric prodding irons, police dogs, high pressure hoses and the brutal beating of women, provoked angry outrage throughout the world. Its impact was especially felt in Africa, where concern about racism in the United States was expressed by
I lie Addis Ababa Conference of African Ministers.5
The alarm of white ruling circles was also reflected among the lop leadership of the NAACP and other reformist organizations. I n order to maintain their role as “honest” brokers between the Hlack masses and the white rulers, they had been forced to grant some autonomy to the Southern dissident wing led by King and SCLC. Representing ministers and the Black bourgeoisie of the South, King favored a policy of non-violent, mass action. But he in (urn was faced with a growing challenge from the more radical dements of the movement, especially the youth of SNCC, sections of CORE and the NAACP youth—the shock troops of the Revolt. It was among these front-line fighters that the inherent conflict between King’s non-violent philosophy and direct mass action first dime to a head. Under conditions prevailing in the Deep South, (I irect mass action and civil disobedience campaigns could develop n ml grow only if accompanied by organized armed self-defense. In renouncing self-defense, the movement inevitably reached an impasse there.
In situations like the heroic but unsuccessful battle of Albany, Georgia, the moral and political bankruptcy of making nonviolence a principle was revealed. In Jackson, Mississippi, even niter the assassination of NAACP leader Medgar Evers, little or no progress was made. Similarly in Greensboro, North Carolina,
2,000 demonstrators were jailed over the integration of two restaurants. And in Birmingham, the South’s most important bastion of white supremacy, it was fourteen years until a token indictment was brought against a few of the child-murdering bombers. The upsurge of 1963 resulted in gains in other parts of the country, but practically none in the Deep South.
liven the victories that were won in desegregation and legal reforms produced no improvement in the conditions of poor and Working Blacks. In the fifteen-year period between 1949 and 1964, t he median annual income for non-white families increased from $1,650 to $3,800, while the median income for white families Increased from $3,200 to more than $6,800 during the same period. The disparity between white and non-white annual income in 1949 had been less than $1,600. By 1964, the gap was more than $3,000.
During the economic crisis of 1958-64, the government admitted that Black unemployment was above the 10% mark and the Black-white ratio of unemployment rate was boosted from 1.6 in 1948 to 2 or 2.5 from the early fifties on. Black youth were hardest hit of all. Between the two “good” years of 1957 and 1964, their unemployment increased 51%, at the same time that one out of every six young Blacks was driven out of the official labor force.
These experiences cast doubt on the whole program of “peaceful democratic integration.” Riding the tiger of the Black Revolt, King and fellow advocates of non-violence were rescued by President Kennedy. Trying to walk a tightrope between the hardcore dixiecrat defiance and surging Black militancy, the administration sought to divert the mass movement back into legalistic channels by proposing a civil rights bill. The bill’s declared purpose was to get the Black movement off the street and back into the courtroom where the 100 years of litigation promised by the Southern governors could proceed. Instead of the militant protest originally planned, the 1963 March on Washington was converted into a peaceful demonstration in support of the President’s civil rights bill. But even this much-vaunted march could not succeed in diverting the rising tide of rebellion. It did, however, openly expose to the masses the collusion between the Kennedy Administration and men like Whitney Young of the Urban League, Roy Wilkins of the NAACP and A. Philip Randolph. At the same time, the march leaders censored John Lewis’s speech for SNCC because it attacked Kennedy’s Civil Rights Bill.6
Malcolm X showed how the government used bribery to bring these reformist leaders to its aid in controlling the masses in March on Washington.
When they [the administration-ed.] found out that this black steamroller was going to come down on the capital, they called in Wilkins, they called in Randolph, they called in these national Negro leaders that you respect and told them, “Call it off.” Kennedy said, “Look, you all are letting this thing go too far.” And Old Tom said, “Boss, I can’t stop it, because I didn’t start it.” I’m telling you what they said. They said, “I’m not even in it, much less at the head of it.” They said, “These
Negroes are doing things on their own. They’re running ahead of us.” And that old shrewd fox, he said, “If you all aren’t in it, I’ll put you in it. I’ll put you at the head of it. I’ll endorse it. I’ll welcome it. I’ll help it. I’ll join it.”7
Following this event, mass rejection of peaceful democratic integration became apparent in the growing wave of ghetto rebellions. There were twenty-four in 1964, thirty-eight in 1966, one hundred twenty-eight in 1967 and one hundred thirty-one in the first half of 1968, the year of King’s assassination.
These urban uprisings put into sharp focus the alienation of the Black masses from the old-line leaders like Roy Wilkins, A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. As the Kerner Report lamented, “Those who come forward to discourage rioting may have no influence with the rioters.” The report also contained another ploy of the bourgeoisie, designed to get itself off the hook. It charged: “What white Americans have never understood—but what the Negro can never forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”8 By blaming everyone, including the masses of white working people, the ruling class in effect blamed no one and covered up their own crimes.
Black Power became the rallying cry of the uprisings because it summed up the main lessons learned by the masses during the civil rights phase of the movement; legal rights meant nothing without the political power to enforce them. Black Power expressed the growing consciousness of the Afro-American masses that they are an oppressed nation whose road to freedom and equality lies through taking political power into their own hands. Thus Blacks should become the controlling force in the areas of their major concentration—in the urban ghettos of the north as well as the Black Belt area of the South.
The emergence of Black Power as a mass slogan signaled a fundamental turning point in the modern Afro-American liberation struggle, carrying it to the threshold of a new phase. It marked a basic shift in content and direction of the movement, from civil rights to national liberation, with a corresponding realignment of social forces. It indicated that the Black Revolt had crashed beyond the limited goals set by the old-guard reformist assimilationist leadership of the NAACP and associates, beyond the strictures of Reverend King’s non-violent holding operation, into channels leading to direct confrontation with the main enemy—the “white power” oligarchy of the imperialists. Inevitably, this struggle moved towards juncture with the anti- imperialist revolutions in the third world and with the working class movement for socialism.
The vehicle of the Revolt was an indigenous grassroots nationalism, upsurging from the poor and working masses of the urban ghettos and the poor and dispossessed farmers and sharecroppers of the Black Belt. The movement reflected their strivings to break out of the bind of racist economic and cultural subjugation, to establish for themselves the dignity of a free and equal people. Here was the mass base of SNCC, the Black Panther Party (which raised the question of armed self-defense for the urban ghettos and popularized the writings of Mao Tsetung), Malcolm X (recently split from the Black Muslims), and other revolutionary nationalists.
Afro-Americans were caught up in an assertive drive for a viable, collective identity adapted to the peculiar conditions of their development in the U.S. and their African background. Further, it was a drive to recover a cultural heritage shaped by over 300 years of chattel slavery and a century of thwarted freedom. This quest for identity as a people in its own right led ever greater segments of the Afro-American community to a fundamental reassessment of their actual status as an oppressed nation—virtual captives in the metropolitan heartland of one of the world’s most powerful and predatory imperialist powers.
A growing body of young Black radical intellectuals assumed an active role in fostering Black Power nationalism. Their efforts, reflecting the spirit of the masses, produced a new cultural renaissance surpassing that of the twenties. The vanguard was an angry, alienated Black youth—a proud and sensitive young generation which refused to stagnate and die in a system which sought to destroy it.
The above developments led to a mass defection from the old guard leadership which became morally and politically isolated from the masses. The trend of Black Power nationalism rose to dominate the Black community in the second phase of the struggle. The nationalism of the sixties differed from the Garvey movement and its latter-day spiritual descendants, the Black Muslims, neo-Garveyites and others. In the main, the Black Power movement called not for escapist withdrawal, but for a fight here where Blacks live. Among some narrow nationalist sects, however, the old backward utopianism persisted.
The leadership of the Black Power movement, while having a profound and positive effect on the struggles of the Black masses— displayed its own major weakness—that of being primarily based in the Black intelligentsia and petty-bourgeoisie. This was inevitable in the face of the CPUSA’s defection. The movement was hamstrung in attempting to fight U.S. imperialism without the benefit of a program of class struggle. It also deeply underestimated the potential strength of unity with the overall workers’ movement in achieving the goals of the national struggle. These weaknesses contributed to the ability of the U.S. corporate establishment to temporarily cool out and buy off the Black upsurge by employing both reformist and narrow nationalist schemes.
At first Black Power activists submerged class conflicts in the movement. But soon a right wing emerged, with its base in a sector of the ghetto bourgeoisie: businessmen, ministers, professionals, poverty project leaders, Black studies professors, newly-hired lower management and token upper management. This right wing found its spokesmen in elite intellectuals like Roy Innis, Floyd McKissick and Harold Cruse. They aspired to the role of economic and political administrators of a Black “internal colony,” still owned and controlled by white monopoly capitalism.
COOPTING A RIGHT WING
This perspective of pursuing the Black bourgeoisie’s class interests within an imperialist framework was not fundamentally different from the integrationism of the old guard Black leaders. The more nimble members of this group hopped on the bandwagon, while others, like Whitney Young, kept a foot in both camps.
This emerging Black right wing was met half way by a white establishment in search of new allies. Facing defeats abroad and burning cities at home, the establishment was haunted by the specter of a national rebellion in its urban nerve centers. As McGeorge Bundy pointed out, if blacks burn the cities, “the white man’s companies will have to take the losses.”9
This new kind of broker spoke the language of the Black Power movement and might better lead it into safe channels, away from the confrontations which threatened domestic tranquility and international credibility. So the buffer zone between the establishment and the Black masses was extended to include the new right-wing nationalists and their social base. A wide range of corporate leaders united behind this strategy, bringing into play their tremendous powers of cooptation and manipulation. This does not mean that the bourgeoisie gave up on the old-line leadership, but rather that they concentrated their efforts on the right-wing nationalists in this particular period.
Bundy’s Ford Foundation led the way, putting some of CORE’S leadership on the payroll. The establishment and its new allies moved to redefine Black Power in more acceptable terms. Harvard’s Kennedy Institute of Politics defined self-determination to mean community development corporations and tax incentives for investors in the ghetto; Roy Innis endorsed this formula.
Fifty corporations jointly sponsored two Black Power Conferences under Nathan Wright’s leadership. To Wright, Black Power meant Black capitalism, or, as he expressed it, “The most strategic opportunity which our American capitalistic system has to preserve or strengthen itself lies in the possibility of providing the Negro community with both a substantial and immediate stake in its operation at every level.”10
In fact, “Black capitalism” was the centerpiece of the power-elite’s strategy. This included a stepped-up policy of piecemeal concessions to contain and reverse the revolutionary trend by buying up and corrupting potential and actual community leaders. Richard Nixon articulated this strategy in 1968: “What most of the militants are asking is not separation but to be included in—not as supplicants, but as owners, as entrepreneurs—to have a share of the wealth and a piece of the action.”11 Sections of the ghetto entrepreneurs and professionals were ready to misuse the collective strength of the Black community to get a “piece of the action.”
The crisis and ebbing of the Black Power nationalist movement was precipitated by the rise of this thoroughly reformist trend, which was backed directly by the imperialists. This new Black elite moved systematically to take over the movement, sap its revolutionary potential and restrict it to goals which U.S. capitalism was willing to concede. In this, they were aided by a growing apparatus of repression—police, FBI, CIA, National Guard and Army Intelligence—which murdered, jailed and suppressed many un-cooperative leaders. This came on the heels of Nixon’s law and order, white backlash campaign of 1968. The full story of intrigue, murder, character assassination, splittism and provocative activities is only now beginning to come to light. The exposure of the FBI’s notorious COINTELPRO operations was but the tip of the iceberg.
Where were the forces to give leadership to the movement in the face of this both open and covert assault by the imperialists?
Certainly they were not to be found in the CPUS A which made every effort to attack and downgrade the movement. James Jackson summed up the basic attitude of the CPUSA toward nationalism in a recent article. “The main function of nationalism,” he wrote, ‘‘whatever its form (our emphasis), is to split and divide and fragment the international working class and the advanced contingents of the national liberation movements.”12
Genuine communists, of course, must distinguish between the nationalism of the oppressor nations and that of the oppressed, as well as between nationalism’s progressive and backward aspects.
Without the leadership of a genuine communist party, the limitations of the nationalist outlook (as I have already shown) became clear. Its leadership was unable to make a class analysis of the Black community, thus overestimating the unity between the Black masses and the Black bourgeoisie, while underestimating the need for unity with the general workers’ movement.
To be sure, the upsurge spurred the political development of the Black proletariat, building on the foundations laid by the Black caucus movement of the post World War II period. Beginning in the early sixties, a new wave of Black caucuses sprung up in basic industries across the country, reaching perhaps their highest political development in the Detroit League of Revolutionary Black Workers. But, in the final analysis, the treachery of the Dennis-Hall clique prevented Black workers and the working class as a whole from playing a consistently independent and leading role as a class force during this period.
I believe that if we had had a revolutionary party in the sixties that much of the spontaneity and reactionary nationalism of the period could have been combatted. Undoubtedly, the ruling class would still have tried to split the Black Power movement, but the left wing would not have been nearly wiped out as an organized force in the Black community. If the CPUS A hadn’t liquidated communist work in the South and in the factories, the sixties would have seen a consolidated proletarian force emerge in the Black Belt and the ghettos. The communist forces could have come out of the Revolt with developed cadres rooted in the factories and communities, with credibility among the masses.
THE ROAD AHEAD
Despite such shortcomings, the sixties Revolt did force concessions from the ruling class—breaking down a great deal of legal and occupational Jim Crow, enlarging the Black middle class and
extending the franchise to Blacks in the South.
But have these gains exhausted the revolutionary potential of the Black movement? Have the mechanization of Southern agriculture, massive outmigrations from the Black Belt and civil rights laws wiped out the consequences of the old plantation system? Most important, have these changes wiped out the existence of an oppressed Black nation in the Deep South as so many have claimed? Is the right of self-determination for the Black Belt nation still a demand that communists should raise?
Let’s take a look at current conditions. Despite the imperialist offensive against the Black masses, which resulted in tremendous outmigrations from the Black Belt homeland, there remains a stable community of Black people in the rural South and a growing Black population in the urban areas. The actual number of Blacks has steadily increased. In 1940, there were over nine million Black people in the South and by 1970 the number had increased to nearly twelve million. Over 70% of all Black people in the U.S. were born in the South and still have roots there. Within the Black Belt territory itself, despite fierce economic and political coercion, there has remained since 1930 a stable community of over five million. The “escape valve” into the northern cities is being closed by the crisis, and outmigration from the South has slowed considerably with reverse migration now becoming the dominant trend.
It is no accident that the civil rights movement first arose in the South where Blacks face the most terroristic oppression and are often denied even the most basic democratic rights. In fact, the mechanization of agriculture, which drove so many Blacks off the land in the South, provided one of the main fueling sources of the rebellion. SNCC did some of its best work in its Southern rural projects, where it took up the struggles of sharecroppers and the displaced peasantry.
Today the spiraling inflation and recession of the worst crisis in forty years still hits Blacks hardest, the victims of continued last-hired, first-fired policies and an unemployment rate twice that of whites. Recent statistics show the highest rate of unemployment among Black youth since World War II, while at the same time there have been cutbacks in Black studies and other affirmative action programs. The result is yet another “lost” generation of Black youth condemned to the margins of the workforce. Once again, the sensitive ghetto youth and students are becoming a flash point for all the contradictions of the system.
In the midst of the biggest strike wave in twenty years, the ruling class is desperately trying to exacerbate existing race differences. This accounts for the new rise of anti-busing and segregationist movements in northern cities, the rise in membership of the Ku Klux Klan and the increasing attacks on social welfare and affirmative action programs.
The crisis is also undermining the existence of the expanded Black middle class which was created by the ruling class’s strategy of concessions during the “boom” years of the sixties. Business failures and service cutbacks are weakening this group economically, while fascist attacks and growing class divisions inside the Black community are eroding the political credibility of Black elected officials. In cities like Atlanta, Detroit and Newark, where Black mayors have been elected, the living and working conditions among Blacks have continued to deteriorate. Far from indicating the attainment of real political power for Afro-Americans, these politicians have been elected merely to serve as administrators for the white power structure.
This domestic situation is combined with an international situation more explosive than in the sixties, symbolized particularly by the fierce liberation struggles in southern Africa and the increasing threat of war between the two superpowers. It is only a matter of time before the smouldering embers of Black Revolt burst into flame again. As Lenin pointed out, “Capitalism is not so harmoniously built that the various sources of rebellion can immediately merge of their own accord, without reverses and defeats.”13 Whenever the next Black upsurge comes—whether as part of a general revolutionary upsurge or as signal of the movement to come—we must be prepared to bring out mass support for equality and self-determination as a special feature of the struggle for socialism.
Most assuredly, the next wave of mass struggle will begin from a higher level of consciousness, based on what the last upsurge taught the masses about the nature of the enemy and the path to liberation. In fact, the Revolt sparked an irreversible growth of Black national consciousness and brought forward a new generation of revolutionaries. A section of this movement has turned to the best experiences of the socialist countries in fighting for equality of nations and nationalities. These young fighters have become part of the growing body of cadres of the anti-revisionist communist movement.
In this regard, a great deal has been learned from the People’s Republic of China, its Communist Party and its great leader, Mao Tsetung. The emphasis on testing ideas in practice, care and flexibility in applying united front tactics, of relying upon and serving the people, realism in dealing with power relationships, respect for the integrity of national minorities and for the rights of the third world nations against great nation chauvinism, the concrete analysis and application of Marxist-Leninist principles to one’s own country, and the pursuing of the two-line political struggle inside the Party are all part of China’s great legacy. For me, this has been a cause for great optimism for the future, especially for the new generation of communists.
This generation, left without guideposts after the betrayal of the CP, was forced to start almost from scratch. It has carried out a long march through the mass struggles of the sixties, to recapture our revolutionary heritage. It is heartening that they, along with some of us veteran fighters, are building a genuine communist party—the first in this country in decades. To this new revolutionary movement falls the task of giving leadership in the coming upsurge.
The ever deepening crisis and the increased threat of war between the two superpowers are affecting the living conditions of the broad masses of American people. At the same time, the ability of the imperialists and the labor aristocracy to grant concessions and thus buy off dissent, has been somewhat hampered by the crisis. Under such conditions and with the leadership of a new party, there is a strong possibility of building a movement based on the alliance between Blacks and other nationalities and the
working class. As Chairman Mao wrote in 1968:
The struggle of the black people in the United States is bound to merge with the American workers’ movement, and this will eventually end the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class.14
I hope that this book, which sums up some of my experiences and that of many other comrades, will make some contribution to this lofty goal.
Notes
CHAPTER ONE
1. (p. 5.) W. E. B. DuBois, Dusk of Dawn (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1940), p. 96.
2. (p. 21.) On April 12, 1864,6,000 Confederate soldiers commanded by an ex-slave trader, Major General Nathan Forrest, overran the 600 defenders of Fort Pillow, Tennessee, including 262 Blacks. After the fort was surrendered, Forrest’s troops massacred every Black soldier who failed to escape. Some were shot, others were burned or buried alive. This was in line with the official Confederate policy that Black soldiers would be treated as stolen property, not prisoners of war.
Reference to the incident can be found in the following works: Lerone Bennett, Jr., Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966), pp. 175-76; John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, 3rd ed. (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1967), p. 292; Carl Sandburg, Storm over the Land (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1942), pp. 245-48; Bruce Catton, A Stillness at Appomattox (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1953), p. 233.
CHAPTER TWO
1. (p. 36.) “An Essay Toward a History of the Black Man in the Great War,” reprinted in Julius Lester (ed.), The Seventh Son: The Thought and Writings of W. E. B. DuBois (New York: Random House, 1971), Vol. 2, pp. 130-31.
2. (p. 37.) Branches of the Manasseh also existed in Milwaukee and Chicago, but they had dissolved by the late twenties. See St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), vol. 2, pp. 145-46.
3. (p. 43.) Herbert Aptheker, “Negroes in Wartime,” New Masses, April 22, 1941, p. 14.
4. (p. 43.) John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, 4th ed. (New York: Knopf, 1974), pp. 474-75.
5. (p. 44.) Martha Gruening, “Houston, an N.A.A.C.P. Investigation,” The Crisis, November 1917, pp. 14-15.
6. (p. 45.) This was the story as we heard it from Company G. Slightly different versions appear in the following: Jack D. Foner, Blacks and the Military in American History (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974), pp. 113-16; Robert V. Haynes, “The Houston Mutiny and Riot of 1917,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1973, pp. 418-39; and Charles Flint Kellogg, NAA CP (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967), vol. 1,
pp. 261-62.
A campaign for the freedom of the men of the Twenty-fourth was launched by the NAACP, which finally resulted in the release of the last prisoner by Roosevelt in 1938.
7. (p. 55.) This document was first published in The Crisis, May 1919, pp. 16-17, with this note:
“The following documents have come into the hands of the Editor. He has absolute proof of their authenticity. The first document was sent out last August at the request of the American Army by the French Committee which is the official means of communications between the American forces and the French. It represents American and not French opinion and we have been informed that when the French Military heard of the distribution of this document among the Prefects and Sous-Prefects of France, they ordered such copies to be collected and burned.”
8. (p. 56.) This was how Roberts impressed many of us in the ranks at the time. Black officers, however, later told DuBois that Roberts let them run the regiment while taking credit for their exploits and conniving behind their backs to replace them with whites. See Lester, pp. 140-41.
9. (p. 66.) Charles H. Williams, Sidelights on Negro Soldiers (Boston: B.J. Bremmer and Co., 1923), pp. 74-75.
10. (p. 66.) Robert R. Moton, Finding a Way Out (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1920), p. 254.
11. (p. 67.) Quoted in Monroe N. Work (ed.), Negro Year Book (Tuskegee Institute, Alabama: The Negro Year Book Publishing Co., 1922), p. 192.
12. (p. 80.) For a detailed description of Black stevedore units, see Lester, pp. 117-19; and Williams, pp. 138-55.
CHAPTER THREE
1. (p. 83.) Arthur I. Waskow, From Race Riot to Sit-In (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1966), pp. 12, 111-12.
2. (p. 84.) Claude McKay, Selected Poems (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1953), p. 36.
3. (p. 87.) Allan H. -Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 36-41, and 151-55. Also see William M. Tuttle, Jr., “Labor Conflict and Racial Violence: The Black Worker in Chicago, 1894-1919,” Labor History, Summer 1969, pp. 408-32.
4. (p. 87.) Spear, p. 141.
5. (p. 93.) In the wake of mass actions in Philadelphia and Boston, the film was temporarily banned in many cities, including Chicago, where the NAACP and the Chicago Defender were active in the campaign.
6. (p. 93.) These states included parts of New England, New York, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois. The Klan was first reorganized in 1915 by William J. Simmons who advertised the reborn KKK in an Atlanta paper, alongside an ad for the opening of Birth of a Nation. According to David Chalmers, the KKK grew from several thousand members in 1919 to nearly 100,000 by summer 1921, and up to 3,000,000 by the midtwenties. See David M. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1965), pp. 29-31, 291.
7. (p. 94.) See W. E. B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935), pp. 711-28.
8. (p. 98.) Martin Madden, the white congressman from the first district, was the grand patron of Black post office employees. From his position on the House Postal Committee, he built a reputation for getting his Black constituents a good share of post office jobs. See Harold F. Gosnell, Negro Politicians (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935), pp. 307-08, 316-17.
9. (p. 99.) Ibid., pp. 302-18; and Henry McGee, “The Negro in the Chicago Post Office,” unpublished master’s thesis (University of Chicago, 1961), pp. 31-36.
10. (p. 100.) DuBois, Black Reconstruction, pp. 718-19.
11. (p. 103.) Amy Jacques Garvey, Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (New York: Atheneum, 1969), vol. 1, pp. 4, 8.
12. (p. 104.) There are many examples of pre-Garvey nationalism in the U.S., but Martin Delany is one of the most modern-sounding. In the conclusion to his book, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered (New York: Arno Press, 1968) pp. 209-10, he writes:
“We are a nation within a nation; as the Poles in Russia, the Hungarians in Austria; the Welsh, Irish and Scotch in the British Dominions....The claims of no people, according to established policy and usage, are respected by any nation, until they are presented in a national capacity.”
13. (p. 105.) Edmund David Cronon, Black Moses (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1955), p. 197.
14. (p. 106.) Spear, p. 135.
15. (p. 108.) Garvey, vol. 2, pp. 69-70.
16. (p. 111.) W. E. B. DuBois, “Back to Africa,” The Century Magazine, February 1923, p. 547. History repeated itself forty years later when the Black Muslims’ public contacts with ultra-racists caused them to lose many of their more revolutionary followers. This was exposed in the March 1966 issue of the radical monthly magazine, Now (p. 10):
“If Americans—and Negroes in particular—were astonished when a member of the American Nazi Party was accorded a place of honor at a Black Muslim conclave not long ago, Malcolm indicated that Muslim ties with the oil-rich supporters of the Ku Klux Klan were deep and vast. James Venable, a Klan lawyer, had defended the New Orleans mosque following a raid by police and charges of insurrectionist activity. Malcolm said he himself had accompanied Elijah Muhammad to an incredible meeting in 1961 at Magnolia Hall in Atlanta, Georgia, at which Elijah’s dream of a Black nation within the United States was solemnized in a treaty with officers of the Klan. Maps were drawn ‘ceding’ the Black Muslims parts of South Carolina and Georgia, an act to be effectuated when the right wing forces came to power.”
CHAPTER FOUR
1. (p. 123.) Frederick G. Detweiler, The Negro Press in the U.S. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1922), p. 77.
2. (p. 124.) Amsterdam News, September 5 and 19, 1917, quoted in Theodore Draper, American Communism and Soviet Russia (New York: The Viking Press, 1960), p. 323.
3. (p. 124.) “Liberty For All!” Amsterdam News, 1918, quoted without full date in Draper, p. 323.
4. (p. 125.) The Crusader, November 1921, quoted in Draper, pp. 505-06.
5. (p. 125.) In 1946, while researching material for Negro Liberation, I had occasion to look over the file of The Crusader in the Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library. It seemed at the time to be almost complete. I learned later from Briggs, who sought to consult these files in 1967, that they had disappeared. Theodore Draper, in preparation for his hatchet job on communism, American Communism and Soviet Russia, was able to track down fourteen copies in the Howard University Library. For the present, pending my own research, I am relying partially on Draper’s quotes, but not, of course, upon his interpretation.
6. (p. 125.) The Crusader, April 1921, p. 9, quoted in Draper, p. 324.
7. (p. 129.) The Bugs Club was a corner of Washington Park used for open-air speaking in the twenties and thirties. The Dill Pickle Forum gathered on the north side on Saturdays under the leadership of the anarchist, Jack Jones. A wide variety of radicals attended the meetings and spoke there, including Emma Goldman.
8. (p. 130.) See Spear, Black Chicago, pp. 198-99.
9. (p. 138.) Ray Ginger, The Bending Cross (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1949), p. 260.
10. (p. 138.) International Socialist Review, November 1903, pp. 258-59.
11. (p. 138.) Ibid., January 1904, p. 396.
12. (p. 140.) In 1922, right-wing union leaders drove the Communist Party (then called the Workers Party) out of the Conference for Progressive Political Action. This was the organization which ran LaFollette for president in 1924 when he got one sixth of the vote. In 1923, the Farmer-Labor Party, led by “center” union leaders like Fitzpatrick of the Chicago Federation of Labor, split with the Workers Party. This marked the defeat of the Party’s early efforts to build a farmer-labor party. For Foster’s analysis, see William Z. Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United States (New York: International Publishers, 1952), pp. 211-23. For Ruthenberg’s version, see Charles E. Ruthenberg, From the Third Through the Fourth Convention of the Workers (Communist) Party of America (Chicago: Daily Worker Publishing Co., 1925), pp. 10-14.
13. (p. 142.) Ruthenberg, p. 18.
14. (p. 143.) “Proceedings of the Fourth National Convention of the Workers (Communist) Party of America (1925),” p. 119.
15. (p. 143.) Ibid.
16. (p. 143.) The Trade Union Educational League (TUEL) was founded in 1920 to organize the “militant minority” in the trade unions. William Z. Foster and other TUEL leaders joined the Workers Party in 1921. The following year, the TUEL launched a successful campaign to win unions representing millions of workers to support its main demands: for a labor party; for amalgamation (industrial unionism); and for recognition of Soviet Russia.
17. (p. 145.) Sterling D. Spero and Abram L. Harris, The Black Worker (New York: Atheneum, 1968), p. 425.
18. (p. 146.) James W. Ford, The Negro and the Democratic Front (New York: International Publishers, 1938), p. 82.
CHAPTER FIVE
1. (p. 148.) The January 17, 1926, edition of the Sunday New York Times carried an article titled “Communists Boring into Negro Labor.” It included such sensational subheads as:
•Taking Advantage of the New Moves Among Colored Workers Here to Stir Unrest •Not Much Progress Yet
•Ten Young Negroes are Sent to Moscow Under Soviet “Scholarships” to Study Bolshevism •Nuclei Sought in Unions
•Labor Federation and Older Leaders of the Race Seek Antidotes in Real Labor Unions.
2. (p. 151.) John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World (New York: Boni and Liverwright, 1919).
3. (p. 157.) Stalin saw the university having two lines of activity: “one line having the aim of creating cadres capable of serving the needs of the Soviet republics of the East, and the other line having the aim of creating cadres capable of serving the revolutionary requirements of the toiling masses in the colonial and dependent countries of the East.” J.V. Stalin, “The Political Tasks of the University of the Peoples of the East,” Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953), vol. 6, p. 382.
4. (p. 157.) See J.V. Stalin, Foundations of Leninism (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1975), pp. 72-83.
5. (p. 159.) Ibid., p. 77.
6. (p. 171.) Permit me briefly to define these terms which I will be using quite often throughout the rest of the book.
The Comintern (Communist International or Third International) was founded in Moscow in March 1919 and dissolved in 1943. The Comintern was founded in a period of revolutionary upsurge and in direct opposition to the leaders of the Second International, who had endorsed support for their own imperialist bourgeoisies in the First World War. A voluntary association of communist parties, the Comintern gave revolutionary leadership during a very important period in history, building communist parties around the world and developing united fronts against fascism in the thirties. Particularly significant among its theoretical contributions were the theses on the national and colonial questions.
The Crestintern, or Peasant International, was founded at the International Peasant Conference in Moscow in 1923, with the express purpose of “coordinating peasant organizations and the efforts of the peasants to achieve workers’ and peasants’ internationals.” It was dissolved in 1939.
The Profintern, or Red International of Labor Unions (RILU), was founded in 1921 and played an important role in the development of the labor movement until its dissolution in the late thirties. The Profintem’s program called for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. To this end, it gave leadership to the struggles of the working masses worldwide, adding, as Foster wrote, “a new dimension” to the labor movement by carrying trade unionism to the colonial and semi-colonial countries.
See also William Z. Foster, History of the Three Internationals (New York: International Publishers, 1955).
The District Organizer, also referred to as the “D.O.,” is the head of the leading body in the Party district and is in overall charge of the district’s work. The D.O.’s primary responsibility is to give political leadership in carrying out the Party’s line.
CHAPTER SIX
1. (p. 176.) During the French Revolution, on July 27,1794 (the ninth of Thermidor, according to the revolutionary calendar), a group later called the Thermidorians seized power, executing Robespierre, Saint-Just and more than eighty other radical Jacobins. This began a counter-revolutionary trend which led to Napoleon’s coup in 1799 and the restoration of several European monarchies in 1815.
2. (p. 176.) Stalin, Works, vol. 5, p. 394.
3. (p. 177.) History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)—Short Course (New York: International Publishers, 1939), p. 257. In this work, the Central Committee of the CPSU(B) sums up Lenin’s views on the NEP:
A certain freedom of trade would give the peasant an economic incentive, induce him to produce more and would lead to a rapid improvement of agriculture...on this basis, the state-owned industries would be restored and private capital displaced...strength and resources having been accumulated, a powerful industry could be created as the economic foundation of Socialism, and then a determined offensive could be undertaken to destroy the remnants of capitalism in the country.
4. (p. 177.) Ibid., p. 257.
5. (p. 178.) Quoted in Stalin, Works, vol. 6, p. 393.
6. (p. 179.) Quoted in Stalin, Works, vol. 6, pp. 383-84.
7. (p. 179.) V. I. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), vol. 21, pp. 418-19. It is here that Lenin shows, in opposition to Trotsky, that imperialism and especially war “strengthened the economic and political factors that are impelling the petty bourgeoisie, including the peasantry, to the left.”
8. (p. 179.) Stalin, Works, vol. 6, p. 384. Stalin pointedout that “Lenin speaks of the alliance between the proletariat and the labouring strata of the peasantry as the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Trotsky sees a ‘hostile collision’ between the ‘proletarian vanguard’ and ‘the broad masses of the peasantry.’ ”
9. (p. 180.) Stalin, Works, vol. 6, p. 382.
10. (p. 180.) Ibid., p. 385.
11. (p. 180.) Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 21, p. 419.
12. (p. 181.) Lenin, “The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination,” ibid., p. 409.
13. (p. 181.) In the fifties and sixties, many communist parties dropped their revolutionary principles and launched vicious attacks on Stalin, opening the way for a temporary resurgence of Trotskyism. A new generation then learned first-hand how Trotskyism uses revolutionary phrases to cover its attacks on every progressive movement, taking every opportunity to slander socialist China. They promoted slogans like “All Indochina Must Go Communist” as an excuse for their opposition to the popularly-supported National Liberation Front of Vietnam. In current struggles in the Black liberation movement, they have liquidated the necessity for a revolutionary program of struggle, promoting instead reliance on the courts and other brands of reformism.
14. (p. 183.) International Press Correspondence, January 12, 1927, p, 63. (Hereinafter cited as Inprecorr.)
CHAPTER SEVEN
1. (p. 198.) See J.T. Murphy, “The First Years of the Lenin School,” Communist International, September 30, 1927, pp. 267-69.
2. (p. 201.) Born in 1862 in Staten Island, New York, Ella Reeve Bloor (Mother Bloor) joined the Socialist Labor Party during the 1890s. She quickly became a leading activist and organizer, participating in many important labor struggles of the time, including the 1914 miners’ strike in Ludlow, Colorado. In 1921, she became a founding member of the Communist Party and continued her activity in the revolutionary movement until her death in the fifties. See Mother Bloor’s autobiography, We Are Many (New York: International Publishers, 1940).
3. (p. 202.) Lenin returned to Petrograd from exile on April 3,1917. The next day he delivered his theses, “The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution,” Collected Works, Vol. 24, pp. 19-26. These “April Theses” outlined a comprehensive program of transition from the bourgeois-democratic to the proletarian-socialist revolution, including nationalization of land and banks, workers’ control of industry and a Soviet republic. Lenin’s line of “No support for the Provisional Government” was resisted by many in the Party who had been calling for a policy of pressuring the Provisional Government. But at the Petrograd City Conference of Bolsheviks, two weeks later, Lenin’s theses won the day. The all-Russian Conference of Bolsheviks, over the opposition of Kamenev and Rykov, also adopted the line of the April Theses and put forward the slogan, “All Power to the Soviets.”
4. (p. 203.) The following are some of the most outstanding of Fox’s works: The Class Struggle in Britain in the Epoch of Imperialism (London: M. Lawrence, 1932); Genghis Khan (London: John Lane, 1916); Lenin: A Biography (London: V. Gollancz, 1933); Marx, Engels mil Lenin on the Irish Revolution (New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1944); The Novel and the People (New York: International Publishers, 1937).
V (p. 203.) See “The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nntions to Self-Determination,’’Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 21, pp. 407-14, and “The Irish Rebellion of 1916,” vol. 22, pp. 353-58. ft (p. 204). The German government allowed Lenin and other Russian miles to pass through Germany on their way back to Russia in the spring ol 1917. They were required to travel in a “sealed coach,” cut off from all direct contact with the outside.
7, (p. 204.) By the late thirties, the Moscow Trials had exposed the MUtcnce of the “Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites.” This bloc was actually a gang, which, from within the CPSU(B) and organized into illegal, lei i oristic cells, sought to overthrow the dictatorship of the proletariat in I he Soviet Union. Its membership included followers of Trotsky’s "iiltrnlcft” theory of permanent revolution, as well as the followers of llukharin’s right opportunist line. In the final analysis, it was proven that I It In bloc actually conspired with agents of German and Italian fascism, as Well as with agents of other imperialist powers, to open the doors for a foreign invasion of the Soviet Union. This plot was smashed by the Nnviets and the bloc’s members were either executed or sent to prison for lllr. During my stay in the Soviet Union (which ended a good five years before this conspiracy was fully exposed), I was acquainted with a number of people who were later proven to be members of the bloc. Most Were not major figures, but played a minor role in the conspiracy. Kegrctfully, my good friend, Nasanov, was among them. See Michael Ntiycrs and Albert E. Kahn, The Great Conspiracy (London: Red Star I'rcNN, 1975).
N, (p. 205.) James Connolly (1868-1916) was a great Irish labor leader, liK'tnlist and a revolutionary nationalist who was executed by the British niter playing a leading part in the unsuccessful Easter uprising against colonial rule. He lived in the U.S. from 1903-10, and was a founding member of the IWW. Connolly was active in many mass labor and political struggles in this country, including the fight against the »ei'larianism of the SLP and Daniel DeLeon’s leadership of it.
9 (p. 205.) Murray later became general secretary of the Irish Party.
10, (p. 206.) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Correspondence 1846-ll195 (New York: International Publishers, 1936), p. 281.
11, (p. 206.) Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 21, pp. 104, 293.
12, (p. 206.) Ibid., p. 357.
13. (p. 208.) A.M. Simons, Social Forces in American History (New York: Macmillan, 1911), p. 274.
14. (p. 209.) Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Civil War in the United States (New York: International Publishers, 1937).
15. (p. 210.) Ibid., vol. 25, pp. 274-82.
16. (p. 210.) Ibid., vol. 24, p. 169.
17. (p. 210.) Ibid., vol. 26, p. 258.
18. (p. 211.) Ibid., vol. 26, p. 258.
19. (p. 211.) Ibid., vol. 30, p. 165.
20. (p. 214.) The African National Congress (ANC) was formed in 1912 to oppose the color bar in South Africa.
21. (p. 217.) H. J. and R. E. Simons, Class and Colour in South Africa (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 402.
1. (p. 219.) Lenin, “Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and Colonial Questions,” Collected Works, vol. 31, pp. 144-51.
2. (p. 220.) “...a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.” Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” Works, vol. 2, p. 307.
3. (p. 223.) Lenin, “Draft Theses,” p. 148.
4. (p. 223.) Ibid., p. 144.
5. (p. 223.) Sen Katayama, the veteran Japanese communist, was a special friend of the Black students in Moscow. He was born to a Japanese peasant family, was educated in the U.S. and became one of the founders of the Japanese Social Democratic Party in 1901. A member of the ECCI, he had spent several years in exile in the U.S. and was considered somewhat of an expert on the Afro-American question. Katayama was most interested in our studies and our views on the situation in the U.S., particularly as it concerned Blacks. “Old Man” Katayama knew all about white folks, and we Black students regarded him as one of us. We often came to him with our problems and he always had a receptive ear. It was Katayama who told us of Lenin’s earlier writings about U.S. Blacks and Lenin’s views on the Black Belt. He died in Moscow in 1933 at the age of 74.
6. (p. 223.) Der Zweite Kongress der Kommunist. Internationale: Protokoll der Verhandlungen vom 19. Juli in Petrograd und vom 23. Juli bis 7. August, 1920 in Moskau (Hamburg, 1921), p. 156.
7. (p. 223.) Ibid.
8. (p. 224.) Lenin, “New Data on the Laws Governing the development of Capitalism in Agriculture. Part One: Capitalism and Agriculture in the United States of America,” Collected Works, vol. 22, p. 25.
9. (p. 224.) Ibid., p. 27.
10. (p. 224.) Lenin, “Statistics and Sociology,” Collected Works, vol. 23, p. 271-77.
11. (p. 225.) Ibid.
12. (p. 225.) Ibid., p. 276.
13. (p. 225.) Speech of Huiswood (Billings), Inprecorr, July 25, 1924, pp. 514-15.
14. (p. 226.) Speech of Thalheimer, Inprecorr, July 25,1924, pp. 514-15.
15. (p. 226.) Protokoll: Fünfter Kongress der Kommunistischen Internationale, Band II (Verlag Carl Hoym Nachf), p. 699.
16. (p. 227.) Stalin, “The Fifteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U. (B.). December 2-19, 1927, Political Report of the Central Committee, December 3,” Works, vol. 10, p. 297.
17. (p. 228.) Speech of James Ford, Inprecorr, August 3, 1928, p. 772.
18. (p. 236.) Simons, Class and Colour, p. 390.
19. (p. 236.) “The South African Question (Resolution of the E.C.C.I.),” The Communist International, December 15, 1928, p. 54.
20. (p. 238.) Ibid., p. 52.
21. (p. 238.) Ibid., pp. 54, 56.
22. (p. 239.) Simons, Class and Colour, p. 395.
23. (p. 239.) Edward Roux, Time Longer than Rope: A History of the Black Man’s Struggle for Freedom in South Africa, 2nd ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), p. 13.
24. (p. 240.) Simons, Class and Colour, p. 398.
25. (p. 240.) Ibid., p. 398.
CHAPTER NINE
1. (p. 246.) “Resolution of the Comintern on the American Question. Endorsed by the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, July 1, 1927,” The Daily Worker, August 3, 1927.
2. (p.247.) A. Lozovsky, “Results and Prospects of the United Front (in connection with the coming Profintern, R.I.L.U., Congress),” The Communist International, March 15, 1928, p. 146.
3. (p. 249.) Three of Foster’s works which are of special interest to this period are: Toward Soviet America (New York: Coward-McCann, 1932); From Bryan to Stalin (New York: International Publishers, 1937); Pages from a Worker’s Life (New York: International Publishers, 1939).
4. (p. 255.) A. Shiek, “The Comintern Programme and the Racial Problem,” The Communist International, August 15, 1928, pp. 407-11.
5. (p. 255.) The Daily Worker, September 22, 1927.
6. (p. 255.) The Daily Worker, February 17, 1928.
7. (p. 257.) La Correspondence Internationale, August 1,1928, pp. 9-23. Only the French translation of Bukharin’s report was available to me.
8. (p. 258.) Stalin, “The Right Deviation in the C.P.S.U.(B.) in April, 1929 (Verbatim Report),” Works, vol. 12, p. 23.
9. (p. 258.) Ibid., p. 21.
10. (p. 258.) The Daily Worker, December 11, 1928. This issue of the Daily Worker was not available to me; the reference is taken from Draper, p. 501n.l3.
11. (p. 258.) John Pepper, “America and the Tactics of the Communist International,” The Communist, April 1928, pp. 219-27.
12. (p. 259.) William Z. Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United States (New York: International Publishers, 1952), p. 266.
13. (p. 261.) Pepper wrote the resolution on the Negro question for the Plenum of the Political Committee on May 30,1928. This resolution was the basis for the section on Negro work in the “Resolution on the Report of the Political Committee (Adopted by the May 1928 Plenum of the CEC of the Workers Party),"The Communist, July, 1928, pp. 418-19.
14. (p. 262.) See note 4.
15. (p. 262.) John Pepper, “American Negro Problems,” The Communist, October 1928, p. 630.
16. (p. 263.) Speech of Ford, Inprecorr, October 25, 1928, pp. 1345-47.
17. (p. 263.) Ibid.
18. (p. 263.) Speech of Otto Hall (Jones), Inprecorr, October 30,1928, pp. 1392-93.
19. (p. 266.) Speech of Lominadze, Inprecorr, November 8, 1928, p. 1462.
20. (p. 267.) Speech of Otto Hall (Jones), pp. 1392-93.
21. (p. 267.) John Pepper, “Amerikanische Negerprobleme,” Die Kommunistische Internationale (Berlin), September 5,1928, pp. 2245-52.
22. (p. 267.) James Ford and William Wilson (Patterson), “Zur Frage der Arbeit der amerikanischen Kommunistischen Partei unter den Negern,” Die Kommunistische Internationale (Berlin), August 29, 1928, pp. 2132-46.
23. (p. 267.) Harry Haywood, “Das Negerproblem und die Aufgaben der K.P. der Vereinigten Staaten,” Die Kommunistische Internationale (Berlin), September 5, 1928, pp. 2253-62.
24. (p. 268.) “CI Resolution on Negro Question in USA,” The Daily Worker, February 12,1929; “Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies and Semi-Colonies,” Inprecorr, December 12,1928, p. 1674.
25. (p. 269.) “Theses on the Revolutionary Movement,” p. 1674.
26. (p. 270.) See Simons, Class and Colour, p. 406.
27. (p. 271.) Speech of Bunting, Inprecorr, August 3, 1928, p. 780; and Inprecorr, September 19, 1928, p. 1156.
28. (p. 271.) Ibid.
29. (p. 272.) Speech of Bunting Inprecorr, November 8, 1928, p. 1452.
30. (p. 272.) I know of no written record of either Rebecca Bunting’s or Manuilsky’s remarks since they were made at the commission meetings, and these were not recorded in Inprecorr.
31. (p. 272.) This position was stated in the section on South Africa in the “Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies.”
32. (p. 273.) “Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies,
p. 1661.
33. (p. 274.) Speech of Murphy, Inprecorr, October 30, 1928, p. 1410.
34. (p. 275.) SpeechofKuusinen,/«precorr,November21,1928,p. 1524.
35. (p. 275.) Ibid.
36. (p. 275.) This last extemporaneous remark does not appear in the protocol of the congress. But I distinctly remember it, for we laughed about the matter for years afterward. Perhaps for political reasons it was later extracted.
37. (p. 276.) Speech of Lozovsky, Inprecorr, August 18, 1928, p. 914.
38. (p. 277.) Speech of Lominadze, Inprecorr, August 23, 1928, p. 932.
39. (p. 277.) Ibid.
40. (p. 277.) Declaration of Comrade Johnstone, Inprecorr, November 21, 1928, p. 1539.
41. (p. 278.) See Sayers and Kahn, The Great Conspiracy, pp. 324-25.
42. (p. 280.) In reference to this question, Stalin wrote:
The persons constituting a nation do not always live in one compact mass; they are frequently divided into groups, and in that form are interspersed among alien national organisms. It is capitalism which drives them into various regions and cities in search of a livelihood.
But when they enter foreign national territories and there form minorities, these groups are made to suffer by the local national majorities in the way of restrictions on their language, schools, etc.
Hence national conflicts.
Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” Works, vol. 2, pp. 334-35. CHAPTER TEN
1. (p. 282.) The Daily Worker, October 3, 1928.
2. (p. 284.) The letter was published in The Daily Worker, December 26, 1928. This issue was not available to me, and the quotations were taken from Draper, American Communism, p. 385.
3. (p.288.) “Open Letter to the Convention ofthe Workers (Communist) Party of America from the E.C.C.I.,” The Daily Worker, March 4,1929.
4. (p. 292.) The speeches of Stalin were published in the pamphlet Stalin’s Speeches on the American Communist Party (New York: International Publishers, 1929). The speeches of Molotov and Kuusinen were published in the proceedings of the Dies Committee: U.S. House Special Committee on Un-American Propaganda Activities in the U.S., Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1939-40), pp. 7124-33.
5. (p. 296.) Stalin’s Speeches, p. 11.
6. (p. 296.) Ibid., p. 12.
7. (p. 297.) Ibid., p. 18.
8. (p. 297.) Ibid., p. 20.
9. (p. 297.) Un-American Propaganda Activities, p. 7133.
10. (p. 298.) “Should the final decision of your committee follow the outline given in the last Plenary session of the American Commission [this refers to the speeches of Comrade Stalin and Molotov—ed.] then the membership of our Party would have to come to the conclusion that the ECCI desires to destroy the CC (of the CPUS A) and therefore follows the policy of legalizing the past factionalism of the opposition bloc and inviting its continuation in the future.” The Daily Worker, June 12,1929.
11. (p. 298.) “To All Members of the Communist Party of the United States—An Address by the Executive Committee of the Communist International,” The Daily Worker, May 20,1929 and Inprecorr, June 7, 1929, pp. 598-600.
12. (p. 299.) Un-American Propaganda Activities, p. 7129.
13. (p. 300.) The Daily Worker, June 7, 1929.
14. (p. 301.) The Daily Worker, May 20, 1929.
15. (p. 301.) “Important Passages from the Declaration of May 14, Submitted to the Presidium,” The Daily Worker, June 12, 1929.
16. (p. 302.) Stalin’s Speeches, pp. 21-22.
17. (p. 302.) Ibid., p. 23.
18. (p. 302.) Ibid., p. 22.
19. (p. 302.) Ibid., pp. 27-29.
20. (p. 303.) Ibid.; p. 31.
21. (p. 304.) Ibid., p. 39.
22. (p. 307.) See Don Kurzman, “Lovestone’s Cold War—The AFL-CIO has its own CIA,” The New Republic, June 25, 1966.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1. (p. 317.) Cyril Briggs, “The Negro Question in the Southern Textile
Strikes,” The Communist, June 1929, pp. 324-28; “Further Notes on Negro Question in Southern Textile Strikes,” The Communist, July 1929, pp. 391-94; “Our Negro Work,” The Communist, September 1929, pp. 494-501.
2. (p. 317.) Briggs, “Our Negro Work,” p. 494.
3. (p. 319.) Daily Worker, October 4, 1929.
4. (p. 320.) Briggs, “Our Negro Work,” p. 498.
5. (p. 321.) Daily Worker, October 17, 1929.
6. (p. 322.) Otto E. Huiswood, “World Aspects of the Negro Question,” The Communist, February 1930, p. 133.
7. (p. 322.) N. Nasanov, “Against Liberalism in the American Negro Question,” The Communist, April 1930, pp. 296-308.
8. (p. 322.) Harry Haywood, “Against Bourgeois-Liberal Distortions of Leninism on the Negro Question in the United States,” The Communist, August 1930, p. 706.
9. (p. 322.) Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” Works, vol. 2, p. 304.
10. (p. 323.) Haywood, p. 696.
11. (p. 323.) Ibid., p. 698.
12. (p. 324.) A. Sik, “To the Question of the Negro Problem in the U.S.,” in Revolutionary East, No. 7, 1929, quoted in Haywood, ibid., p. 708.
13. (p. 324.) Stalin, “The National Question Once Again,” Works, vol. 7, p. 225.
14. (p. 325.) From Haywood, p. 707.
15. (p. 326.) William Z. Foster, History of the Communist Party, p. 282.
16. (p. 326.) S. Mingulin, “The Crisis in the United States and the Problems of the Communist Party,” The Communist, June 1930, p. 500.
17. (p. 326.) Earl Browder, “The Bolshevization of the Communist Party,” The Communist, August 1930, p. 688.
18. (p. 327.) The Daily Worker, June 23, 1930.
19. (p. 327.) Browder, p. 689.
20. (p. 327.) The Daily Worker, June 23, 1930.
21. (p. 327.) Browder, p. 690.
22. (p. 328.) I first met George Padmore in December 1929, when Foster had brought him to Moscow. I got to know him quite well and on a number of occasions visited him in his room at the Lux Hotel. I remember him as a slim, handsome, ebony-hued young man of medium height, neatly dressed. A native of Trinidad, he had studied journalism at Howard University. He joined the YCL and then the CP in Washington, D.C. Later he was assigned to work with the TUUL as a national organizer. He was a good speaker and a prolific writer.
At the time I sized him up as a pragmatist with only a superficial grasp of Marxist theory. Politically, he appeared to be a staunch supporter of the fight for independence in Africa and the West Indies, but was adamantly opposed to the right of self-determination for U.S. Blacks, whom he regarded not as a nation, but as an oppressed racial minority. I was to clash with him publicly several years later. See also p. 429n. 14.
23. (p. 330.) A. Lozovsky, Inprecorr, August 21, 1930, p. 782.
24. (p. 330.) A. Lozovsky, “Ten Years of the Red International of Labor Unions,” Inprecorr, July 31, 1930, pp. 675-76.
25. (p. 331.) A. Lozovsky, “The World Crisis, Economic Struggles and the Tasks of the Revolutionary Trade Unions,” Inprecorr, September 4, 1930, pp. 867-74; September 11, 1930, 891-96; September 18, 1930, pp. 919-24.
26. (p. 332.) Documents from this commission are not available. Consequently, I have had to rely on my memory, as well as consultations with comrades active at the time.
27. (p. 333.) “Resolution on the Negro Question in the United States,” The Communist International, February 1, 1931, p. 66.
28. (p. 334.) Ibid., p. 65.
29. (p. 334.) Ibid., p. 66.
30. (p. 334.) Ibid, p. 67.
31. (p. 335.) Ibid., p. 68.
32. (p. 336.) Ibid, p. 70.
33. (p. 336.) Ibid, pp. 71-72.
34. (p. 337.) Ibid, p. 73.
35. (p. 337.) Ibid., p. 73.
36. (p. 337.) Ibid., p. 72.
37. (p. 338.) Ibid., p.. 74.
CHAPTER TWELVE
1. (p. 342.) The Daily Worker, April 2, 1934.
2. (p. 351.) The Comintern had called on all communist parties to bolshevize themselves by cleansing their organizations of the remnants of the old socialist parties. One aspect of this was building a centralized organization based on shop nuclei in place of a loosely federated organization based on election districts and language federations.
3. (p. 357.) The New York Times, March 2, 1931.
4. (p. 357.) The day after the trial, Yokinen was arrested and soon released on bail. The government continued its efforts to deport him and was ultimately successful after the Supreme Court upheld the deportation order on March 11, 1932.
5. (p. 359.) See Dan T. Carter, Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South (Oxford University Press, 1969), for a detailed account of the trial.
6. (p. 359.) As quoted in Harry Haywood and Milton Howard, lynching (New York: Daily Worker, 1932), p. 13.
7. (p. 360.) “Is the N.A.A.C.P. Lying Down On Its Job?’ The Crisis, October 1931, p. 354.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1. (p. 364.) Foster, History of the Communist Party, p. 285.
2. (p. 365.) Ibid., p. 257.
3. (p. 368.) United Press International dispatch quoted in The Daily Worker, June 9, 1931.
4. (p. 371.) Formerly a member of the Central Committee of the German Communist Party, Ewart led an opposition to the Thaelmann leadership. As a result, he was pulled out of Germany and assigned to international work. Later, while representing the Comintern in Brazil, he was captured and tortured to death by the regime of the dictator Vargas.
5. (p. 373.) “Lessons of the Strike Struggles in the U.S. A.: Resolution of the E.C.C.I.,” The Communist, May 1932, pp. 402-13.
6. (p. 375.) Tom Mooney and Warren K. Billings were arrested in July 1916 for their activities in opposition to World War I. Their frame-up conviction attracted support from workers all over the world. Due to this mass movement and, in particular, the efforts of the ILD, Mooney was finally released in January 1939 and Billings in October of that year. Mooney’s health was ruined by twenty-two years in prison and he died in 1942.
7. (p. 376.) See “The NAACP Prepares New Betrayals of the Negro Masses,” Daily Worker, May 28,1932, and Daily Worker, May 30,1932; “The Scottsboro Decision,” The Communist, May 1932, pp. 1065-75; Harry Haywood and Milton Howard, Lynching.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1. (p. 380.) William Z. Foster, History of the Communist Party, p. 289.
2. (p. 380.) Ibid., p. 291.
3. (p. 381.) Angelo Herndon, Let Me Live (New York: Arno Press, 1969), p. 192.
4. (p. 381.) Ibid., p. 238.
5. (p. 381.) Ibid., p. 240.
6. (p. 382.) “The International Situation and the Tasks of the Sections of the Communist International: Theses on the Report of Comrade
Kuusinen,” Inprecorr, October 6, 1932, pp. 939-43.
7. (p. 384.) Langston Hughes, I Wonder As I Wander (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964), pp. 69-70, 73-80, 89-90,94-99, See also The Crisis, January 1933, p. 16. See Louise Thompson’s response in the February 1933 issue, p. 37. Delegation members Poston and Moon issued a statement in Berlin claiming that the “forces of American race prejudice have triumphed” in canceling the film. This statement was published in The New York Times and The Amsterdam News of October 10, 1933. Similar statements were also issued by two other members of the twenty-two member delegation. Hughes and fourteen others issued a statement repudiating these slanders. See The Daily Worker, October 5, 1933, and October 15, 1933.
8. (p. 385.) Hughes, pp. 76-77.
9. (p. 388.) Walter Duranty of The New York Times is the only American newsman I know of who wrote favorable and accurate reports about the Soviet Union in this period.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
1. (p. 391.) The New York Times, April 12, 1933, as quoted in Carter, Scottsboro, p. 247.
2. (p. 392.) In 1932 my close friend, William L. Patterson, had been elected national secretary of the ILD at its Cleveland convention. Earl Browder and I attended as delegates from the Party’s Central Committee. We pushed for Patterson’s election, but Pat, a brilliant dynamic man, needed no pushing! He was quite popular, having played a leading role in publicizing the Scottsboro case.
Louis Engdahl, former national secretary of the ILD, was on tour of Europe and the Soviet Union with Scottsboro mother, Ada Wright, at the time of the convention. He was elected chairman of the ILD at that time, but died while on tour in Europe.
3. (p. 392.) See Carter, p. 248.
4. (p. 393.) At this time, the LSNR and the ILD were involved in a number of local struggles against police brutality and lynching, which raised similar slogans. Most notably, we helped to build a broad united front on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. A reign of terror had struck the area after the legal lynching of Euel Lee and the lynching of George Armwood. Both men were Black and both were innocent.
At the initiation of the LSNR, we built the Baltimore Anti-Lynch Conference (November 18-19, 1933). Some 773 delegates, Black and white, attended, including Monroe Trotter, who along with DuBois was a co-founder of the Niagara movement, Dr. Harry F. Ward of the Union rheological Seminary in New York and Mary Van Cleek of the Russell Sage Foundation. Even some of the local NAACP types were forced to attend.
I believe that the widely publicized movement around the conference was successful in bringing a temporary halt to the open terror on the Eastern Shore. Masses of people became aware that the deaths of Armwood and Lee were not isolated incidents. The anti-lynching movement won many new friends and supporters as a result of the conference.
5. (p. 394.) Ruby Bates was one of the two women supposedly raped by the nine youths. She recanted her testimony at the Decatur, Alabama, trial of Haywood Patterson and became an active member of the defense movement.
6. (p. 395.) “The Scottsboro Struggle and the Next Steps: Resolution of the Political Bureau,” The Communist, June 1933, pp. 575-76, 578-79.
7. (p. 396.) Hosea Hudson, Black Worker in the Deep South (New York: International Publishers, 1972), p. 57.
8. (p. 397.) The following account of the sharecroppers’ struggles is based on what I learned at the time from personal observations and reports of comrades. Much of it is confirmed by Stuart Jamieson, Labor Unionism in American Agriculture, Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin No. 836 (1945), pp. 290-98; and Dale Rosen, The Alabama Sharecroppers Union, Radcliffe Honors Thesis (1969), pp. 19-20,30-41,48,56, 130-35.
9. (p. 399.) The Daily Worker, December 28, 1932.
10. (p. 399.) Ibid., December 21-22, 1932, and April 17, 1933.
11. (p. 400.) Ibid., January 7 and 9, 1932.
12. (p. 400.) Ibid., April 27, 1933.
13. (p. 404.) Benjamin J. Davis, Communist Councilman from Harlem (New York: International Publishers, 1969) p. 44. See also pp. 27,34,40, 43, 46-48, 51.
14. (p. 407.) Kenneth E. Barnhart, “A Study of Homicide in the United States,” Birmingham-Southern College Bulletin (May 1932), p. 9. Figures for 1930.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
1. (p. 417.) “The Eighth Convention of Our Party,” The Communist, May 1934, p. 428.
2. (p. 418.) The Daily Worker, April 7, 1934.
3. (p. 419.) Ibid., April 4, 1934.
4. (p. 419.) The full text of Browder’s report appeared in The Daily
Worker, April 14, 1934.
5. (p. 420.) This report was published as a pamphlet, The Road to Negro Liberation (New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1934).
6. (p. 422.) DuBois, Dusk of Dawn, p. 290.
7. (p. 423.) As cited in Harry Haywood, Negro Liberation (Chicago: Liberator Press, 1976), p. 180.
8. (p. 423.) In looking at the top NAACP leadership, we can see that this analysis still holds true today. Despite the crises within the organization brought about by periodic depressions and mass upsurges such as the revolt of the sixties, its leadership still reflects the strivings and ambitions of the top layer of the educated Black middle class. Their strategy is to enlarge the Black middle class in order to strengthen reformist illusions and extend their class as a buffer against the masses.
9. (p. 423.) Haywood, Road to Negro Liberation, p. 6.
10. (p. 424.) Haywood, Negro Liberation, p. 194.
11. (p. 426.) “Program of the Nationalist Movement for the Estab-lishmnt of a Forty-Ninth State,” as quoted in Haywood, Road to Negro Liberation, p. 28.
12. (p.427.) Press release of the Peace Movement to Liberia,.as quoted in Haywood, Road to Negro Liberation, p. 28.
13. (p.429.) William N. Jones in the Baltimore Afro-American, August 4, 1934, as quoted in Haywood, Road to Negro Liberation, p. 35.
14. (p. 429.) Padmore had worked with the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers after it was founded at the Hamburg Conference in 1930. (See Chapter Eleven.) Other members of the committee removed him in 1933, however, after he put forward his fascist version of pan-Africanism, which proposed that Africans look to the Japanese Emperor for protection.
Padmore’s brand of “pan-Africanism” set him in opposition to the national aspirations of the emerging black majority states in Africa. As late as 1956, in referring to a Black Republic in Azania (South Africa), he wrote:
Africans had never demanded any such nonsense....They, like the Negroes in America, while opposed to all forms of racial disability have never demanded separatism, either in the form of Apartheid or “Native Republic.” Rather, the Africans have always demanded full citizenship rights within a multi-racial society. They therefore looked with deep suspicion upon the new Communist slogan of a Native Republic, which they interpreted as an attempt to segregate them into some sort of Bantu state....
See Richard Gibson, African Liberation Movements (London:
Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 37. See also “Earl Browder Replies,” The Crisis, December 1935, p. 372.
15. (p. 430.) “Report to the Seventeenth Party Congress,” Works, vol. 13, p. 369.
16. (p. 431.) Ibid.
17. (p. 431.) William Odell Nowell persisted in his activities after the convention and was finally expelled from the Party. He later testified before the Dies Un-American Activities Committee and revealed that he had been a government agent while a member of the CPUS A.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
1. (p. 443.) The Daily Worker, August 5-8, 10, 11 and 13, 1931.
2. (p. 444.) Ibid., September 29, 1932.
3. (p. 448.) Dimitrov, The United Front (New York: International Publishers, 1938), p. 10.
4. (p. 454.) The Daily Worker, September 2, 1935.
5. (p. 455.) The Chicago Defender, September 7, 1935.
6. (p. 456.) Ibid.
1. (p. 456.) The Daily Worker, September 2, 1935.
8. (p.459.) As quoted in James W. Ford, “The National Negro Congress,” The Communist, April 1936, pp. 323-24.
I plan to speak of Randolph a number of times during the course of this book and, therefore, I feel it necessary at this point to briefly give my estimation of the man. Randolph is a social democrat. At the height of his career, he was probably the most influential Black union executive in the U.S. His role in the AFL-CIO, however, has always been the loyal opposition. At every annual convention, he would make the same criticisms of discrimination in the unions, but always in a manner acceptable to the bureaucrats.
Randolph was a board member of the NAACP and had broad influence, not just among Black workers, but in the Black community as well. As one of the very few Black labor bureaucrats in the U.S., he was widely acclaimed to represent Black labor. In reality, he shared the basic ideology of the labor aristocracy: support for U.S. imperialism, belief in the common interests of labor and management, negotiation by bureaucrats as a substitute for militant rank-and-file action, and consistent anticommunism. Randolph helped to legitimize the labor aristocracy’s claim to speak for Black working people. Despite his anti-communism, our leadership of the mass struggles of Blacks often forced him to unite with us. Such was the case with the NNC.
9. (p. 459.) The Daily Worker, February 17, 1936.
10. (p. 464.) Ibid., June 24 and 25, 1936.
11. (p. 465.) Ibid., June 27, 1936.
12. (p. 466.) Ibid., November 8, 1936.
13. (p. 466.) Foster, History of the Communist Party, p. 333. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
1. (p. 467.) Lines from Pablo Neruda’s “Landscape after a Battle,” España en el corazón, translated by Paul Elitzik.
2. (p. 468.) Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), pp. 419-21.
3. (p. 468.) Certain nationalists asked why the International Brigades had not intervened in Ethiopia. This question struck home at the genuine sentiments of the masses in support of the Ethiopian people’s cause and was used to confuse matters in the Black community. Indeed there was worldwide support among the international communist and anti-fascist forces for the Ethiopian people, but Haile Selassie had neither called for nor desired the assistance of the International Brigades.
4. (p. 470.) I have relied on these works to refresh my memory and found them to be some of the best: Arthur Landis, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade (New York: The Citadel Press, 1967); Robert Colodny, The Struggle for Madrid (New York: Paine-Whitman, 1958); and Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War.
5. (p. 473.) The POUM—the Workers Party of Marxist Unification— was a Trotskyist group; their line denied the bourgeois-democratic nature of the struggle in Spain and called for immediate direct revolution for socialism. The POUM’s followers charged that the united people’s front government was betraying that revolution and put forward the slogan, “You may win the war and lose the revolution.” They staged an uprising in Barcelona on May 3, 1937, and virtually opened up the Aragon front to the fascists.
6. (p. 478.) With the defeat of Republican Spain in 1939, Dolores Ibárruri (La Pasionaria) fled to Moscow. She remained there until May 1977.1 was sorry to see that Ibárruri supported the revisionist takeover in the Soviet Union and, by the late fifties, had become a leading spokesperson for revisionism worldwide. Since her return to Spain, she has become a supporter of the Euro-Communist brand of revisionism.
7. (p.486.) According to Landis (pp. 207,325), Usera was later found to be working for U.S. Army Intelligence.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
1. (p. 491.) Copie was dismissed from command on July 4, 1938 (Landis, p. 505). He then went to the Soviet Union, where he was purged in the course of Soviet preparations for war with Germany. See Vincent Drome, The International Brigades (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1966), pp. 276-77.
2. (p. 492.) Briggs was readmitted in the early forties, following mass protests from the rank and file. Moore, however, refused the Party’s offer to reinstate his membership, though he remained a Party sympathizer.
3. (p. 492.) The Communist, January 1938, pp. 62-74.
4. (p. 492.) T.R. Bassett, “The ‘White’ South and the People’s Front,” The Communist, April 1938, pp. 369-80.
5. (p. 494.) Is Japan the Champion of the Colored Races? (New York: Workers Library, 1938).
6. (p. 501.) For the history of the NMU, see William L. Standard, Merchant Seamen: A Short History of Their Struggles (New York: International Publishers, 1947), pp. 54-128, 170, 190-94. See also Joseph P. Goldberg, The Maritime Story: A Study in Labor-Management Relations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 130-97.
7. (p. 516.) The New York Times, June 24, 1941.
8. (p. 527.) The Daily Worker, May 27, 1945.
9. (p. 527.) Peter Calvocoressi and Guy Wint, Total War: The Story of World War //(New York: Pantheon, 1972), pp. 861-62.
10. (p. 528.) Political Affairs, July 1945, pp. 640-54.
CHAPTER TWENTY
1. (p. 530.) Earl Browder, “Teheran—History’s Greatest Turning Point,” The Communist, January 1944, pp. 3-8.
2. (p. 530.) Teheran, Our Path in War and Peace (New York: International Publishers, 1944).
3. (p. 531.) Browder,“Teheran—History’s Greatest Turning Point,”p. 8.
4. (p. 531.) Browder, Teheran, p. 67.
5. (p. 531.) Ibid., pp. 79-80.
6. (p. 532.) Earl Browder, “On the Negroes and the Right of Self-Determination,” The Communist, January 1944, p. 84.
7. (p. 533.) Stuart Jamieson, Labor Unionism in Southern Agriculture, p. 298.
8. (p. 533.) The Farmers Union of Alabama agitated for populist-style cooperatives and federal regulation of markets and prices. Traditional reformist demands rather than the right of the tiller to the land he tilled characterized its work. Although the SCU was always overwhelmingly Black, it was an integrated union and stood in principle for unity. Particularly after the reputation of the SCU was established, many white croppers and tenants joined up. In contrast, a Farmers Union organizer explained that “the Farmers Union is proud of its large colored membership. But just as America had more white farmers than colored, so has the union. In Opelousas, Louisiana, we had an instance of colored farmers crowding out the white at an open meeting. They later realized that their enthusiasm had worked against them. Both white and colored generally prefer to have their own locals and meet separately.” (Dale Rosen, The Alabama Sharecroppers Union, p. 116.
9. (p. 533.) Rosen, pp. 112-16. Reverend Charles Coughlin, a fascist demagogue, violently criticized everything progressive and aimed at establishing a fascist United States. He had an estimated ten million listeners to his weekly radio broadcast and launched the National Union for Social Justice in 1934, along with the notorious Christian Front with its organized groups of hoodlums and storm troopers.
10. (p. 534.) James Ford, “Negro People Unite for Victory,” The Communist, July 1943, p. 643.
11. (p. 535.) The Daily Worker, April 4, 1945.
12. (p. 535.) James Ford, “Teheran and the Negro People,” The Communist, March 1944, p. 264. Later Ford, who was not so nimble in recanting Browder’s line as most of the Party leadership, fell from his leading position in Afro-American work.
13. (p. 535.) See Earl Browder, “Production for Victory,” The Communist, January 1943, pp. 10-29. See also Browder, “The Economics of All-Out War,” The Communist, October 1942, pp. 791-808.
14. (p.536.) Foster addresses the effects of Browderism on mass work in History of the Communist Party, pp. 432-33.
15. (p. 536.) The Daily Worker, July 28, 1945. See also Earl Browder, Why America is Interested in the Chinese Communists, as cited in Foster, pp. 419-20.
16. (p.537.) Prior to the arrival of the Duclos letter, there had been what could be described as a passive revolt of the rank and file. Some 18% of the membership failed to enroll in the CPA when the Party was liquidated. Referring to a report made by John Williamson in June 1945, Harrison George stated that “the true indicator of membership, dues payment, had fallen to a national average of 58%; in industrial districts as low as 32%.” Harrison George, The Crisis in the C.P.U.S.A. (mimeographed pamphlet, 1947), p. 120.
The Party never recovered its membership and Foster states that in January 1947, membership was 59,172—down from its peak of at least
80,000 and perhaps as high as 100,000 during the war. Foster, p. 437.
17. (p. 537.) Browder refused to recognize his errors and was removed from leadership. He declined the offer of a minor Party position and soon resorted to factionalism. This led to his expulsion in February 1946.
18. (p. 538.) Dennis, Williamson, Thompson and Foster made up the National Secretariat chosen after the Emergency Convention—all had been members of the small (nine-man) National Board of the CPA. Only n year later, in July 1946, was a new member—Henry Winston—added to this inner circle in the secretariat.
19. (p. 539.) Harrison George, p. 121.
20. (p. 540.) Foster’s letter was not published until July 1945.
21. (p. 540.) See Harrison George, p. 23.
22. (p. 541.) William Z. Foster, “Concluding Remarks at the Convention,” Political Affairs, September 1948, pp. 824-25.
23. (p. 542.) “Note by W. Z. Foster,” Political Affairs, July 1945, p. 655.
24. (p. 542.) “Foster’s Letter to the National Committee,” Political Affairs, July 1945, pp. 648-49.
25. (p. 543.)“Discussion Article by Claudia Jones,” Political Affairs, August 1945, pp. 717-20.
26. (p. 544.) James Allen, The Negro Question in the United States (New York: International Publishers, 1936).
27. (p. 547.) Later the Cuban Party, under Roca’s leadership, came to support Batista. They followed the Soviet Party into the revisionist swamp and Roca became famous for denouncing the Cuban guerrillas as adventurists only a few months before Castro came to power. As the Cuban government moved closer to the USSR, Bias Roca’s and the Cuban Party’s differences with Castro seemingly evaporated.
28. (p. 548.) Much of Browder’s line and the Party’s opportunism were concealed from the masses of Party members and supporters. I myself didn’t know about the dissolution of the SCU until 1948.