American Communism and Black Americans: A Documentary History, 1919-1929 [1 ed.] 0877224501, 9780877224501

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AMERICAN COMMUNISM AND BLACK AMERICANS

AMERICAN COMMUNISM AND BLACK AMERICANS A Documentary History, 1919-1929

Edited by Philip S. Foner and James S. Allen

Temple University Press PHILADELPHIA

Temple University Press, Philadelphia 19122 Copyright

® 1987

by Temple University.

All rights reserved

Published 1987 Printed in the United States of America The paper used in thispublication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences--Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48=1984

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

American communism and black Americans. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Afro-American communists--History--Sources. 2. Afro-Americans--History--1877-1964--Sources. 3. Communism--United States--History--Sources. I. Foner, Philip Sheldon, 1910II. Allen, James S. HX83.A49 1986 335.43 1 08996073 86-23032 ISBN 0-87722-450-1

33S.43,Am35 American communism and Black Americans.

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION

vii

CHAPTER I

Preliminaries, 1919-1924

CHAPTER II

The Sanhedrin, 1924

51

CHAPTER III

Racism and Nationalism, 1924-1925

67

CHAPTER IV

American Negro Labor Congress, 1925

107

CHAPTER v

Beginning of a Turn, 1926-1928

131

CHAPTER VI

Sixth World Congress of the Communist International, 1928

161

Party Work Among Blacks, 1929

201

CHAPTER VII INDEX

1

225

INTRODUCTION The significant impact of communism in combatting racism in the labor movement and in support of Black liberation cannot be ignored by any serious student of United States history and society. This documentary study seeks to substantiate that view. The editors have tried to select from the mass of primary material they gathered those documents, articles, speeches, and news items that indicate most clearly the formation, evolution, and application of Communist policy with respect to the condition and freedom struggle of Black Americans. The present volume covers the period from the establishment of the first Communist parties in 1919 to the outbreak of the Great Depression in 1929. A second volume will deal with the Depression Decade. Editorial introductions to the items place each in context and supply interpretive comment. The prime material has been gathered almost entirely from the newspapers, journals, and other publications issued directly by the Communist party or identified with it. The editors have restricted themselves to published sources, as the best evidence of the formation of policy and activity based upon that policy. Secondary sources as well as non-Communist primary sources have been drawn upon in the editors' introductions, and occasionally for the text. I.

The decade of the 1920s may be considered years of transition during which the Communist party was consolidated, having more or less brought together divergent tendencies arising from the different roots of American communism and having overcome the state of internecine war between its two contending factions. This process was made more difficult during the early years of the decade by the illegal or semi-legal status forced on the party by repression, including the Palmer Raids and prosecution under state sedition and anti-syndicalist laws. The evolution of the party position with respect to the Black Americans was part of the general process of transition, perhaps the most difficult part. The party did not have at hand a substantive Marxist theory to cope specifically with the situation of Black Americans. Marx himself had provided little to serve as a guide for the period after the Civil War. During the course of that war he had seen its revolutionary import clearly, anticipating Charles A. Beard's interpretation of the conflict as the "second American revolution" by some 60 years. He had also forseen the impetus to free capitalist development and the rise of an independent working-class movement imparted by the defeat of the slavocracy. This famous sentence in Capital about slavery in the United States was quoted by Socialists and then by Communists to stress the need for working-class solidarity: "Labor with a white skin cannot emancipate itself where labor with a black skin is branded." But aside from some passing remarks in correspondence with Engels about the importance of the Black franchise, there is no evidence that he paid much attention to the post-Emancipation condition of the ex-slaves during the Reconstruction period or afterward. The International Workingmen's Association, The First International, penned three addresses on the American struggle--the first to President Lincoln proclaiming full support for the North, the second to President Andrew Johnson conveying condolences on the assassination of Lincoln. The third, written shortly after the war ended, congratulated the American people for abolishing slavery and urged them to "Declare your fellow citizens from this day forth free and vii

equal, without reserve.Kl There is no available record of further concern by Marx with the fate of Black Americans. To be sure, he was deeply concerned with the national question. Another famous thought of Marx, RNo nation can be free if it oppresses other nations,R was first expressed to indicate the relation between the emancipation of the English working class from capitalism and Irish freedom. It be'came the central theme of his approach to the national questions of Central and Eastern Europe. But it did not at first occur to American Marxists that the RNegro questionR might fall within the compass of the "national question.R And it was not until the latter part of the 1920s that Lenin's copious writings on the subject became available in English. The Communists inherited from the Socialist movement the prevalent RpureR class approach which was thought consistent with the Marxist outlook: The solution of the Rlabor questionR leading in the end to socialism would bring in its train the solution to the RNegro question.R With such a general outlook, what was distinctive in the situation of the Blacks was overlooked and their special needs and demands were ignored. The prevalence of racism in society as a whole, including the working class and affecting the party itself--and therefore the pressing need to fight it if the adherence of Negroes was to be won--was underestimated if not entirely bypassed. Nor in 'the broader perspective did the Communists at first appreciate the strategic relation of the Black freedom struggle to the class struggle against capitalism or to the socialist objective. Only very gradually and uncertainly, often painfully, did the party find its way to a more substantial and productive approach. This course over rough ground, and with many twists and turns, can be traced in the material gathered in this volume. In view of the mass migration of Blacks from the rural South to the cities, mostly in the North, and the overnight creation of a Black industrial proletariat during the first World War and in the years immediately following, the need for unity of white and Black workers was soon recognized. The Communists, like the Industrial Workers of the World and Left labor militants before them, sought to organize Black workers and to eliminate the color bar in the trade unions. Some valiant efforts were made but they met with little success. As early policy statements reveal, the Communists as a whole still failed to realize that the confidence of the Black workingman, who had to fight his way into industry against the resistance of organized white labor, could not be won without carrying on a fight simultaneously for the specific demands of Black labor and against racism. The growing awareness of this crucial problem in the party was due almost entirely to the constant pressure of its Black members. At the founding conventions of the two Communist parties in 1919, there was not a single Black delegate, and one of the conventions had not a word to say about the Negro. Within two or three years, however, the principal source of Black party members became the African Blood Brotherhood, formed in 1919 shortly after the split in the Socialist Party. Many of its leaders were Socialists who were enthused by the Russian Bolshevik Revolution. They welcomed the call of the Communist International for the unity of workers of all races throughout the world and its stand for the liberation of subject and colonial peoples. The Brotherhood rejected the RBack to AfricaR

lThe three addresses are in Hermann Schlueter, Lincoln, Labor and Slavery, NY, 1913, pp. 188-201. viii

program of the Garvey movement and favored a militant program for Black freedom here. Although the African Blood Brotherhood supplied relatively few Communists, these were among the first Black Americans to join the party and were to constitute the core of Black Communist leadership for some years to come. The Brotherhood should therefore be considered a principal source of Communist adherents, alongside the Socialist Party, the Industrial Workers of the Workers of the World, and other trade union militants. II. The Black Communists waged a vigorous campaign within the party to raise its consciousness on the "Negro question," to achieve positions of leadership, and to reach out toward the Negro masses. In those years, Cyril Briggs, Otto Huiswood, Otto Hall, Lovett Fort-Whitemen, Edward Doty, and other Brotherhood leaders were the most insistent prodders of the party. Among leading white Communists there were a few who began to understand the great importance of work among Blacks, especially Robert Minor and William F. Dunne, each from an opposing faction. They studied the problem and wrote about it in party journals, in some respects going much beyond the old "pure" class position and began to appreciate the role of race consciousness as well as the broader social aspects of the Black freedom struggle. The ambivalent position with respect to the Garvey movement, the greatest Black mass movement in the postwar years, is symptomatic of the difficulties confronted by the party. Particularly in the first years there was a tendency to overlook, if not condemn, the national aspects of that movement, while welcoming its mass character and at the same time rejecting the "back to Africa" program as diverting the Negroes from the struggle at home. On the other hand, there were those in the party who rejected the Garvey movement as a whole precisely because of its strong nationalist flavor. There seemed no way to transcend the contradiction between the class and national aspects, the difficulty at the heart of the party problem regarding the American Blacks. Nevertheless, in the years 1924 and 1925 vigorous efforts were made to reach out to the Black masses. In the former year, a party delegation together with one from the African Blood Brotherhood participated in the All-Race Assembly, the Sanhedrin. This was the first postwar attempt to form a concerted front of the civil rights organizations. All took part, with the exception of Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association. The conference was completely dominated by the Black middle class, the professionals and intellectuals. The few party delegates and a handful of their supporters made hardly a dent when they tried to get the conference to take a straightforward position in favor of Black labor and its admission into the established trade unions. They fared no better in the effort to establish a militant stand on housing segregation, against the Black real estate interests present at the conference or on other anti-discrimination demands. The All-Race Assembly seemed to demonstrate the irreconcilable class conflict within the Black community, thus feeding the "pure" class, anti-national trend among the Communists. In any case, the conference proved abortive. No doubt a contributing element to the failure of the united front effort was the anti-intellectual, anti-middle class bias of the Communists, both white and Black. This can be seen in the writings of the time. It is also rather sharply illustrated in the fate of Claude McKay, the talented poet and the most prominent Black intellectual to adhere to the Communists in the ix

early 1920s. At that time he was an editor of The Liberator, successor to the old Masses, and a staunch supporter of the Russian Revolution. He was invited to address the IVth Congress of the Communist International as a fraternal delegate in 1922, and wrote passionately in favor of Soviet Russia. And yet, soon after, he was alienated from the Communists, largely as a consequence of the racism he encountered among the American Communists, a tension aggravated by their anti-intellectual stance. A united freedom front of substance could hardly be attained with such a negative attitude toward the Black middle class and the intellectuals. The other major effort to reach outward occurred in 1925, with the organization of the American Negro Labor Congress. Its central objective was to generate a movement directed toward the organization of Black labor and to overcome its exclusion from the established unions. The formation of separate Black unions was to be supported where necessary but this was not to be seen as a diversion from the main task of uniting white and Black workers in the same unions. The program approved at the Congress went beyond the labor question to cover the broad field of Black rights in all aspects--including demands that were to be recognized in law years later. The Congress aroused considerable interest in the country, both from those who were fearful of Black militancy and from Blacks who looked hopefully to radical initiatives to advance the cause of freedom and equality. It is indicative of the times that in back of both attitudes was the expectation that, given the Black condition, communism would have a great appeal to Black Americans. Unfortunately, the Congress itself was a disappointment since it attracted few delegates outside of Communists and their adherents, despite the proclaimed aim of reaching out to the broad masses. The sharp attack on the Congress by the AFL leadership deterred Black unionists from participating. The Congress, however, did bring to public attention the full Communist program for Black rights, and encouraged an active core of young Black Communist organizers. In reaction to the Black middle class rejection of labor's demands at the Sanhedrin the previous year, the Communists seemed to go to the opposite extreme in requiring adherence to their full program even if it meant a narrow gathering. As the Communists themselves were soon to recognize, the Congress was practically a replica of their party, isolated from the masses, and therefore ineffective as a mass organization. A major lesson to be learned from both the Sanhedrin and the Congress was that the "Negro question" could not be relegated to a separate compartment, even if placed in the hands of Black Communists. The entire party was to be engaged if any advance of consequence was to be made. III. The entire party had to be engaged because of the stubborn persistence of racism--white chauvinism--in its ranks. This was expressed in neglect of "Negro work," inability or refusal to acknowledge the specific and special demands of Black Americans arising from age-old oppression, if not in outright insult and acts of discrimination. Readers of the material contained in this volume will be struck by the constant note of warning in the party press against racism, especially though not only from Black Communists. Racism was so ingrained in American institutions, daily practice and the white consciousness that a sharp sensitivity and supreme effort would be needed to overcome it within the party, to begin with, before any success among white workers in general could be expected. And without this

x

primary attempt, little could be accomplished in overcoming among Blacks the distrust of all whites. Undoubtedly throughout the 1920s the Communists did make significant advances beyond the old Socialist stand, developing on their own the elements of a program that would eventually recognize the national quality of the "Negro question." But in reality, in terms of the Communist Party's role in the Black freedom movement and of the number of Blacks in its own ranks, progress was slow through most of that decade. The Trade Union Educational League, devoted to the organization of the unorganized and to industrial unionism, the realization of which would encompass the mass of Black labor in industry, was under severe criticism, for its "complete neglect" of Negro workers. The party itself, according to the shocking revelation by James W. Ford at a World Communist Congress in 1928, had no more than 50 Black dues-paying members at the time. This seemed to bear out the complaint of some Blacks that racism was enough of a burden without taking on the additional onus of being "Red" and "subversive." Yet, as acknowledged even by outsiders, it was a remarkable feature of the Communist Party that it was practically the only predominantly white political organization in the country where the need to fight racism and to win Black equality could openly be raised and advocated by both Blacks and whites. Why, then, did racism in the party seem so intractable and why such meager progress in recruiting Black Americans? The two were obviously connected, and the Communists knew it. The solution of the problem could be found only in evolving a new general approach which would supercede the concept either of "pure" class or merely of race. Here the Communist International made a crucial contribution, encompassing both the class and race aspects of the problem, by setting the Black liberation struggle in the United States in the milieu of the national (or nationality) question. The historical literature has usually blamed the International for supposedly misleading the American party with respect to its Negro policy. (An outstanding example is Wilson Record's The Negro and the Communist Party, New York, 1971, which has been accepted as a standard work on the subject.) Yet, the positive contribution of the Communist International must be acknowledged: it helped the American Communists make the crucial turn in the struggle against racism and for Black rights which so profoundly affected the decade of the 1930s and beyond. To be sure, there were some serious flaws in the theory as applied to the situation of the American Negro people, which we will discuss; but these should not be permitted to obscure the basic contribution. IV.

A compelling reason for the Blacks to remain in the party and keep fighting was their conviction that Marxism and the socialist perspective would in time evolve a solution if the party stuck to the revolutionary path. This confidence was sustained by the powerful influence of the Russian Revolution and the Communist International which from the start condemned imperialism and, rejecting decisively the compromising stand of social-democracy, and came out unequivocally in support of the liberation struggles of subject and colonial peoples for their independence. Confidence in the Communist International was grounded also in the first-hand experience of Black American Communists at its world congresses and in their association with its work. To begin with, the International brought constant pressure upon the American party to end the factional warfare which Black communists considered a great, if not the main, obstacle to xi

effective "Negro work." They found neither faction free of racism and accused both of using the "Negro question" as a political football. So they had more than the usual relief when finally in 1929 the factional division was put to an end. Even more to the point, the Congresses, departments and commissions of the International offered an open tribunal for American Blacks at which they could air their complaints freely about racism in the American party. They were assured a sympathetic reception and were certain that pressure would be brought upon the American Communist Party to improve the situation. The International also offered a forum for the discussion of the national and colonial question in many parts of the world. There was thus brought to bear upon the American problem a variety of current experience, not to speak of the theoretical conclusions arising from the debates on the national question over the years in the European Socialist and Communist movements. The position evolved at the VIth World Congress, with respect to the American Negro as an oppressed nation, was therefore the outcome of a combination of historical experience. It should not be overlooked that elements of such a position appeared in the United States, in the form of independent, self-reliant freedom movements and programs, from the time of slavery to the present. Some form of political self-determination was implicit in the separatist and nationalist tendencies, even if in a· confused way, as most recently in the Garvey movement. Actually, the slogan was raised specifically for the American Negro on the occasion of President Wilson's Fourteen Points, which included the right of self-determination for other nations. But at the VIth World Congress the national interpretation was for the first time raised in the fuller context of American history.

v. The theoretical insights that opened the way to the new interpretation came from Lenin. As early as February 1913 in a short article entitled "Russians and Negroes," he observed that traces of slavery are reflected in the deplorable condition of Blacks in the South of the United States--"unworthy of a civilized country." He drew an analogy between that condition and the situation of the Russian peasantry who were "almost freed" from the bondage of serfdom at about the same time as the emancipation of the American slaves.2 This thought was explored more thoroughly in his scholarly study Capitalism and Agriculture in the United States of America, written in 1915 and published in 1917. He made a detailed analysis of the U.S. agricultural censuses of 1900 and 1910, the latter of particular importance because it was the first census to present separate data on the plantations in the South. Here Lenin rejected the view that the United States is a "virgin" bourgeois democracy, a capitalism devoid of feudal remnants--a view which he had shared with Marx and Engels. He recognized in the sharecropping plantation system the unique characteristic of Southern society as distinguished from the rest of the country. That system he saw as a powerful remnant of slavery similar to the residue of feudalism .in Russian agriculture following the abolition of serfdom. The Southern semi-feudal formation, Lenin observed, retarded capitalist development and kept captive the majority of the Negro people under especially harsh oppressive conditions. "For the

2Lenin on the United States: Selected Writings by V.I. Lenin, International Publishers, N.Y., 1970, pp. 58-59. xii

'emancipated' Negroes," he wrote, "the American South is a kind of prison where they are hemmed in, isolated and deprived of fresh air. The South is distinguished by the immobility of its population and by the greatest 'Attachment to the land' ."3 Lenin thus associated the oppression of the Negro with the peculiar historical and social development of the South, that is, its semi-feudal content. He was soon to draw further theoretical conclusions. In a work probably begun in 1916 dealing with the composition of the nation-state, he wrote: They [the Negroes] should be classed as an oppressed nation, for the equality won in the Civil war of 1861-65 and guaranteed by the Consitition of the republic was in many respects increasingly curtailed in the chief Negro areas (the South) in connection with the transition from the progressive, pre-monopoly capitalism of 1860-70 to the reactionary, monopoly capitalism (imperialism) of the new era, which in America was especially sharply etched out by the Spanish-American imperialist war of 1898.4 This is a remarkable perception of the genesis of the "Negro question" into a national question" from Civil War and Reconstruction into the period of big capital consolidation and expansion. He returned a number of times to the parallel between semi-feudalism and semi-slavery. Thus, in his pamphlet A Great Beginning (1919) we find: "Half a century after the abolition of serfdom there are still quite a number of survivals of serfdom in the Russian countryside. Half a century after the abolition of slavery in America the position of the Negroes was still very often one of semi-slavery." And in the following year, in his "Theses on the Agrarian Question" for the IInd Congress of the Communist International, he grouped the "former slave-owners of America" with the big landowners in Russia, Germany and Eastern Europe as carryovers from feudalism.5 Thus Lenin saw American Blacks as an "oppressed nation," a condition arising from their history of oppression within the semi-feudal agrarian system of the South. It was not by mere chance, but the result of years of observation, that in his famous "Theses on the National and Colonial Question," submitted to the IInd Congress, he urged that "all Communist parties should render direct aid to the dependent and underprivileged nations (for example, Ireland, American Negroes, etc.) and in the colonies."6 One can well surmise that Lenin singled out Ireland and the American Negroes for mention from scores of eligible examples because he was well aware of the chauvinism of the English toward the Irish and of the Americans toward the Negroes. In fact, he had made note of the chauvinism of the American white workers regarding the Chinese and Japanese exclusion acts, as well as the racism of the American Socialist Party regarding them and the American Negroes.7

3rbid., pp. 123-131. 4"statistics and Sociology," in Ibid., p. 306. 5rbid., p. 397 and p. 453. 6v. I. Lenin, Selected Works, International Publishers, N.Y. 19 , Vol. 3, p. 425. 7see "Notebooks on Imperialism," in preparation for his book on that subject, written in 1916, in Lenin on the United States, pp. 606-07. xiii

~

To be sure, Lenin did not present a specific program on the American Negro since, as he always insisted, the specifics of each situation had to be fully taken into account, all the more in the case of the complex national question. But his view of the American Negro as an oppressed nation was incorporated in a prime document approved by a World Commu~ist Congress as far back as 1920. The analogy with other peoples oppressed by imperialism or subjugated by big nations brought the "Negro Question" within the theoretical orbit of the national question in general. But eight years were to pass before the national approach on the Negro was seriously posed in the American Communist Party. This was due in large measure to the opposition in the party to the nationality interpretation. Objections were expressed from the outset at the !Ind World Congress by John Reed, delegate of the Communist Labor Party, in the discussion of Lenin's Theses. Reed objected principally on two grounds-that nationalist trends such as the Garvey movement failed because the American Negro wanted to be part of the American nation, and, further, because such tendencies were harmful to working-class solidarity and therefore to the prospects of attaining socialism. It is known that Lenin personally tried to convince Reed otherwise, but to no avail. Reed's arguments, in essence, remained at the heart of the opposition to Black' self-determination among American Communists, Black as well as white, right through the discussions at the VIth Congress and long afterward. VI. The "Resolution on the Negro Question" which resulted from the VIth World Congress of the Communist International was the first official document to propose "the right of Negroes to national self-determination in the Southern states, where the Negroes form a majority of the population." However, full social and political equality was considered the central slogan. A crucial differentiation was drawn between "the struggle for equal rights and the propaganda for the slogan of self-determination." (Emphasis added.) In fact, the resolution contained surprisingly little on the latter slogan--surprising, because this was almost an entirely new concept for the United States and was to play a crucial role in the development of Communist policy. The semi-slave Black Belt in the South was seen as the source of Negro oppression and as providing "the necessary conditions for a national revolutionary movement among the Negroes." Accordingly, the Black peasantry are "potential allies of the revolutionary proletariat," and not the "reserves" of reaction as Jay Lovestone and others claimed. But the central emphasis is upon the "double historical mission" of the newly-formed Black proletariat--in the class struggle against capitalism as part of the American working class and as leader of the oppressed Negro masses in their freedom movement. To bring into play both potentials was the responsibility of the Communist Party. It was urged to place "Negro work" at the center of all its activities, and specifically to concentrate upon breaking down the barriers to Blacks in the trade unions. Great urgency was given to the further development of a Black party cadre and upon beginning organizational work in the South. Most difficult for the American Communists to accept was the accusation that racism infected the party and was reflected in its work. To combat it, the resolution urged vigorous self-criticism together with systematic education on the sources of racism. To overcome the historically rooted distrust of all whites, including white workers, among all classes of Blacks the resolution says, the advanced white workers must "show, by xiv

action, that they are fighting with the Negroes against all racial discrimination and persecution." Especially the white Communists must take the initiative and bear the responsibility in the struggle against all manifestations of racism and its influence in the working-class movement, leaving to the advanced Blacks the fight against middle-class separatist tendencies. Without such a constant struggle, the resolution cautions, the Black workers will not be drawn to the party. Aside from its inadequate treatment of national selfdetermination, the resolution was weakest in its narrow concept of the Black liberation struggle. There is in it a lack of sensitivity to nationalist feelings among Blacks and a failure to comprehend the function and autonomy of their own institutions. For example, Negro preachers and their churches are condemned as "agents" of the oppressors, and "united front tactics" are advocated of the kind that would "expose the treacherous petty-bourgeois leadership." At the Second Congress Lenin had advocated support for bourgeois-democratic nationalist movements in the struggle against imperialism. But following the Left emphasis of the VIth Congress, the resolution narrowed such support to the "toiling masses" of the subject nation. Despite its flaws, the document made a decisive turn away from the Socialist Party position inherited by the Communist Party and toward a new, national approach. True, the Communists had by 1928 already advanced considerably from the antequated stand, as the election platform of 1928 and William z Foster's tour of Southern cities in the course of the campaign show. But the CI resolution overcame the dualism of class vs. race by encompassing both in the concept of the oppressed nation striving for liberation, and as such the potential ally of the working class in the struggle for socialism. The accusation of racism shook up the party, forced it into a long-needed critical examination of its position and into taking the initial steps that were to culminate in the Communist leadership of the great Black mass movements for civil rights and in Black participation in the great labor advance of the Depression Decade. However, the resolution of 1928 proved to be only a beginning. It was to take more than another year for a real turn to be made. There remained some strong opposition in the party to the new position, as well as reluctance to go the whole way, if not outright indifference to the question. Throughout, considerable unclarity as to the meaning of national self-determination as applied to Black Americans prevailed. There was to be another CI resolution on the American Negro in 1930 which sought to resolve such problems. In the meantime, the impetus imparted by the rigorous and extended discussion of the question before and during the VIth World Congress led the American party to take some important preliminary measures in 1929. Blacks were elected to the top committees of the Party, at least one Black district organiser was appointed, a Negro Commission with a Black in charge was established at the center, and similar bodies recommended for the regional organizations. Serious consideration was given to establishing Communist organization in the South. For the Communist Party, the 1920s were years of transition from an immature policy of neglect and indifference with regard to Black Americans, to new concepts of Black nationality and of the dialectical quality of the relation between Black liberation and the goal of socialism. The decade of the 1930s was to be the period in which these new concepts bore fruit in practice. That is the subject of Volume Two. This work could not have been completed without the assistance of numerous libraries and historical societies. We wish to take this opportunity to thank the staffs of the Tami~ent Institute Library of New York University, Columbia xv

University Library, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Widener Library, Harvard University, Yale University Library, New York Public Library, New York Public Library--Schomburg Collection, Howard University Library, University of Pennsylvania Library, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, Langston Hughes Memorial Library, Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, University of Wisconsin Library, and the Library of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. The editors want especially to thank Richard C. Winchester of Lincoln University for his invaluable assistance in preparing the manuscript for publication. Philip S. Foner

James

xvi

s.

Allen

AMERICAN COMMUNISM AND BLACK AMERICANS

I.

PRELIMINARIES, 1919-1924

l

I.

PRELIMINARIES, 1919-1924

When the Socialist Party split at its convention in August 1919, two communist parties were immediately formed at separate conventions--the Communist Party and the Communist Labor Party. The former was much the larger, including the foreign-born language federations which had either been expelled from or had left the Socialist Party. The Communist Labor Party had the larger American-born component. The Negro was not mentioned at all in its program. No Negro delegates were present at either founding convention. Aside from the different composition of the two parties, the~e was little else to distinguish them from each other. Both opposed the reformist policies of the Socialist Party, supported the militant left in the labor movement, welcomed the Bolshevik-led Russian Revolution of 1917, and favored affiliation with the newly-formed Communist International. An attempt to unite both parties was made at a convention in May 1920 which formed the United Communist Party of America. But a large part of the initial Communist Party did not come along, and instead held a separate convention in July 1920 at which, among other things, it accused the United Communist Party of giving "undue prominence" to the Negro question by placing it as a separate point in the agenda of its convention. As can be seen from the initial programmatic statement of the Communist Party, and other items below, the general approach is similar to that of the Socialist Party in viewing the Negro question simply as an economic or class question, although organization of Black workers together with white is emphasized. The Communist was the official organ of the first Communist Party. PROGRAM ADOPTED BY FOUNDING CONVENTION OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY

v The unorganized unskilled workers including the agricultural proletariat constitute the bulk of the working class. The Communist Party shall directly and systematically agitate among these workers, awakening them to industrial union organization and action. VI In close connection with the unskilled worker is the problem of the Negro worker. The Negro problem is a political and economic problem. The racial oppression of the Negro is simply the expression of his economic bondage and oppression, each intensifying the other. This complicates the Negro problem, but does not alter its proletarian character. The Communist Party will carry on agitation among the Negro workers to unite them with all class conscious workers. The Communist, September 27, 1919. RACE AND CLASS This is one of the few editorial comments in white journals to support the right of self-defense by Blacks against white mobs. Nearly 400,000 Blacks served in the armed forces during World War I, and these veterans 3

gave a good account of themselves during the race riots of the immediate postwar period. Many American Negroes expected that discrimination would be ended as a result of the victory in the "war to make the world safe for democracy." The first major riot occurred in East St. Louis, Illinois in July 1917, occasioned by competition for jobs; at least 40 Blacks were killed, and nearly 6,000 were driven from their homes. In the same year at Houston, Texas, two Blacks and 17 whites were killed in a fight between Black soldiers of the 24th Infantry and whites who had been molesting them; 13 members of the regiment were later hanged. Lynchings were on the rise: 38 in 1917; 64 in 1918, and 83 in 1919. There were other riots during the war, at Waco, Texas, and Memphis, Tennessee. But race riots rose in crescendo in the summer of 1919--the "Red Summer," in the words of James Weldon Johnson--when 26 occurred. The bloodiest were in Washington, Chicago, Omaha, Knoxville, Longview, Texas, and in Elain, Arkansas. These riots were marked by a rising level of armed self-defense by Blacks. In Elaine (Phillip County), Arkansas, an all-Black association, Progressive Farmers and Householders Union of America, was formed in 1919 to combat the exploitation of Negro sharecroppers and laborers on the plantations. An attempt was made to break up a union meeting at a church in the County in October 1919, in the course of which a white man was killed. A white mob gathered and in the resulting rampage, five whites and 25 Blacks were officially listed as dead, but observers placed the Black toll at over 100. Tried for "inciting to insurrection," 12 Blacks were sentenced to death and 80 to prison for one to 20 years. The Liberator, first published in March 1918, was a successor to The Masses, which was banned from the mails in August 1917 for its anti-war stand. Like its predecessor, the new magazine gathered around itself Left writers, artists and other intellectuals, maintaining an aura of freewheeling radicalism. Though not an organ of either Communist party, its initial editor, Max Eastman, as well as other collaborators, were communists or associated themselves with the Communist Left. Contributors included many writers and artists who were to become prominent during the next decade or two. The journal at its peak reached a circulation of 60,000. It ceased publication in 1924; its tradition was continued by the New Masses which started as a monthly in 1926. There is cause for hope of an ultimate adjustment of the race problem, in the fact that the Negroes are showing some power of resistance to white persecution. If large groups of Negroes have learned enough in the army about .their own value and.power,.s? that they are ready. to defend themselves unitedly against criminal assaults from Whites, these assaults will be far less frequent. The first fruit of this new attitude of Negroes may be seen in the following dispatch from Gilmer, Texas: "Four white men charged with lynching Chilton Jennings, a Negro, here on July 24, were arrested today after investigation by the Upshur County Grand Jury." If the four men are convicted 1 it may establish a precedent for which a few "race-riots" is not too large a price to pay.

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It is hoped, however, that the Negroes will realize that the economic problem, the problem of exploitation and class-rule in general, lies in the heart of the race-problem, and that it is more important for them to join revolutionary organizations of the general proletariate than the special organizations of their race. The Liberator, September 1919. SPEECH BY JOHN REED AT IInd CONGRESS OF COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL ON NEGRO QUESTION John Reed--the author of Ten Days That Shook the World, a classic first-hand account of the Russian Socialist Revolution-- was a founder of the Communist Labor Party and its delegate to the IInd Congress of the Communist International in July 1920. As already noted, that party ignored the Negro at its founding convention the year before. Thus Reed's speech at the Congress may be considered the first programmatic statement on the question by one of its leaders. The speech was occasioned by Lenin's "Draft Theses on the National and Colonial Question" which was submitted to that Congress, discussed extensively, and adopted. (The full text of the "Theses" is in V.I. Lenin, Selected Works, International Publishers, New York, 1967, Vol. 3, pp. 422-427.) In the "Theses" Lenin included the American Negro among the "dependent and underprivileged nations" where liberation movements should be supported by Communists (for the development of Lenin's thinking on the American Negro as an oppressed nation see the Introduction to this volume). Reed spoke against this concept, holding that Negroes "consider themselves first of all Americans," and that movements aiming at "a separate national existence"--such as Garveyism-have "met with little, if any success." (In 1920 the Garvey movement had not yet attained the mass appeal it was soon to have.) He held that the major concern of the American Communists was working-class unity of white and Black, but he also warned that they "must not stand aloof from the Negro movement for social and political equality." In his speech he supported armed defense by Blacks in the riots at Washington, DC, Chicago and Omaha, and remarked on the increase in race consciousness. However, his brief interpretation of the Civil War and Reconstruction and of Black history in general is superficial, which is not surprising in view of the little attention then paid to the subject in the labor movement or in Left circles. Obviously, he exaggerated the speed with which socialism was influencing Black workers, as he did the ratio of whites to Blacks killed in the Washington riot. Reed died shortly afterward in Moscow on October 11. At the present time there are about 10,000,000 Negroes living in the United States; most of them are in the Southern States, but during the last few years many thousands of Negroes have moved North. As a general rule the northern Negro is an industrial laborer, while in the South they are generally farm laborers or small farmers. The position of the Negroes in the United States, especially in the Southern States, is terrible. They are accorded no political rights whatever, although the 5

sixteenthl amendment to the Constitution of the United States confers upon the Negroes full rights of citizenship. Nevertheless the majority of the Southern States deprive the Negroes of these rights and in other states where they legally have the right to vote they are killed if they dare to exercise this right. In the United States Negroes are not permitted to travel in a car containing white people nor are they permitted to visit hotels and restaurants frequented by the whites nor to live in the same part of towns. Separate schools of an inferior character exist for Negroes and separate churches are maintained. This separation of the Negro from the white is called the "Jim Crow" system, and the clergy of Southern churches teach that there is also a heaven in which the "Jim Crow" system is in operation. In industrial undertakings Negroes are generally used as unskilled laborers and until recently they were not admitted to membership im the majority of unions which comprise what is known as the American Federation of Labor. The International of the Revolutionary Youth2 of course worked to organize the Negroes. The old Socialist Party has never seriously endeavored to organize the Negroes, and, in fact, in several states Negroes were not admitted to the party, while in other states they formed separate and distinct , sections. I have not sufficient time to explain the status of the Negro question in the United States from a historical standpoint. The Negroes are the descendants of a slave population, the liberation of which was effected only as a military necessity at the time of the Civil War, when they were still entirely undeveloped from an economic and political standpoint. They were granted full political rights solely with the intentions of creating a desperate class struggle and with a view to hindering the development of southern capital and thus enable the North to obtain control of all the resources of the country. Until comparatively recently the Negroes gave no indication of any aggressive class tendencies. A change in this regard was first noticed after the Spanish-American War, during which the Black regiments fought with great bravery and from which they returned with the feeling that they were human beings and the equals of the white soldiers. Up to that time, there had been no movement or advance among the Negroes, with the exception of a semiphilanthropic educational institution headed by Booker T. Washington and supported by white capitalists. This movement resulted in the organization of a few schools where the Negroes were taught to be good servants and laborers and to be satisfied with the lot and destiny of an inferior people. During the Spanish War a new feeling arose among the Negroes, which found expression in a demand for social and political equality as regards the whites. The American Army, which was sent to France during the European War, included half a million Negroes, and these, when serving in the same units or organizations with French soldiers, observed that they were being treated in social and other matters as full equals. The American General Staff then applied

lNot the "sixteenth" but the fifteenth amendment granted Negro suffrage. 2 Probably a mistake of translation into Russian and then back to English; perhaps "Industrial Workers of the world" is meant.

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to the French High Command with a request that the Negroes be excluded from all places visited or frequented by white people, and made a request that the Negro be treated as an inferior being. After having served throughout the war these Negro soldiers, many of whom received decorations for bravery from the French and Belgian governments, returned to their homes and villages, where many were lynched solely because they dared to wear their uniforms and decorations in public. At the same time indications appeared of a strong feeling and movement among the Negroes who had remained at home. Thousands of them moved to the Northern States, where they were employed in war industries and where they came into touch with the strong labor movement. Their lot, however, was unhappy, as the increase of wages could not keep pace with the tremendous increase in the price of all articles of absolute necessity. In addition, the Negroes were much more affected by the terrific strain of working in these factories at high tension than were the white laborers who, through many years of experience, had become accustomed to this terrible exploitation . . . At this time the magazine--The Messenger--was founded, edited by a young Negro Socialist--[A. Philip] Randolph. He combined socialistic propaganda with an appeal to the race consciousness of the Negroes, and urged them to organize for self-defense against the brutal attacks of the whites. But at the same time he insisted upon the closest affiliation with the white laborers despite the fact that these white laborers had sometimes participated in Negro pogroms, pointing out that the conflict between these two races is supported by the capitalists for their own selfish purposes. The return from the front of the American Army brought 4,000,000 of white laborers to the labor market. This resulted in a lack of work and an evidence of impatience on the part of the demobilized soldiers who threatened the employers to such a degree and extent that the employers were compelled to direct this general dissatisfaction along another line, which they did by informing the soldiers that their places had been given to Negro workers. They thus provoked the white laborers into starting a massacre of the Negroes. The first struggle took place in the National Capital at Washington, where petty government officials, after their return from the war, found their places occupied by Negroes. The majority of these officials were from the South. They organized a night attack on the Negroes of the city in order to intimidate them and induce them to vacate their positions. To the great surprise of all, however, the Negroes appeared on the streets fully armed, and they fought with such bravery that for each Negro killed three whites were killed. A few months later a similar riot broke out in Chicago which lasted for several days and resulted in many people being killed on both sides. A third massacre took place in Omaha. In these fights, for the first time in history, the Negroes were fully armed, splendidly organized, and gave no evidence of any fear of the whites. Race consciousness has steadily increased among the Negroes, a certain section of whom are now carrying on a propaganda in favor of an armed revolt against the whites. Returned Negro soldiers have everywhere organized unions for self-defense against lynchings carried on by the whites. The circulation of The Messenger has steadily increased until at the present time its monthly issue approximates 150,000 copies. And along with all this, socialistic ideas are rapidly developing among the Blacks employed in industrial establishments. As an oppressed and downtrodden people, the Negro offers to us a double or twofold opportunity: first, a strong race and social movement; second, a strong proletarian labor movement. 7

The Negro does not demand national independence. Every movement which has thus far been carried on among them with the ai1n of establishing a separate national resistance--for example, the "Back to Africa" movement--has met with little, if any, success. They consider themselves first of all Americans and feel entirely at home in the United States. This facilitates to a very great extent the task of Communists. The only proper policy for the American Communists to follow is to consider the Negro first of all as a laborer. Farm laborers and small farmers of the South present a problem analogous to that of the white rural proletariat, although the Negroes are very backward. Among the Negro industrial workers in the Northern States communistic propaganda can easily be spread. In both the northern and southern parts of the country the one aim must be to unite the Negro and the white laborer in common labor unions; this is the best and quickest way to destroy the race prejudice and to develop class solidarity. The Communists must not, however, stand aloof from the Negro movement for social and political equality, which is developing so rapidly at the present time among the Negro masses. Communists must avail themselves of this movement in order to prove the emptiness of bourgeois equality and the necessity for a social revolution not only to liberate all laborers from slavery, but also as being the only effective means of liberating the oppressed Negro people. Pravda, Moscow, August 8, 1920; as translated and printed in The 2nd Congress of the Communist International. As Reported and Interpreted by the Official Newspapers of Soviet Russia. Petrograd-Moscow, July 19-August 7, 1920, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1920, pp. 151-54. (Somewhat abridged.) THE RACE PROBLEM At the Unity Convention in Woodstock, N.Y., May 1921, agreement was reached among the contending groups to form a single party, the Communist Party of America. No specific Negro demands were included in its program, but the Negro was mentioned in the Manifesto. The next step was the formation of the Workers Party of America in December 1921. It should be recalled that the efforts at unity of the two main Communist groups were complicated--indeed, their very existence was threatened--by the constant attacks on the radicals, the foreign-born, and especially Communists, as exemplified in the Palmer Raids at the beginning of 1919 and continued with little abatement thereafter. The Workers Party was therefore considered the "legal" party, in the sense that it would be pushing for legal recognition as a party, while the Communist Party of America was retained as the alternative "underground" organization should the former be suppressed. In April 1923 both parties were consolidated in the Workers Party of America, thus bringing all Communist groups under one ~oof. At the 1925 Convention the name Workers (Communist) Party was adopted, and then in 1930 it became the Communist Party of the United States. It is significant that the Workers Party pledged to "support the Negroes in their struggle for liberation" and for full equality, and to "destroy altogether the barriers of race prejudice" in the unions. The recognition of this special responsibility marks an important step forward. 8

The Negro workers in America are exploited and oppressed more ruthlessly than any other group. The history of the Southern Negro is the history of a reign of terror--of persecution, rape and murder. The formal abolition of slavery made it possible for the northern capitalists to penetrate the south and to bring poor Negro labor north. This was, however, detrimental to the interests of Southern capitalists, and they have sought by every means to maintain the enslavement of the Negro. It is in order to subjugate him and break his spirit, that secret murder societies such as the Ku Klux Klan have been established. Because of the anti-Negro policies of organized labor, the Negro has despaired of aid from this source, and he has either been driven into the camp of labor's enemies, or has been compelled to develop purely racial organizations which seek purely racial aims. The Workers Party will support the Negroes in their struggle for Liberation, and will help them in their fight for economic, political and social equality. It will point out to them that the interests of the Negro workers are identical with those of the white. It will seek to end the policy of discrimination followed by organized labor. Its task will be to destroy altogether the barrier of race prejudice that has been used to keep apart the Black and white workers, and bind them into a solid union of revolutionary forces for the overthrow of our common enemy. Program and Constitution, Workers Party of America, New York, 1921, pamphlet. THE ECONOMIC BASIS OF THE TULSA RACE RIOT By E. T. Allison Tulsa, Oklahoma was the scene of one of the bloodiest race riots of the postwar years. It was marked by a high level of organized self-defense on the part of the Blacks, including many veterans of war. The riot began May 30, 1921. About 50 whites and 200 Black men, women and children were killed, when a white mob of thousands swept through the Negro community, looting homes and setting them ablaze. At the time, Tulsa was rapidly developing its new oil fields. During the war a reign of terror was launched against the Industrial Workers of the World who were organizing the oil workers; at one time 17 IWW men were tarred, feathered and abandoned to their fate. The following article in The Toiler, organ of the Communist Party, is notable for its recognition of the overall oppression of the Negro people by whites and their institutions, a marked departure from the traditional socialist approach, though it still tended to reduce the basic cause of the riot to a single economic factor. With respect to the latter, however, the article has the merit of calling attention to the role of the new oil finds on Negro-owned or inhabited land among causes of the riot. It fails to note, as so much of the Negro press did not at the time, the importance of the Black fight-back and the right of armed defense. Elmer T. Allison was a member of the left wing of the Socialist Party in Cleveland, and helped form the Communist Labor Party. He was editor of the Socialist News, of that city, the forerunner of The Toiler. He died in 1982, just short of 99 years of age.

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As one cannot understand any great social change or manifestation without a true conception of the economic basis for such, so, neither can one understand any lesser social phenomena without understanding the economic basis in which its causes find root, and out of which it springs. The Tulsa race riot of two weeks ago is a case in point. The riot did not "just happen." There were very clear and definite causes for that outburst of savagery; causes which in the main now reveal themselves as economic in character. No difference of color, nor creed, nor race can account for it. The attempt to separate the Negro race from the economic development of the United States in the early period of its settlement would be a witless procedure. The entire "civilization" of the far greater portion of the country was at that time based and grounded upon the slavery of the Negro. To understand the early period of the country's development one must not fail to reckon with the foundation upon which its economic, civil and moral superstructure was built--chattel slavery. Ten million inhabitants of a country, even of the extent of the United States, bound together by ties of race, historical development and similarity of economic and social status, cannot be readily divorced from any calculation of social forces of that country. And it would be entirely erroneous to attempt such on the basis of the larger freedom granted the Negro·since the Civil War. His changed relation to his masters and to the white society is an almost fictitious one, especially in the South where his greatest numbers still live and labor. The Negro race is linked up with unbreakable bonds (economic) with the white civilization. The labor of these millions is still peremptorily necessary in the realms of King Cotton and even in various basic industries of the North. While capitalist society is as clearly in a conspiracy against the Negro here as is any pogram- ridden Eastern nation against the Jews, here the lynching bee and the race riot, there the pogrom: The causes are the same as are too the results. The American Negro, and we must not forget that he is truly American as are any of the whites, more so than many of them, who attempts to raise himself and family into a higher plane of life and social position is always damned and often doomed, by the white society which dominates the country. The Negro who is content to remain a "nigger"--and a vassal of the whites--is held in the veriest contempt, but let him simulate the human aspirations of the white race for the larger life and then to this contempt of the whites is added a blood thirsty desire for vengence which at any moment breaks upon his head. Upon such shifty foundation rested the liberties of thousands of Negro men, women and children at Tulsa when the White Vengeance swept their homes and many of them as well, out of existence in a whirlwind of fury. The main purpose and object of all white aggressions upon the Negro are to KEEP HIM DOWN, down under the feet of the white rulers, the white's laws, the white politicians, the white masters. Anything which will reduce the Negro to this place and keep him there as dirt beneath the feet of his masters--is good in the eyes of white civilization. As long as the Negro will consent to stay down, the bloodthirstiness of the whites may be appeased by only an occasional sacrificial offering of a Black man or woman. The magnet of industrial development drew many thousands of Negroes into the Northern and Western parts of the country during the war. Post-war conditions favored the retention of them north of the Mason and Dixon Line. The opening of oil fields and the high prices for cotton were active agencies in attracting large numbers of them to the Southwest. High wages, 10

high cotton prices, luck in the oil gamble, made many of them comparatively well to do. Negroes established themselves in business, competing with white firms. Negro newspapers were established, Negro organizations grew. They settled down in that section as an established portion of the inhabitants. Business interests establish the current view upon any public matter, whether it is the floating of the pre-discounted 20 per cent liberty loan, or decision upon adopting a scientific formula for conserving human life. Business, through its publicity and legal organisms, has the first and last say. The "lower classes" have little force in deciding anything. Whether white or Black, they are only the implements of the bourgeoisie. It was white business interests which fomented the Tulsa riot. Whatever differences there may have been between white workers and black workers on account of undercutting of wages by the Negroes because of unemployment, it must not be assumed that these differences counted for anything with the white master class, except as an implement of possible use against the Negro when the whites chose to bring the mob into action. The business depression rendered the Negroes more of a menace than an asset to the white interests. The trap was sprung. The Tulsa riot was the fruit of a long brewing trouble, not unexpected in some quarters. Many instances of white aggression upon Negro rights can be cited in proof of this. Negroes holding land upon which oil was struck were forced to sell to whites, were driven out of the country. Notices were stuck upon Negroes' houses warning them of white vengeance if they remained in that section. Many and various obstacles were placed in the way of Negro advancement. Violations of legal rights became the order of the day where Negroes were concerned. The Negroes were becoming an established competitive factor to white business. And because of it they were outlawed; and the sentence of death passed upon them. The riot ensued. Whatever immediate circumstances set off the explosion that has found an echo of condemnation wherever men really think, down at the bottom must be recognized these fundamental causes, economic in nature, which are ineradicable as long as the present capitalistic system shall last. The Toiler, Cleveland, June 18, 1921. THE NEGRO AND RADICAL THOUGHT An Exchange between Claude McKay and W.E.B. Du Bois Claude McKay, the poet, was the most prominent Black intellectual to be associated with the Communists in the early 1920s. Born in Jamaica of a farm family with slave antecedents, he came to the United States in 1912 at the age of 23, after the publication of his first two volumes of poetry, with the intention of studying agriculture. After a short stay at Tuskegee Institute--he found the restrictions and the general air of conformism intolerable--he went to Kansas State College where he remained until 1914, when he came to New York. Here he failed in a short-lived restaurant business, and held jobs as pullman porter, waiter and janitor while again writing. He turned from the dialect poetry of his Jamaica days to lyrical poetry in the traditional sonnet form. He was first published in 1917 in Seven Arts magazine, edited by Waldo Frank and James Oppenheim, and soon after appeared in Pearson's Magazine, of which Frank Harris was editor. McKay was in England from the summer of 1919 to early 1921. He wrote for Worker's Dreadnought, the 11

magazine of Sylvia Pankhurst, suffragette and socialist, whose group participated in the formation of the British Communist Party. Though he had known the old Masses, and favored the Bolshevik Revolution, this was his first opportunity to study Marx. A collection of his poems was published in England under the title, Spring in New Hampshire.' On his retur~ to New York he was invited to become an associate editor of The Liberator, which had published his poetry, and in the April 1921 issue his name appeared o~ the masthead together with Max Eastman, Floyd Dell, and Robert Minor. Michael Gold and Joseph Freeman were also on the staff. When Eastman withdrew as editor later that year, McKay became joint editor with Gold in December 1921. He resigned in June 1922 when differences between him and Gold over proletarian literature could not be resolved. Though it was not admitted at the time, racism was an important factor, as is obvious from the Eastman-McKay correspondence (see below). (See Claude McKay, A Long Way From Home: An Autobiography, New York, 1937; reprinted as paperback by Harcourt Brace & World, 1970.) The publication of Harlem Shadows (New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1922) may be considered the dawn of what was later called the Harlem Renaissance. It was a collection of McKay's poetry, some of which had appeared in The Liberator, The Messenger and other magazines. McKay had achieved wide popularity as a people's poet with his sonnet, "If We Must Die," written during the race riots of 1919 and published in the July Liberator of that year. It was widely reprinted in the Black press, and read from pulpit and platform at Negro gatherings. It expressed deep anger and the new spirit of fight back: "If we must die, let it not be like hogs . Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back." The following exchange between Claude McKay and W.E.B. Du Bois, editor of the Crisis, is noteworthy for the contrast between the two: The former voices straightforward support of the Russian Revolution while Dr. Du Bois, in one of the few full statements of his position at the time, expresses his own ambivalent view. Dr. Du Bois' editorial also expresses clear distrust of the white working class and protests the anti-Negro stand of the unions. MR. CLAUDE McKAY, one of the editors of The Liberator and a Negro poet of distinction, writes us as follows: "I am surprised and sorry that in your editorial, 'The Drive,' published in THE CRISIS for May, you should leap out of your sphere to sneer at the Russian Revolution, the greatest event in the history of humanity; much greater than the French Revolution, which is held up as a wonderful achievement to Negro children and students in white and black schools. For American Negroes the indisputable and outstanding fact of the Russian Revolution is that a mere handful of Jews, much less in ratio to the number of Negroes in the American population, have attained, through the Revolution, all the political and social rights that were denied to them under the regime of the Czar. "Although no thinking Negro can deny the great work that the N.A.A.C.P. is doing, it must yet be admitted that from its platform and personnel the Association cannot function as a revolutionary working class organization. And the overwhelming majority of American Negroes belong by birth, condition and 12

repression to the working class. Your aim is to get for the American Negro the political and social rights that are his by virture of the Constitution, the rights which are denied him by the Southern oligarchy with the active cooperation of state governments and the tacit support of northern business interests. And your aim is a noble one, which deserves the support of all progressive Negroes. "But the Negro in politics and social life is ostracized only technically by the distinction of color; in reality the Negro is discriminated against because he is of the lowest type of worker . . . . "Obviously, this economic difference between the white and Black workers manifests itself in various forms, in color prejudice, race hatred, political and social boycotting and lynching of Negroes. And all the entrenched institutions of white America--law courts, churches, schools, the fighting forces and the Press,--condone these iniquities perpetrated upon Black men; iniquities that are dismissed indifferently as the inevitable result of the social system. Still, whenever it suits the business interests controlling these institutions to mitigate the persecutions against Negroes, they do so with impunity. When organized white workers quit their jobs, Negroes, who are discouraged by the whites to organize, are sought to take their places. And these strikebreaking Negroes work under the protection of the military and the police. But as ordinary citizens and workers, Negroes are not protected by the military and the police from the mob. The ruling classes will not grant Negroes those rights which, on a lesser scale and more plausibly, are withheld from the white proletariat. The concession of these rights would immediately cause a Revolution in the economic life of this country." We are aware that some of our friends have been disappointed with THE CRISIS during and since the war. Some have assumed that we aimed chiefly at mounting the band wagon with our cause during the madness of war; others thought that we were playing safe so as to avoid the Department of Justice; and still a third class found us curiously stupid in our attitude toward the broader matters of human reform. Such critics, and Mr. McKay is among them, must give us credit for standing to our guns in the past at no little cost in many influential quarters, and they must also remember that we have one chief cause,--the emancipation of the Negro, and to this all else must be subordinated--not because other questions are not important but because to our mind the most important social question today is recognition of the darker races. Turning now to that marvelous set of phenomena known as the Russian Revolution, Mr. McKay is wrong in thinking that we have ever intentionally sneered at it. On the contrary, time may prove, as he believes, that the Russian Revolution is the greatest event of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and its leaders the most unselfish prophets. At the same time THE CRISIS does not know this to be true. Russia is incredibly vast, and the happenings there in the last five years have been intricate to a degree that must make any student pause. We sit, therefore, with waiting hands and listening ears, seeing some splendid results from Russia, like the cartoons for public education recently exhibited in America, and hearing of other things which frighten us. We are moved neither by the superficial omniscience of Wellsl nor the reports in the New York Times; but this alone

lH.G. Wells interviewed Lenin and wrote favorably about the revolution. See his Russia in the Shadows, London, 1921. 13

we do know: that the immediate work for the American Negro lies in America and not in Russia, and this, too, in spite of the fact that the Third Internationale has made a pronouncement which cannot but have our entire sympathy: "The Communist Internationale once forever breaks with the traditions of the Second Internationale which in reality only recognized the white race. The Communi~t Internationale makes it its task to emancipate the workers of the entire world. The ranks of the Communist International fraternally unite men of all colors: white, yellow and Black--the toile~s of the entire world." Despite this there come to us Black men two insistent questions: What is today the right program of socialism? The editor of THE CRISIS considers himself a Socialist but he does not believe that German State Socialism or the dictatorship of the proletariat are perfect panaceas. He believes with most thinking men that the present method of creating, contrdlling and distributing wealth is desperately wrong; that there must come and is coming a social control of wealth; but he does not know just what form that control is going to take, and he is not prepared to dogmatize with Marx or Lenin. Further than that, and more fundamental to the duty and outlook of THE CRISIS, is this question: How far can the colored people of the world, and particularly the Negroes of the United States, trust the working class? Many honest thinking Negroes assume, and Mr. McKay seems to be one of these, that we have only to embrace the working class program to have the working class embrace ours; that we have only to join trade Unionism and Socialism or even Communism, as they are today expounded, to have Union Labor and Socialists and Communists believe and act on the equality of mankind and the abolition of the color line. THE CRISIS wishes that this were true, but it is forced to the conclusion that it is not. The American Federation of Labor, as representing the trade unions in America, has been grossly unfair and discriminatory toward Negroes and still is. American Socialism has discriminated against Black folk and before the war was prepared to go further with this discrimination. European Socialism has openly discriminated against Asiatics. Nor is this surprising. Why should we assume on the part of unlettered and suppressed masses of white workers, a clearness of thought, a sense of human brotherhood, that is sadly lacking in the most educated classes? Our task, therefore, as it seems to THE CRISIS, is clear: We have to convince the working classes of the world that Black men, brown men, and yellow men are human beings and suffer the same discrimination that white workers suffer. We have in addition to this to espouse the cause of the white workers, only being careful that we do not in this way allow them to jeopardize our cause. We must, for instance, have bread. If our white fellow workers drive us out of decent jobs, we are compelled to accept indecent wages even at the price of "scabbing." It is a hard choice, but whose is to blame? Finally, despite public prejudice and clamour, we should examine with open mind in literature, debate and in real life the great programs of social reform that are day by day being put forward. This was the true thought and meaning back of our May editorial. We have an immediate program for ·Negro emancipation laid down and thought out by the N.A.A.C.P. It is foolish for us to give up this practical program for mirage in Africa or by seeking to join a revolution which we do not at present understand. On the other hand, as Mr. McKay says, it would be just as foolish for us to sneer or even seem to sneer at the bloodentwined writhing of hundreds of millions of our whiter human brothers. The Crisis, July 1921. 14

THE NEGRO LIBERATION MOVEMENT By

c.

Lorenzo

The following article in The Toiler maintains the advance beyond the traditional Socialist approach which was made by the previous essay of E.T. Allison. Perhaps for the first time in Communist Literature--certainly among the earliest--is the term ''Negro Libration movement," denoting a broader concept beyond the simple class position. In associating that movement with the world colonial struggle against imperialism, the author expresses the position of the "Theses on the National and Colonial Question'' adopted at the !Ind Congress of the Communist International. To be sure, he exaggerates the "brilliant tactical victories" of the African Blood Brotherhood over the Universal Negro Improvement Association (for discussion of both organizations, see below), and his views of the UNIA were not entirely accepted by either communist party. But his approval of the African Blood Brotherhood did presage a development of considerable importance. That the Negro people are at last waking to a realization of their rights and, accordingly, to participation in the universal liberation struggle of the exploited masses of the world, must be, of necessity, a source of constant and intense gratification to all workers who are genuinely class-conscious. The efforts of the Negroes to throw off the yoke of the white capitalist imperialists cannot fail to react favorably on our fight against the same enemy. In spite of the folly and blindness of most of their present leaders, the Negroes, to attain any measure of success in their struggle against the imperialist governments of Europe and North America, must come eventually to a full realization of the identity of their interests with those of other oppressed people and of the class-conscious white workers. They are beginning to realize that not all white people are their enemies, and that the same group which oppresses and exploits them also exploits and oppresses the working masses of the white race. Every blow struck for Negro liberation will be a blow struck for the world Proletariat, since whether the Negroes consciously will it or not, the effects will be the weakening of the capitalist foe of both the "subject peoples" and the exploited white workers. In like manner, every blow struck for the liberation of the Proletariat will be a blow for the Negroes, both as Negroes and as workers. The difficulties which will face the proletarian struggle in Europe and America will be increased so long as the enemy is able to draw on the colonies for material resources and fighting men with which to war upon the workers in the home lands. This is a truth that, while fully recognized by the Communist International and its millions of followers in all countries, is generally blinked at by the leaders of the British Labor Party, and other traitors to the Workers' cause. It is largely on account of these traitors that the Negroes have not yet been brought to a realization of the primacy of their workers' interests over their merely racial interests. For this reason a short survey has to be made from a racial angle. At the present there are two great outstanding sections or phases of the Negro Liberation Movement with headquarters in the United States. These are the Universal Negro Improvement Association, better known as the Garvey Movement, and the African Blood Brotherhood . . . 15

Of the two great sections of the Liberation Movement emanating in the United States and now encircling the globe and demanding full Negro liberation, the African Blood Brotherhood, or A.B.B., headed by Cyril Briggs, appe3rs to have the better tactical direction which, together with a clear realization of the underlying causes and intensity of the struggle, makes it the most effective Negro organization in' the field. It is the only Negro organization that the capitalists view with any degree of alarm. This may be because of the historic reputation of the organization, dating from the Tulsa race ~iots, or because the A.B.B. recognizes the capitalist imperialist system as the cause of the economic slavery of the Negro people and loses no opportunity to drive home to the Negro masses this most important point. Moreover, A.B.B. tactics are based upon the idea, expressed by the Indian proverb that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," and the organization openly seeks the cooperation of all other forces genuinely opposed to the capitalist-imperialist system. While placing a free Africa as the chief of its ultimate aims, the A.B.B. has no intention of surrendering any rights that the Negro has won in other parts of the world, or of letting up on the fight for liberty--"political, economic, social"--in the United States. It is at present carrying on a most uncompromising fight for the rights of the Negro wo~kers in this country to organize for the betterment of their condition, the raising of their standard of living, and for shorter hours and higher wages. At the same time it seeks to imbue the Negro workers with a sense of the necessity of working-class solidarity to the success of the struggle against the capitalistimperialist system, which it asks Negroes to wage both as Negroes and as workers. The A.B.B. is a genuine working-class organization, composed of Negro workers, and with Negro workers at the helm. The Garvey organization, in concentrating its attention upon a free Africa to the neglect of the race and labor rights of Negroes in other parts of the world, has done much to confuse the Negro masses and distract the American Negro workers from their urgent problems in this country. There are signs, however, of a reversal of this policy, due, no doubt, to the stream of criticism which has been leveled at Garvey as a result of said policy. The A.B.B., in particular, has attacked Garvey on this and other points, in order to show to the masses of the Negro workers exactly what the Garvey movement stands for. The African Blood Brotherhood is practically supported by the rank and file of both organizations. In fact, several thousand members have left the U.N.I.A., and that organization now faces a severe international crisis as a result of the brilliant tactical victories which the A.B.B. leaders have won over Garvey and his staff. The Toiler, December 10, 1921. PROGRAM OF THE AFRICAN BLOOD BROTHERHOOD The African Blood Brotherhood was organized as a "revolutionary secret order" in 1919 by Cyril v. Briggs. Born in Nevis, British West Indies, in 1888, he came to the United States in 1905. In 1912 he joined the staff of the Amsterdam News, a Harlem Negro weekly, later to become its principal editorial writer. He was a contributor to The Messenger, the Socialist magazine edited by Chandler Owens and A. Philip Randolph, who was later to organize the Pullman porters. When the Socialist Party split in 1919, Randolph and Owen adhered to that party, while Briggs

16

tended to align himself with the Left as editor of The Crusader, a monthly magazine which had been ~­ established the year before and became the organ of the A.B.B. The magazine supported three Black socialist candidates in the New York elections of 1918, and in October 1919 it was still urging its readers to join the Socialist Party as a way of "forcing belated justice and consideration from the Republicans." But the A.B.B. soon moved into the Communist orbit. Briggs, Richard B. Moore, Otto E. Huiswood, Grace P. Campbell, Edward Doty, Otto Hall, N.V. Phillips and Harry Haywood, as well as other leaders and activists of the society, were among the earliest Negroes to join the Communist Party and to become prominent within it. In fact, the A.B.B. may be considered among the principle sources of the Communist movement, not so much because of the number of Black recruits it provided--which were relatively few--but because of the vital contribution of its leading members in making white Communists sensitive to the meaning and dangers of racism, and to the pressing needs of the Negro. Its closeness to the Communists was well established by December 1921, when the A.B.B. had a fraternal delegation at the founding convention of the Workers Party of America. It gradually merged into the party, and by 1924-25 it practically ceased to exist. The few remaining posts were urged to join the American Negro Labor Congress when it was organized in 1925 (see below). According to an interview with Cyril Briggs (Carl Afford, Federal Writers Project, July 27, 1939, on film at Schomburg Library, New York), the A.B.B. at its height had a membership of 2,500 with 50 posts throughout the nation, including some in the South, and a few in South America and the West Indies. It had a strong post of miners in West Virginia, and also had considerable support among the building workers in Chicago. Edward Doty, commander of the Chicago post, was organizer of independent unions of Black workers in that city. Besides editing The Crusader, which at its peak claimed a circulation of 33,000, Briggs also ran the Crusader News Service, which he said reached as many as 200 Negro newspapers. In this interview, he summarized the A.B.B. program as follows: (1) Armed resistance against lynching; (2) self-determination for the Negro in the States where he constituted a majority; (3) right of franchise for Negroes in the South; (4) struggle for equal rights and against all forms of Jim Crow; (5) organization of the Negro in established trade unions; organization of Negro unions in industries where Negroes are barred from stablished trade unions; (6) against imperialism in Africa and West Indies; world-wide struggle for Free Africa. Though Briggs mentions self-determination in the above interview, given in the 1930's when that concept was part of the Communist position, it is not mentioned in the full programmatic statement given below nor in the scanty A.B.B. literature available today. However, Briggs himself, in early writings, suggested such an idea. In September 1917 he urged the setting up of an autonomous Black state in the West in an Amsterdam News editorial, and he took the occasion of President 17

Wilson's 14-point statement of January 1918, with its call for self-determination of nations, to urge also a "separate political existence" for American Negroes. He continued to press this idea as editor of The crusader, with emphasis shifting between the South, Africa, and the Caribbean. Because of his opposition during the first World War to Jim Crow in the Army, and his sharp criticism of Dr. Du Bois' appeal to Blacks to "Close Ranks" in support of the war, Briggs was forced to withdraw from the Amsterdam News. The A.B.B. received national attention when attempts were made to blame it for the Tulsa race riot. It had a post in that city, mostly of ex-servicemen, some of whom were killed. In a press interview, Briggs denied that the Brotherhood had "fomented the race riot," but declared: "This organization has no other answer to make save to admit that the African Blood Brotherhood is interested in having Negroes organized in self-defense against wanton attack. Haven't the Negroes the right to defend their lives and property when they are menaced or is this an exclusive prerogative of the white race?" (New York Times, June 5, 1921). The following is one of the rare program documents available. It sees Soviet Russia as the great anti-imperialist force, and the Communist International as the world revolutionary force. Some of its proposals are prophetic; for example, the call for a Pan-African Army, which was to be echoed after World War II by Kwame Nkrumah, as president of newly-independent Ghana; or its demand for united action of all Negro organizations in the United States on a federative basis, which was attempted two years later in the Sanhedrin (see below). Its concept of alliances with the appropriate white sectors, and its view of the non-class conscious white workers as a "potential ally" to be won over, are notable points. The idea of American Negroes as leaders of a world movement for Negro liberation, is a theme often to be found in Communist and Left literature. The last vitriolic paragraph is directed at the Garvey "Back to Africa" movement. According to the introductory note of the editor of the Communist Review, the Program was the work primarily of Cyril V. Briggs, "the Brotherhood's ideological leader." The Communist Review was the official monthly journal of the Communist Party of Great Britain. A race without a programme is like a ship at sea without a rudder. It is absolutely at the mercy of the elements. It is buffeted hither and thither and in a storm is bound to flounder. It is in such a plight as this that the Negro race has drifted for the past fifty years and more. Rarely ever did it know exactly what it was seeking and never once did it formulate any intelligent and workable plan of· getting what it was seeking, even in the rare instances when it did know what it wanted. It is to meet this unfortunate condition and to supply a rudder for the Negro ship of State--a definite directive force--that the following programme adopted by the African Blood Brotherhood is herewith offered for the consideration of other Negro organisations and of the race in general. There is nothing illusory or impractical about this programme. Every point is based upon the historic experience of 18

some section or other of the great human family. Those who formulated the programme recognised (1) the economic nature of the struggle (not wholly economic, but nearly so); (2) that it is essential to know from whom our oppression comes: that is, who are our enemies; and to make common cause with all forces and movements that are working against our enemies; (3) that it is not necessary for Negroes to be able to endorse the programme of these other movements before they can make common cause with them against the common enemy; that the important thing about Soviet Russia, for example, is not the merits or demerits of the Soviet form of Government, but the outstanding fact that Soviet Russia is opposing the imperialist robbers who have partitioned our motherland and subjugated our kindred, and that Soviet Russia is feared by those imperialist nations and by all the capitalist plunder-bunds of the earth, from whose covetousness and murderous inhumanity we at present suffer in many lands. AFRICA Our Motherland, Africa, is divided by the Big Capitalist Powers into so-called "colonies." The colonies in turn are parcelled out to white planters and capitalists, some of them colonists, others absentee landlords. To this end the free life of the African peoples have been broken up and the natives deprived of their lands in order to force them to work, at starvation wages, on the lands of these white capitalists. These planter-capitalists have settled down in our country to exploit the riches of the land as well as the labour of our people. But our people were not tamely submissive and had to be subjugated. They refused to be exploited and rebelled and fought the invader in an unequal struggle. The invaders, armed with weapons of modern technique, and precision, as against the primitive and old weapons of our forefathers, were finally able to subdue our people. But not until many a "British square" had been broken and many a sudden disaster suffered by the forces of all of the invading capitalist Powers. HOW WE WERE ENSLAVED. And the fight is not yet over. A people living in oppression may be compared to a volcano. At any moment it may rise like a giant and run its enemies into the sea. To prevent this eventuality the capitalist planters, with the aid of their home governments, have organized "Colonial Armies," formed and equipped according to methods of modern technique. And to conquer our militant spirit and win us to slavish acceptance of their dominance they brought in the white man's religion, Christianity, and with it whisky. By the white man's religion our people's militant spirit was drugged; with his whisky they were debauched. The white man's treachery, the white man's religion and whisky had as great a part in bringing about our enslavement as the white man's guns. But in order to more intensively exploit our rich motherland and the cheap labour power of an enslaved people, it was necessary to bring into our land certain machine industries and certain material improvements, like railroads, etc., and to-day we may witness, especially in the coast cities of Africa, the steady growth of modern enterprise. With the introduction of industrial equipment the African has learned to wield the white man's machines, his guns, his methods, and with the possession of this knowledge has grown a new hope and determination to achieve his freedom and become the master of his own motherland.

19

HOPE NEVER MORE JUSTIFIED.

C

Indeed, the hope of the Negro people to free themselves from the imperialist enslavers was never more justified than at present. The home governments of the planter-capitalists are weakening day by day, and are trembling under the menace of the Proletarian Revolution. The oppressed colonies and small nations are in constant rebellion, as witness the Irish, Turks, Persians, Indians, Arabs, Egyptians, etc. While the interior of Africa is as yet barely touched by predatory Capitalism, the tribes fully realize the danger they would be subjected to should the enslavers penetrate more into the interior. Under the leadership of the more able and developed Negroes in the coast district, the tremendous power of the Negro race in Africa could be organised. Towards this end we propose that every effort shall be bent to organise the Negroes in the coast districts, and bring all Negro organisations in each of the African countries into a world-wide Negro Federation. The various sections of the Federation to have their own Executive Committees, etc., and to get in touch with the tribes in the interior, with a view of common action. The Supreme Executive Committee to get in touch with all other peoples on the African continent, the Arabs, Egyptians, etc., as well as the revolutionists of Europe and America, for the' purpose of effecting co-ordination of action. Labour organisations should be formed in the industrial sections in order to protect and improve the conditions of the Negro workers. No opportunity should be lost for propagandising the native soldiers in the "colonial armies" and for organising secretly a great Pan-African army in the same way as the Sinn Fein built up the Irish Army under the very nose of England. Modern arms must be smuggled into Africa. Men sent into Africa in the guise of missionaries, etc., to establish relations with the Senussi,l the various tribes of the interior, and to study the topography of the country. The Senussi already have an "army in existence," a fact that is keeping European capitalist statesmen awake o'nights. Every effort and every dollar should be spent to effect the organisation of a Pan-American army, whose very existence would drive respect and terror into the hearts of the white capitalistplanters, and protect our people against their abuses. Remember: MIGHT MAKES RIGHT--ALWAYS DID AND ALWAYS WILL. AMERICA Whatever interests the capitalist displayed in the Negro was always motivated by considerations of cheap labour power. It was early recognized that the Negro people were the most endurant in the world, and when the New World was discovered the rich exploiters organised expeditions to enslave our people and forcibly carry them into New World lands, there to build empires and create wealth where otherwise none would have been possible. This is the history of most of the Negro populations in foreign lands. THE CAUSE OF THE CIVIL WAR. In the United States, as is well known, the Negroes but a few decades ago were exploited according to the most crude and

lMembers of a belligerent North African Moslem group. 20

primitive system of exploitation; chattel slavery. This chattel slavery prevailed in the South, while in the North the modern capitalist method of exploitation (wage slavery) prevailed. The two systems could not exist side by side and therefore the so-called war of liberation, in which Northern Capitalists and their retinue, in a smoke of idealist camouflage, went to war against feudal capitalists in the South in order to decide supremacy between the two systems in the Americas. Northern Capitalists won and chattel slavery in the South was abolished with lurid speeches and glamour about Liberty, Democracy, etc. But the Negroes were not to have even the comparative liberty which the great Capitalist Czars tolerate under the wage-slavery system. They were scrupulously disarmed, while their former owners with their henchmen remained armed. To repress all Negro aspirations for real freedom and suppress all desires to better their condition, secret murder societies like the Ku Klux Klan were organised by the former owner class who tortured and murdered secretly in cold blood thousands of defenceless Negroes and many whites wherever the humanitarian instincts prompted them to champion the Negroes' cause. And the victorious Capitalist "Liberators" of the North not only did not move a finger to enforce justice but suppressed the facts of this terrible persecution of the Negro and his few white friends. Through years of terror exercised by these white cracker societies the Negro again became totally subjugated, and Peonage is the lot of many to-day in the Southern States, while many are lynched or massacred each year. Lately the New Negro has come upon the scene and in response to his rebellious spirit and that of the exploited in general, we see the resurrection of the Ku Klux Klan. NEGRO MIGRATION. As a result of continued oppression and maltreatment in the South, many thousands of Negroes have managed to escape to the North, and to-day every big Northern city has a large Negro population. The comparative freedom of the North is propitious for great organisations and cultural activities, and it is here that the vanguard and general staff of the Negro race must be developed. A GREAT NEGRO FEDERATION. In order to build a strong and effective Movement on the platform of Liberation for the Negro People and protection of their rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," etc., all Negro organisations should get together on a Federation basis, thus creating a united centralised movement. Such a movement could be carried on openly in the North, but would have to be built up secretly in the South in order to protect those members living in the South and to safeguard the organisation from premature attack. Within this Federation a secret protective organisation should be developed--the real Power--to the membership of which should be admitted only the best and most courageous of the race. The Protective organisation would have to function under strict military discipline, ready to act at a moment's notice whenever defence and protection are necessary. LABOUR AND ECONOMIC ORGANISATIONS. Millions of Negroes have come North and are employed as labourers and mechanics, etc., in the various industries and capitalist enterprises of the North. Being unorganised, they are compelled to work at the meanest jobs and under the worst 21

~

conditions. When depression in industry appears they are the first to suffer. The white workers, through their labour organisations, have not only compelled the capitalists to give them more money and a shorter workday, but also partial employment during slack times. And when better times arrive, the white workers, through their organisation, are ready to take full advantage of the situation. Negro worker~, wherever organised in Labour Unions, have improved their living conditions, won shorter hours, more money and steadier employment, as witness the sleeping car conditions, the Negro Longshoremen in Philadelphia, etc. And since the strength of a people depends upon the degree of well-living by that people, we must by all means strive to substantially improve the standard of living, etc. All worth-while Negro organisations and all New Negroes must therefore interest themselves in the organising of Negro workers into Labour Unions for the betterment of their economic condition and to act in close co-operation with the classconscious white workers for the benefit of both. NEGRO FARMER ORGANISATION. The same principle applies to the small Negro farmers and farm labourers. They must get together to resist exploitation as well as to protect themselves against peonage and other injustices. Wherever co-operation with white farmers is possible it is of course desirable. CO-OPERATIVE ORGANISATIONS. There has developed among our people the naive belief that permanent employment, better conditions, and our salvation as a race can be accomplished through the medium of Negro factories, steamship lines, and similar enterprises. We wish to warn against putting too great dependence along this line, as sudden financial collapse of such enterprises may break the whole morale of the Liberation Movement. Until the Negro controls the rich natural resources of some country of his own he cannot hope to compete in industry with the great financial magnates of the capitalist nations on a scale large enough to supply jobs for any number of Negro workers, or substantial dividends for Negro investors. Let those who have invested in such propositions tell you whether they have obtained either jobs or dividends by such investment. The only effective way to secure better conditions and steady employment in America is to organise the Negro's Labour Power as indicated before into labour organisations. Every big organisation develops certain property in the shape of buildings, vacation farms, etc. In prosperous times they may even develop co-operative enterprises such as stores, etc., but such enterprises must be cooperative property of all members of the organisation, and administered by members elected for the purpose. Under no circumstances should such property be operated under corporation titles written over to a few individuals to be disposed of at their pleasure. But experience has proven that such enterprises can only exist when the oppressed class is well organised. Without adequate organisation an industrial crisis like the present would sweep them off their feet. But where backed by adequate organisation the co-operative idea can be worked to advantage. Unlike the corporation, which lifts a few men on the shoulders and life-savings of the many, the cooperative is of equal benefit to all.

22

ALLIANCES There can be only one sort of alliance with other peoples and that is an alliance to fight our enemies, in which case our allies must have the same purpose as we have. Our allies may be actual or potential, just as our enemies may be actual or potential. The small oppressed nations who are struggling against the capitalist exploiters and oppressors must be considered as actual allies. The class-conscious white workers who have spoken out in favour of African liberation and have a willingness to back with action their expressed sentiments, must also be considered as actual allies and their friendship further cultivated. The non-class conscious white workers who have not yet realised that all workers regardless of race or colour have a common interest, must be considered as only potential allies at present and everything possible done to awaken their classconsciousness toward the end of obtaining their co-operation in our struggle. The revolutionary element which is undermining the imperialist powers that oppress us must be given every encouragement by Negroes who really seek liberation. This element is led and represented by the Third International which has its sections in all countries. We should immediately establish contact with the Third International and its millions of followers in all countries of the world. To pledge loyalty to the flags of our murderers and oppressors, to speak about alliances with the servants and representatives of our enemies, to prate about first hearing our proven enemies before endorsing our proven friends is nothing less than cowardice and the blackest treason to the Negro race and our sacred cause of liberation. It is the Negroes resident in America--whether native or foreign born--who are destined to assume the leadership of our people in a powerful world movement for Negro liberation. The American Negro by virtue of being a part of the population of a great empire, has acquired certain knowledge in the waging of modern warfare, the operation of industries, etc. This country is the base for easy contact with the whole world, and the United States is destined, until the Negro race is liberated, to become the centre of the Negro World Movement. It is in this country, especially, that the Negro must be strong. It is from here that most of the leaders and pioneers who will carry the message across the world will go forth. But our strength cannot be organised by vain indulgence in mock-heroics, empty phrases, unearned decorations and titles, and other tomfoolery. It can only be done by the use of proper tactics, by determination and sacrifice upon the part of our leaders and by intelligent preparatory organisation and education. To be kidded along with the idea that because a few hundreds of us assemble once in a while in a convention that therefore we are free to legislate for ourselves; to fall for the bunk that before having made any serious effort to free our country, before having crossed swords on the field of battle with the oppressors, we can have a government of our own, with presidents, potentates, royalties and other queer mixtures; to speak about wasting our energies and money in propositions like Bureaus of Passports and Identification, diplomatic representatives, etc., is to indulge in pure moonshine, and supply free amusement for our enemies. Surely, intelligent, grown-up individuals will not stand for such childish nonsense if at all they are serious about fighting for Negro liberation! We must come down to earth, to actual practical facts and realities, and build our strength upon solid foundations--and not upon titled and decorated tomfoolery. The Communist Review, London, II, 1922, 448-54.

23

CIVILIZING AMERICA The Worker, pubished in New York, was the organ of the Workers Party of America. According to its masthead, the paper was formerly The Toiler and was published weekly by the Toiler Publishing Association. The Dyer Anti-Lynchinef Bill was passed in the House and defeated in the Senate. The passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill by. the lower house of Congress, with only 119 chivalrous sourtherners voting "no,'' gives hope that in another decade we may be able to look the Abyssinians and the herd-hunters of Borneo in the face. The Liberal magazines are jubilant over the remarkable victory for tolerance. We are glad for their sakes. They have had little to rejoice over since 1916 when they followed the standard of liberalism held high--out of reach, some say--by the late Woodrow Wilson. Seriously, however, we can think of no greater indictment of the American government and the American people than that a magazine like The Nation should feel it necessary to comment as follows on the action of the House of Representatives. "The passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill in the House of Representatives by the large majority of 230 to 119 is an achievement. Every American should derive distinct satisfaction from this, the most important legal step ever taken toward ending our pecularily national disgrace. For this accomplishment the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which for years has labored to arouse the American conscience about lynchings and to crystallize public sentiment into effective legislation, deserves full credit. But the fight is not yet won; the bill still has to pass the Senate. Those who feel the sting when Europeans ask, 'Do you really mean that crowds gather to see men burned alive in America?' should give the National Association unstinted support until the bill not only passes the Senate and becomes law, but is enforced." This is the year of our Lord, 1922. The last witch was burned several years ago, even in backward nations. In the United States organs of liberal opinion give voice to a feeling of encouragement because one of our legislative bodies has expressed the opinion that it is not quite the thing in this day and age to beat, torture, burn and mutilate members of the colored race at the whim of degenerates who find supreme enjoyment in witnessing these spectacles of sadistic debauchery. We are glad the Dyer bill passed the house, but our glee is tempered by the thought of those 119 "noes." Editorial, The Worker, February 18, 1922. THE NEGRO QUESTION AT THE IVTH WORLD CONGRESS The IVth Congress of the Communist International was held in Moscow, November 7 to December 3, 1922. Two American Negroes participated--Otto E. Huiswood (under the name of Billings) as a member of the official U.S. delegation, and Claude McKay as a special fraternal delegate. This was the first time American Negroes had attended a CI Congress. Also for the first time, a Negro Commission was established in the CI to deal with the position of Blacks in the United States and other countries and dependencies; Huiswood was elected as its chairman. And again for the first time in a CI Congress, a special session was devoted to "The Negro Question." 24

Huiswood, a native of Dutch Guyana, became a union printer in New York City, and was the national organizer of the African Blood Brotherhood. He was among the earliest of his associates to join the Communists and was to become a prominent Communist leader--the first Black elected to the Central Committee and the first Black district organizer (Buffalo), and later a candidate member of the Executive Committee of the CI. According to Harry Haywood, Huiswood was the first American Black to meet Lenin. (Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist, Chicago, 1978, p. 137). In the speech, his characterization of three principal Negro organizations is of interest--the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People as a mass organization under bourgeois leadership; the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Garvey) as ''ultra-nationalist," yet composed of "rebel rank and file elements," race conscious, and an influence against imperialism; and the African Blood Brotherhood standing on a program for the abolition of capitalism. His emphasis upon the importance of the South is notable. Billings (America): In the Negro question we have before us another phase of the race and colonial question to which no attention has been paid heretofore. Although the Negro problem as such is fundamentally an economic problem, it is aggravated and intensified by the friction which exists between the white and Black races. It is a matter of common knowledge that prejudice does play an important part. Whilst it is true that, for instance, in the United States of America the main basis of racial antagonism lies in the fact that there is competition of labour in America between Black and white, nevertheless, the Negro bears a badge of slavery on him which has its origin way back in the time of his slavery. There are about 150,000,000 Negroes throughout the world. Approximately 25,000,000 of them reside in the New World, and the rest reside in Africa. The Negroes in America and the West Indies are a source of cheap labour supply for the American capitalist, and we find the capitalist class has always used and will always continue to use them as an instrument in order to suppress the white working class in its every-day struggle. They will be the source from which the "white guard'' elements will be recruited in the event of a revolutionary uprising anywhere and everywhere. The capitalist class as a class has recognized the valuable aid that the Negro masses will be to them. Therefore, for years they have made it their business to cultivate a bourgeois ideology in the mind of the Negro populace. This, of course, was done in their own interests and not in those of the Negroes. They have carefully planned out and planted organisations amongst the Negroes to carry agitation in favour of the bourgeoisie as against the white workers. They have what is known as the Rockfeller Foundation and the Urban League. The first organisation supplies grants of money to Negro schools; the second is a notorious strike-breaking institution. Facing this condition, it was inevitable that the Negro population would have some sort of reaction against the oppression and the suppression to which they were subjected throughout the world. Their first reaction was, of course, in the forming of religious institutions, the only forms permitted at certain times for their own enjoyment, but later we find that there has been a continuous development of organisations on the 25

part of the Negroes, which, although purely Negro, are to a certain extent directly or indirectly opposed to capitalism. The three most important Negro ogranisations operating to-day are, firstly, what is known as the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, an organisation which is composed of a large proletarian element led by bo~rgeois intellectuals. It bases its action upon the principle of seeking redress from the capitalist class by means of petitions and what practically amounts to begging that something may be done for them. Then we come to the other more interesting form of organisation which is known as the Garvey Association, an organisation that is ultranationalist, yet composed of a rebel rank and file element. It is an organisation which, in spite of the fact that it has drafted on its programme various cheap stock schemes, is influencing the minds of the Negroes against imperialism. This organisation came into existence after the world war. Of course it did not take any definite radical form, it was saved in time by its own leader; but, notwithstanding this, the race consciousness has been planted and used to a very large extent far into the interior of Africa, where hardly anyone could expect that an organisation could be planted which had its origin in America. The third organisation is the African Blood Brotherhood, a radical Negro organisation which bases its programme upon the abolition of capitalism. It was the one organisation which, during the time of a race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, put up a splendid and courageous fight, and the one to which the capitalist class in America is going to turn its attention next. We have also in Africa certain small organisations which get their direct inspiration from America, the headquarters and centre of political thought among Negroes; these organisations are stretching out and developing as far as the Sudan. These can be utilised by Communists if the means of propaganda are carefully, deliberately and intensively used to link up these movements. We see in them a sort of organisation which will react against imperialism throughout the world. There are in the United States about 450 Negro newspapers and magazines, and, while they are mostly strictly racial, they have a great influence upon the Negro masses everywhere. There is, for instance, the "Chicago Defender," which issues 250,000 copies weekly which are spread out all over the world, wherever there are large groups of Negroes. Then there is the "Crisis," a monthly magazine which has a circulation of over 600,000. These papers, and especially the "Chicago Defender," and others with a smaller circulation, have constantly used radical propaganda material that we sent out. The Negroes feel the impending crisis which will break out in the south between Black and white. It was in the south that the seed was sown and the results are bound to come in some way. It will probably take the form of race rioting on a very large scale. In the United States, of the approximate number of Negroes (12 millions), two millions live in the northern industrialised part of the country, and the other nine or ten millions in the south, and I suppose that all of you have a picture in your mind of what the south is like. When you enter there it is like Dante's Inferno. Eighty per cent. of the Negroes live on the land. They are discriminated against and disfranchised, and it is there that the class struggle is waged in its most brutal form. The relation between Blacks and whites is one of constant conflict and of fighting to the death. The lynching of a Negro is something to be enjoyed in the south as a picture show is enjoyed elsewhere. The white population in the south is so saturated with this idea of white domination over the Negro that 26

this question must engage our attention. At the present time when there are big strikes in the north United States, the capitalist class and its hirelings hurry to the south in order to draw the southern Negroes into the northern districts as strike-breakers. They promise them higher wages and better conditions, and so induce them to enter those areas in which strikes are in progress. That is a constant danger to the white workers when on strike. Of course, the entire blame for this must not be placed upon the Negroes. The labour unions in America, and I am speaking of the bona fide trade unions, have for the last few years insisted that, although a Negro is a skilled worker, he cannot by virtue of the fact that he is a Negro enter the trade union. It is only recently that the American Federation of Labour has made a weak attempt to try to get Negroes into the regular trade unions. But, even to-day, such an organisation as the Machinists' Union still has, if I am not mistaken, the assertion in its programme that the qualification of membership is that every white brother shall introduce for membership other white men, or something to that effect. This means that the Negroes are permanently excluded from the unions simply on account of the fact that they are Black, and the capitalist class and the reactionary Negro press use this to the fullest extent in order to prejudice the minds of these Black workers against the labour unions. When you speak to a Negro about his joining a trade union, or about the necessity of his becoming radical, the first thing he throws at you is the assertion: "Don't preach to me. Preach to the whites. They need it and I do not. I am always ready to fight alongside of them so long as they agree to take me into the trade unions, but as long as they do not I will scab, and, by God, I have a right to scab. I want to protect my own life." That is one of their arguments, and it cannot be ignored. While theoretically we may use all the beautiful phrases that we know, nevertheless these are hard concrete facts in the everyday struggle. The Negro Commission therefore prepared certain definite proposals to which I hope you will agree. Fourth Congress of the Communist International. Abridged Report of Meetings held at Petrograd & Moscow, Nov. 7-Dec. 3, 1922. Communist Party of Great Britain, London, pp. 257-260. from PLATFORM OF THE WORKERS PARTY, CONGRESSIONAL ELECTION OF 1922 The workers must demand: 8. Abolition of secret anti-labor organizations. The capitalists maintain such organizations as the Ku Klux Klan, and other extra-legal though open bodies, such as the Vigilantes, Security League, Sentinels of the Republic, to destroy militant and radical labor organizations. These organizations terrorize and use violence against labor bodies for the purpose of breaking them up. 9. Protection of the lives and civil rights of the Negroes. Lynching has become an established American institution. The American Negro is disfranchised in many States. This situation is a crying disgrace to the working class. The Worker, October 28, 1922.

27

from PROGRAM, SECOND CONVENTION OF WORKERS PARTY OF AMERICA {DECEMBER 1922) The Negro workers of this country are exploited and oppressed more ruthlessley than any othe~ group. The history of the Southern Negro is the history of brutal terrorism, of persecution and murder. During the war tens of thousands of Southern Negroes were brought to the industrial centers of the North to supply the needs of the employers for cheap labor. In the Northern industrial cities the Negro has found the same bitter discrimination as in the South. The attacks upon the Negroes of East St. Louis, Illinois, the riot in Chicago, are examples of this additional burden of oppression which is the lot of the Negro worker. Although the influx of Negro workers in the Northern industrial centers has laid the foundation for a mass movement of Negroes who are industrial workers, the anti-Negro policy of organized labor has made it impossible to organize these industrial workers. The Negro has despaired of aid from organized labor and has been driven either into the camp of the enemies of labor or has been compelled to develop purely racial aims. The Workers Party will help them in their fight for economic, political and educational equality. It will seek to end the policy of discrimination followed by the labor unions. It will endeavor to destroy altogether the barriers of race prejudice that have been used to keep apart the Black and white workers and to weld them into a solid mass for the struggle against the Capitalists who exploit them. The Worker, December 2, 1922. THESES ON THE NEGRO QUESTION OF IVth WORLD CONGRESS The text of the Theses was given in full in the report of the Congress by Rose Pastor Stokes in The Worker {see below}. Its central import was to place the Negro question in the United States in the framework of the world liberation movement against imperialism, and the American Negro in the vanguard of the African struggle. The proposal to hold a general Negro world conference was not realized as such; instead, there took place in Brussels in 1927 the World Assembly of Colonial and Dependent Peoples which founded the Anti-Imperialist League {see later}. 1. During and after the war there developed among the colonial and semi-colonial peoples a movement of revolt, which is still making successful progress against the power of world capital. The penetration and intensive colonization of regions inhabited by Black races is becoming the last great problem on the solution of which the further development of capitalism itself depends. French capitalism clearly recognizes that the power of French post-war imperialism will be able to maintain itself only through the creation of a French-African Empire, linked up by a Trans-Sahara Railway. America's financial magnates {who are exploiting 12,000,000 Negroes at home} are now entering on a peaceful penetration of Africa. How Britain for her part dreads the menace to her position in Africa is shown by the extreme measures taken to crush the Rand Strike. Just as in the Pacific the danger of another world war has become acute owing to the competition of the imperialist powers there, so Africa looms ominously as the object of their rival ambitions. 28

Moreover, the war, the Russian Revolution and the great movements of revolt against Imperialism on the part of the Asiatic and Mussulman nationalities, have roused the consciousness of millions of the Negro race whom capitalism has oppressed and degraded beyond all others for hundreds of years not only in Africa but, perhaps even more, in America. 2. The history of the Negro in America fits him for an important role in the liberation struggle of the entire African race. Three hundred years ago the American Negro was torn from his native African soil, brought in slave ships under the most cruel and indescribable conditions, and sold into slavery. For two hundred and fifty years he toiled a chattel slave under the lash of the American overseer. His labor cleared the forest, built the roads, raised the cotton, laid the railroad tracks and supported the Southern aristocracy. His reward was poverty, illiteracy, degradation and misery. The Negro was no docile slave. He rebelled. His history is rich in rebellion, insurrection, underground methods of securing liberty, but his struggles were barbarously crushed. He was tortured into submission and the bourgeois press and religion justified his slavery. When chattel slavery became an obstacle to the full and free development of America on the basis of capitalism; when chattel slavery clashed with wage slavery, chattel slavery had to go. The Civil War, which was not a war to free the Negro, but a war to maintain the industrial supremacy of the North, left the Negro the choice of peonage in the South or wage slavery in the North. The sinews, blood and tears of the "freed" Negroes helped build American capitalism, and when, having become a world power, America was inevitably dragged into the war, the American Negro was declared the equal of the white man to kill and be killed for "democracy." Four hundred thousand colored workers were drafted into the American army and segregated into "Jim Crow" regiments. Fresh from the terrible sacrifices of war the returned Negro soldier was met with race persecutions, lynchings, murders, disfranchisement, discrimination and segregation. He fought back, but for asserting his manhood he paid dearly. Persecution of the Negro became more widespread and intense than before the war, until he had learned to "keep his place." The post-war industrialization of the Negro in the North and the spirit of revolt engendered by post-war persecutions and brutalities (a spirit of revolt which flames into action when a Tulsa or other inhuman outrage cries aloud for protest) places the American Negro, especially of the North, in the vanguard of the African struggle against oppression. 3. It is with intense pride that the Communist International sees the exploited Negro workers resist the attacks of the exploiters, for the enemy of his race and the enemy of the white workers is one and the same--Capitalism and Imperialism. The international struggle of the Negro race is a struggle against Capitalism and Imperialism. It is on the basis of this struggle that the world Negro movement must be organized: in America, as the center of Negro culture and the crystalization of Negro protest; in Africa, the resevoir of human labor for the further development of Capitalism; in Central America (Costa Rica, Guatemala, Colombia, Nicaragua, and other "Independent" Republics), where American Imperialism dominates; in Puerto Rico, Haiti, Santa Domingo and other islands washed by the waters of the Caribbean, where the brutal treatment of our Black fellow-men by the American occupation has aroused the protests of the conscious Negro and 29

lj

revolutionary white workers everywhere; in South Africa and the Congo, where the growing industrialization of the Negro population has resulted in various forms of uprisings; in East Africa, where the recent penetration of world capital is stirring the native populations into an active opposition to imperialism, in all these centers the Negro movement must be organized. ' 4. It is the task of the Communist International to point out to the Negro people that they are not the only people suffering from the oppression of Capitalism and Imperialism, that the workers and peasants of Europe and Asia and of the Americas are also the victims of Imperialism; that the struggle against Imperialism is not the struggle of any one people, but of all the peoples of the world; that in China and India, in Persia and Turkey, in Egypt and Morocco the oppressed colored colonial peoples are rising against the same evils that the Negroes are rising against--racial suppression and discrimination, and intensified industrial exploitation; that these peoples are striving for the same ends that the Negroes are striving for--political, industrial and social liberation and equality. The Communist International, which represents the revolutionary workers and peasants of the whole world in the struggle to break the power of Imperialism; the Communist International, which is not simply the organization of the enslaved white workers of Europe and America, but equally the organization of the oppressed colored peoples of the world, feels its duty to encourage and support the international organizations of the Negro people in their struggle against the common enemy. 5. The Negro problem has become a vital question of the world revolution; and the Third International, which has already recognized what valuable aid can be rendered to the Proletarian Revolution by colored Asiatic peoples in semi-capitalist countries, likewise regards the cooperation of our Black fellow men as essential to the Proletarian Revolution and the destruction of capitalist power: The Fourth Congress accordingly declares it to be a special duty of Communists to apply the "Theses on the Colonial Question'' to the Negro problem. 6. (1) The Fourth Congress recognizes the necessity of supporting every form of Negro movement which tends to undermine or weaken Capitalism or Imperialism or to impede its further penetration. (2) The Communist International will fight for race equality of the Negro with the white people as well as for equal wages and political and social rights. (3) The Communist International will use every instrument within its control to compel the trade unions to admit Negro workers to membership or, where the nominal right to join exists, to agitate for a special campaign to draw them into the unions. Failing in this, it will organize the Negroes into unions of their own and especially apply the United Front tactic to compel admission to the unions of the white man. (4) The Communist International will take immediate steps to hold a general Negro Conference or Congress in Moscow. The Worker, March 10, 1923. THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL AND THE NEGRO By Rose Pastor Stokes Rose Pastor, a worker in a cigar factory, in 1905 married J.G. Phelps Stokes, a millionaire philanthropist and social worker. Both became Socialists but they resigned from the party when its emergency St. Louis convention passed an anti-war resolution a day 30

after the United States entered the world war. Rose Pastor Stokes soon left her husband and became an active opponent of the war, for which she was tried and sentenced to ten years in prison; the sentence was reversed on appeal. She became a Communist speaker and writer. Karl Radek, who had participated in the socialist movements of Poland and Germany and joined the Bolsheviks in 1917, was a member of the Soviet delegation to the Congress. One of the most significant decisions in the Fourth Congress of the Communist International was the establishment of a Negro Commission and the adoption of the Commission's Theses on the Negro Question which concludes with the declaration that "the Fourth Congress recognizes the necessity of supporting every form of Negro movement which tends to undermine or weaken capitalism and imperialism or to impede its further penetration," pledges the Communist International to fight "for the equality of the Negro with the white people as well as for equal wages and political and social rights," ''to exert every effort to admit Negroes into Trade Unions" and to "take immediate steps to hold a general Negro Conference or Congress in Moscow." Two American Negroes were guests of the Congress. One, a poet, the other a speaker and organizer, both young and energetic, devoted to the cause of Negro liberation and responsive to the ideals of the revolutionary proletariat. They charmed the delegates with their fine personalities. Both addressed the Congress and won prolonged applause, while Comrade Radek threw his arms about one of them, as he came from the platform, delighted to find such a clear and able comrade representing the oppressed Negro workers. Among the countries represented on the Negro Commission were America (two; with an additional member later), Belgium, France, England, Java, British South Africa, Japan, Holland, Russia (one each). The two Negro Comrades were in the Commission; one [McKay) as guest of the Commission invited to address its members and attend its sittings, the other [Huiswood) as member who was elected in the first meeting permanent Chairman of the Commission. The original draft of the Theses (presented by the Chairman to the Congress) was returned upon a motion by Comrade Radek, for "clarification and amplification," his criticism being that the document was ''too Marxian in its phraseology." This pleased the American members of the Commission and the member from British South Africa, who were no sticklers for the "Marxian phrase" and who wanted particularly to make it a simple statement that any man reading a newspaper could read and understand. A small subcommittee elected by the Negro Commission produced the Theses in its final form, the full text of which, purported to be taken from the Minutes, follows: [For Text, see previous item. The reporter who presented the Theses to the Congress Session continued as follows:) "Comrades, I want to add a word on the Negro Question. On the clause dealing with the Negro and the trade unions: In the American Federation of Labor Negroes are nominally admitted to membership in most unions, but there is absolutely no effort made save in extremely few cases to draw the Negro into the unions. "In the United States we can bring pressure to bear upon the American Federation of Labor to admit the Negro workers. There we must enter into a definite campaign to accomplish the thing. Campaigns should be carried on in every country concerned, clearly, definitely, painfully, and if we fail, it will be our duty to organize the Negroes into separate unions, 31

bring together the white and colored workers who are willing to form a united front and carry on anew a campaign to compel inclusion. "In the industrial field, where the Black and white workers toil side by side and suffer together through the industrial oppression of capitalism-- chiefly we ca~ hope to create a unity, that understanding, that binding tie, that will bring them through common organization into the struggle. "The Congress is taking a wonderful first step in moving to hold a general Negro Conference or Congress in Moscow. But our chief work (as Sections) lies in getting the industrialized Negroes into the unions where they can fight together with the white workers for their equal emancipation. .We must not allow this Theses to become a dead letter, but we must carry it into life, and make the Negro worker a vital part of the Communist International." The Resolution was unanimously adopted. Credit is due America for introducing the question of a Negro Commission. I understand there was no opposition to the motion in the Presidium where it was offered, and the creation of the Commission was voted unanimously and immediately named. The Negro Question is not one that was suddenly precipitated at the Fourth Congress. Jack Reed had reported on the American Negro at the Second Congress. Last year a comprehensive report had been received by the C.I. Executive. The question was being considered. Nor is the idea of calling a general Negro Conference or Congress in Moscow some time in the near future, an inspiration of the Commission. In Asia, in Turkey, in Egypt it is the Communist International that inspires the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed colored peoples, and it is the logic of the struggle that fast dictated the tactic. Beside presenting the above Theses to the Congress for action, the Negro Commission made a report also for the Presidium, more private in its nature, which called for action by the C.I. Executive. This report was detailed and said to contain the following: (1) recommendations for the creation of a Negro Bureau in Moscow; (2) certain recommendations with respect to specific Negro Organization; (3) a draft of instructions (as coming from the C.I. to the Sections concerned), detailing the specific tasks of the Sections in their relations to the Negro Question. One indication of the significance the C.I. attaches to the Negro Question, lies in the fact that immediately upon the receipt of these recommendations, a member of the Presidium was selected to head the proposed Negro Bureau. The C.I. desires action in the matter. It is taking action. One of the living tasks of the American Comrades is to carry on in behalf not alone of the foreign-born workers who are oppressed and discriminated against, but also on behalf of that American worker whose black skin is a greater bar to Trade Union membership and the general fellowship of American Labor than the lack of an American birth certificate. White "whisperers" warn against the "rising tide of the darker races" that will overwhelm and dominate the white race. Communists have no ear for such Ku Klucks! Communists have nothing to fear from the liberation of oppressed peoples. Communists know no race or color differences, as they know no national boundary lines. Common oppression ultimately places all workers in one camp for the struggle against the oppressors. And the Proletarian Revolution will make them one in Communism as we are all biologically one. Long live the revolutionary workers and peasants of every color and every race! Long live their power in union! The Worker, March 10, 1923.

32

FROM COTTON FIELDS TO STEEL MILLS By

c.s.

Ware

The Labor Herald, from which this article is reprinted, began publication in 1922 as the official organ of the Trade Union Educational League. The League was founded in Chicago in 1920 by William z. Foster and other former syndicalist and militant labor leaders. Its central demands were: amalgamation of trade unions into industrial unions, formation of a Labor Party, and recognition of Soviet Russia. It opposed dual unionism, advocating work within the established unions. The TUEL had considerable influence in the Chicago Federation of Labor, a number of State AF of L bodies and in several important unions, as well as among rank-and-file workers generally. It was the center of opposition to the AFL bureaucracy led by Samuel Gompers. The TUEL declined from its high point in 1923, its influence in the AFL being curtailed by the expulsion policy in that organization against the Left and radicals, and it languished during the Coolidge "prosperity" years. The following article takes a straightforward stand against exclusion of Blacks from the trade unions, and urges unity of all labor, Black and white, native and foreign-born, but it still falls short of recognizing the specific problems and special demands of Black labor. During the recent war the Negro population of the Southern States was discovered as a source of cheap industrial labor. This sudden discovery was, of course, due to the cutting off of immigration. The immigration problems of the after-war period, described in THE LABOR HERALD for March, tended to continue the capitalist interest in the Negro. Through the villages and small towns of the South went the labor agents of the munition plants, railroads and steel mills. Hundreds of thousands of Negroes were recruited, given free rides to the Northern industrial centres, and dumped into the shacks and bunk-houses of the mill towns and railroad camps. The period of industrial depression following the war "prosperity" discouraged many of the Negro workers. They were "fired" wholesale, and some drifted back to the cotton fields. THE PRESENT MIGRATION OF NEGROES Today, the cry of "Labor shortage: High wages: Come North," is again being sounded through the Southern States. Negro laborers and share-tenants unable to make a living in the cotton belt, are answering the call. According to the NEW YORK EVENING POST of February 3rd, a dispatch from Memphis, Tenn, states: "They (the industrial sections) have been offering all kinds of inducements, and the use of propaganda has been effective in causing thousands to leave the South and go to the North and East." Babson, in a recent letter of advice to employers, discussing the wage situation, points out that the United States Steel Corporation is paying 36 cents an hour for common labor, and that in the Pittsburgh section the rate is even higher. Furthermore, he expects to see wages for this type of labor go as high as 45 cents before the increase is halted. To meet this situation, Babson proposes: 33

"We strongly advise Northern employers to avail themselves of the Southern labor market to help them out on common labor. With wages easy at $1.25 a day for such labor in the South, it will be easy to attract these people to the North. Do not try to move the man who wants to pack up, bag and baggage, and come Ndrth. Most of these become discontented and want to go back. Try for the 'prudent' colored man, who either is unmarried or is willing to come on ahead of his family and try it out. Such a man, if he likes the North, can get together money to enable him to send for his family. And the experience is that such men remain. The Negro as An Industrial Worker The Negro worker comes North, and what does he find? City life, with its cars, stores, movies, and crowds, is all so different from the life in the scattered villages of the South. This serves to blind him to the real facts of his life. Soon, however, he finds that his rent, food and clothing are costing more than he is making. He learns that he is receiving lower wages, and working longer hours, often in more hazardous tasks than his fellow white worker. He learns that he is the last to be hired and the first to be "fired." He learns to distrust the white workers, who will not take him into their unions, yet who call him scab because, as an unorganized worker, he must take whatever job is offered to him. For years, various unions, while uttering official platitudes about no discrimination on the basis of nationality, color, creed, or politics, really followed the policy of Negro exclusion. Other unions, however, organize all workers in the industry, white and colored. Notable examples are the United Mine Workers' and the Hod Carriers' Unions. In the interest of working-class solidarity, all militants should join in a campaign to open all unions to the Negro workers. Capitalists Win by Dividing Workers . . The race-friction and antagonism between the Negro workers and their white brothers is being nourished and developed by the employers. For this purpose they use the press, the church, and the school. To the white workers the Negroes are pictured as strike-breakers, attackers of women and children, a menace to unionism, to wages, and to working conditions. To the Negro the white workers are pointed out as unjustly privileged, and as the source of the consequent discrimination against themselves. Race riots, lynchings, and organized armies of Negro strike-breakers, are but the weapons of the capitalists in their campaign of dividing workers, and forcing upon them a fratricidal struggle. There are no such divisions within the ranks of the employing class. Their solidarity is national - it is international. Only recently the French capitalist class has been negotiating with the American Dougherty detective agency, for 5,000 Negro miners to break the strike of the German workers in the Ruhr. All workers, regardless of race, creed, ~r place of birth, and regardless of color, political belief, or language, are robbed and oppressed by the employers of labor. All workers, Negro and white, foreign-born and native skilled and unskilled, must organize industrially and ' politically, and thus present one front against the one enemy. Labor Herald, April 1923

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PROPOSED PLAN OF UNITY FOR THE NEGROES By Jeanette Pearl The conference of six Negro rights organizations in New York, March 23-24, 1923 was the first effort in the postwar years to form a united Black front, though the Universal Negro Improvement nssociation was excluded. The two principal middle-class organizations--the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Equal Rights League, based largely in New England--were represented by their leaders. James Weldon Johnson, poet and author, was executive secretary of the NAACP through the 1920's; William Monroe Trotter, editor of the Boston Guardian, was a co-founder with Dr. Du Bois and others of the Niagara movement in 1905, was a militant Negro rights leader, and had been one of the staunchest opponents of Booker T. Washington's accommodationist policies. Such a united front had been urged in the program of the African Blood Brotherhood, and it was represented by its outstanding leaders. Although Cyril Briggs does not appear as a signatory to the Call, he made an opening address and played a prominent part in the conference. Among the signers for the ABB was W.A. Domingo, a native of Jamaica who became a leader of the West Indian community in New York; he was a militant Black Socialist and editor of The Emancipator. Richard B. Moore, like Domingo, was a former Socialist and collaborator of The Messenger; he joined Briggs in founding The Crusader and then the ABB. The National Race Congress, still more an aspiration than a reality, was the personal creation of Kelly Miller, professor and dean at Howard University, who became the prime mover of the Congress movement. Friends of Negro Freedom was sponsored by The Messenger, with which George s. Schuyler was associated (he was later to become a crusading anticommunist). The call for a National All-Race Assembly, the text of which is given below, did result in the holding of such an assembly the following year. Jeanette Pearl had been a member of the Socialist Left Wing and became a Communist. Six Negro organizations responded to the call for a United Front of Negroes jointly by the National Equal Rights League and Kelly Miller, Dean of Howard University. They were represented by 16 delegates who attended the preliminary conference held in New York City. The Call adopted was as follows: "The world today has come to a critical period of its existence. Our race likewise has reached a critical situation. The promises of amelioration and of full citizenship so easily made during the critical period of the Great World War have failed of fulfillment. In this time of readjustment there is growing a very menacing spirit of animosity against the race and a determination to thrust the Negro down into the most servile and degrading status and to maintain him there forever. "Now, while world readjustment is in progress and when every other oppressed group is exerting itself to the utmost to gain its rights and liberties, the Negro race must bestir itself, must concentrate its best thought and energy to withstand the terrific onslaught made against it and secure its due and rightful status--equal manhood rights and opportunities in every 35

department of life. The Race must be stimulated to utilize all available opportunities for constructive endeavor and must be brought into harmonious working relationship with the white race. "The need is urgent, nay, imperative, therefore, the assembling of a National All-Race Conference to consider the present position of the race to ferret out and unmask the hostile forces arrayed against it, to formulate a plan of defense and protection, to discover the forces, agencies and organizations which may be utilized in that defense, to effect a United Front of the Race, and to devise ways and means for a full and complete emancipation. "The attention of the Conference must be focused upon the following: Race prejudice; Legal discrimination; Economic exploitation; Racial Self-Respect; Religious awakening; Moral and Social Betterment; Co-operation within the race and between the races; Political Action; Industrial Betterment; such evils as Lynching; Ku Kluxism; Segregation; Disfranchisement; Unequal Enforcement of Law and Peonage. "A detailed call specifying time and place will be issued later by the Committee of Arrangements. Every Negro organization should begin to move in this direction, and the attention and energy of the Race should be centered upon the successful conduct of this Conference to the end that our Race should at last achieve that improvement of its status for which we all hope and strive. "African Blood Brotherhood, Richard B. Moore, W.A. Domingo, Otto E. Huiswood; Friends of Negro Freedom, Geo. s. Schuyler; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, James Weldon Johnson, Richard w. Bagnall, Richetta G. Randolph; National Equal Rights League, James L. Neill, Dr. Matthews A.N. Shaw, Wm. Monroe Trotter; National Race Congress, Kelly Miller; International Uplift League, D.N.E. Campbell." The preliminary conference was opened with addresses by Cyril Briggs, Prof. Kelly Miller, Richard B. Moore, Jas. Weldon Johnson, and Dr. Matthews A.N. Shaw presided, and Cyril Briggs acted as secretary. They spoke on the status and difficulties of the Negro in the United States and other countries. The time is past due for Negroes to silently and meekly accept discrimination fostered by racial prejudices. On the pretext of color, the Negro has been relegated to a position of inferiority in modern society and in order to keep him in that position of inferiority abuses have been multiplied against him, so that the Negro is not only more readily exploited, but also more easily used in the struggle of labor against the white worker. The Negro is now called upon by the leaders of his own race to cease being a submerged element in existing society; to no longer meekly accept poverty, discriminations and bitter outrages. The Worker, April 14, 1923

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THE NEGRO PROBLEM IS IMPORTANT By Otto E. Huiswood This article urges the Workers Party to devote "special attention and careful study" to the "Negro Problem." It illustrates the important role played by Black Communists in educating white Communists on this question. Note the support given here to armed selfdefense, and recognition of rising race-consciousness. "It is the duty of revolutionists," he urges, "to turn this race-consciousness into class-consciousness . . Comrades, go to the Negro masses." The Negro Problem is one of the most important problems facing the Workers Party. Fundamentally an economic problem but intensified by racial antagonism, it demands our special attention and careful study. The Negro population constitutes one-tenth of the population of the country and is a most important factor for the success or failure of any working class movement. It is overwhelmingly a proletarian mass. It is the most ruthlessly exploited of any working class group. Eighty per cent of the Negroes live in the South. Here is where the class struggle rages in the most brutal form. Oppressed and exploited beyond description in order to pile up high profits for the land-owning class, the Negro can barely eke out a miserable existence. Peonage is rampant. He is disfranchised and segregated. Lynching and burning at the stake has become a famous American pasttime. That gigantic butchery--the World War--shook the very foundation of Capitalist Society and destroyed its equilibrium. It has also shattered the apathy of the Negro workers; they are now sharply conscious of their wrongs as Negroes. One may reflect upon the part played by the Negro in the Washington and Chicago Race Riots. They did not let themselves be shot down as dogs. Instead, they put up an effective and organized resistance. There is also developing a revolutionary element among Negroes. This element recognizes clearly the source of their exploitation and the reasons for their repression. Disappointed and disillusioned by the constant failures of the political reformers to secure any redress of their wrongs, many Negroes are turning to radical movements and are acting as a leaven for the Masses. They are at present race-conscious. It is the duty of the revolutionists to turn this raceconsciousness into class-consciousness. But it requires persistency and tact. It is the duty of the Workers Party to attract this section of the American Working class. And the Party must in all seriousness undertake to win the support of the Negro workers. Just as they are used by the ruling class today as strike breakers, so will they be used in the future to crush any revolutionary attempt on the part of the white workers. And the capitalist class is preparing for this event. They are building a new Armory in the Negro district--what for? Well, you may guess. Comrades, it is your duty to aid these masses in their struggles against peonage, and against economic exploitation. It is your duty to rally the Negro workers under the revolutionary banner of the Working Class Movement. Comrades, go to the Negro Masses! The Worker, April 28, 1923

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TOWARD REALIZATION OF A UNITED NEGRO FRONT Concordat Signed by Six Leading Civil Rights Organizations The following agreement was signed by the leaders of the same six organizations which, issued the call for a National All-Race Assembly (see above). The following text was printed on the letterhead of the African Blood Brotherhood and was dated June 18, 1923. (In the editors' possession.) We, The undersigned representatives of the following organizations: The African Blood Brotherhood The Friends of Negro Freedom The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People The National Equal Rights League The National Race Congress The International Uplift League assembled in conference in New York City, March 23-24, 1923. Knowing the strength of the forces opposed to justice and fair play for Americans of African descent, we realize that those forces must be met by the closest co-operation and ~he most harmonious relationship possible among all the agencies working for the civil and citizenship rights of Negro Americans. In order to secure the most effective action and the greatest results, we must guard against the slightest loss of energy from frictions and antagonisms. While each organization should reserve to itself its full autonomy and the use of its own best judgment as to the manner of carrying forward its aims and work, we should not allow any differences, either of opinions or methods, to blind us to the fact that we are all striving for one great common goal. We deplore as harmful and injurious to the best common interests any attitude which implies that loyalty to any one of these organizations necessitates antagonism toward any of the others, or that membership in one in any way precludes membership and active interest in the others. IT IS THEREFORE, The sense of this Conference that we, the representatives of the above named organizations take active steps to bring about a close relationship, both in action and in feeling; and That, in the undertakings of these various organizations the cordial support of all shall be given; and That upon great fundamental principles for which we all stand there shall be the greatest possible correlation and concentration of all our forces, that we may present to the common enemy a united front and inspire in the whole race united action. For the Conference: (Signed) W.A. Domingo THE AFRICAN BLOOD BROTHERHOOD George S. Schuyler THE FRIENDS OF NEGRO FREEDOM James Weldon Johnson THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE Wm. Monroe Trotter THE NATIONAL EQUAL RIGHTS LEAGUE Kelly Miller THE NATIONAL RACE CONGRESS D. N. E. Campbell THE INTERNATIONAL UPLIFT LEAGUE \

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APPEAL OF AFRICAN BLOOD BROTHERHOOD The following mimeographed communication was sent by the ABB to trade unions, appealing for financial aid for the campaign to prevent the use of Bl~ck workers against organized labor. It has been estimated that the migration of Negroes from the South, mostly from Black Belt agrarian areas, into the North in 1917-19 and 1922-23 together reached at least a million. The appeal was printed on the letterhead of the African Blood Brotherhood, bearing the subhead "A Fraternity of, Negro Peoples," with headquarters at 229 Seventh Avenue, New York. The symbol, printed at top center, was the Rock, inscribed: "The A.B.B. the Negro Rock of Gibralter," circled by the slogan: "Unshaken Stands the Guardian Rock Against the Beating Sea." Printed marginally as part of the letterhead the following information is provided: "Initiation Fee $1.00; Monthly Dues 25 cents; Fraternal, Economic, Educational, Physical, Social Benefits; Protection! Activities: Calisthenics (Sokola); Consumers' Cooperatives; Forums; Press Service. "Summary of Aims and Program: Liberated Race. Full Race Equality. The Fostering of Racial Self-Respect. Organized and Uncompromising Opposition to Anti-Negro Organizations. A United Negro Front. Industrial Development Along Cooperative Lines. Higher Wages for Negro Labor, Shorter Hours and Better Living Conditions. Education. Cooperation with the other Darker Peoples with those white workers who are truly class-conscious and are Honestly working for a United Front of all Labor. "International Officers (Supreme Executive Council)" are given as follows: Cyril V. Briggs, Executive Head; Theo. Burrell, Secretary; Otto E. Huiswood, National Organizer; Richard B. Moore, Educational Director; Ben E. Burrell, Director of Historical Research; Grace P. Campbell, Director of Consumers' Co-operatives; W.A. Domingo, Director of Publicity and Propaganda; William H. Jones, Physical Director. Committee of Finance: Grace P. Campbell, Ben E. Burrell, Cyril V. Briggs. At bottom of stationery in bold type: "Across All Frontiers the Negro Race is One!" (In possession of editor.) Dear Sirs and Brothers: The bosses have been quick to recognize the opportunities which the Negro Exodus from the South offers for the cutting of wages and strengthening of the "Open Shop" movement. They are doing everything to stimulate the Migration and thus make up for the loss of cheap labor caused by the immigration restriction law. And the Negro workers of the South, existing in a veritable hell of peonage, starvation wages and mob law, are feverishly availing themselves of the opportunity to leave that terror-ridden section. In the six months prior to May 1, 1923, over 100,000 came North. And with the advent of summer the movement has increased considerably. Organized workers of the North! These unorganized workers pouring North must be reached with the message of Unionism! Otherwise the fruits of your labors, the victories won by the unions for their members and for the entire Labor Movement will be threatened with destruction and nullification. These unorganized Negro workers, ignorant of industrial questions and blind to the necessity of workers' organizations to protect workers' interests, cannot be expected to act intelligently in their own best interests unless YOU, THE ADVANCED WORKERS, come to our aid and help us in the educational work we have been 39

carrying on through the crusader News Service (the greatest single force in the Negro world today, reaching nearly a million readers weekly); study classes; forums; lectures; etc.; as well as the actual organization work being done by us in the industrial districts. we ask you to contribute generouslx to this fight to prevent the use of Negro workers as tools and scabs against Organized Labor--Black and white. The enclosed folders tell of our activities. In the past these were supported by our own membership, but faced now with such tremendous tasks we must seek financial aid of white labor to whom we say "this is your fight, help us wage it!" Fraternally yours, THE AFRICAN BLOOD BROTHERHOOD By Cyril v. Briggs Executive Head A REAL MENACE TO NEGRO WORKERS The Messenger is a Socialist publication seeking to speak for Negroes. It is more a part of the "Socialist" front against Communism, than it is an organ espousing the cause of the colored workers. This is more manifest than ever in the August issue of this publication, containing an editorial, "The Menace of Negro Communists." The same editorial, headed "The Menace of Jewish Communists," or "The Menace of White Communists," might just as easily have appeared in Cahan's Daily Forward, or Oneal's New York Call. In fact, the Randolph-Owen editorship seeks to take in the whole field when it declares that, "Communism can be of no earthly benefit to either white or Negro workers in America."l We wonder why these editors confined themselves to America. Perhaps they were afraid to face the actual working out of the Communist program in relation to the subject nations and races of the world imperialism that sits in power in London, Paris and Rome. But these editors do drop themselves into a trap when they conclude with a final flourish, "How foolish, then, it is to advocate Communism to the Negro Workers before they have even grasped the fundamentals and necessity of simple trade and industrial unionism." Where do the "Socialists" advocate industrial unionism? This is a question of The Messenger editors should answer. Only thru the Communist activities of the Trade Union Educational League do we find any real drive for amalgamation--for industrial unionism. And the most bitter attacks of the "Socialists," especially "Socialists" in the labor unions, are directed against the Trade Union Educational League, because of its struggle to create industrial unions out of the present conflicting craft unions. Only thru really class conscious industrial unions can the United Front of all workers in the huge steel, meat packing, lumber and mining industries be won. And the struggle to achieve this goal is a Communist struggle. The Negroes, like the white workers, will learn that one menace they must overcome is that of "Socialism" trying to chain them

1 Abraham Cahan was editor of the Daily Forward, a Yiddish organ of the Socialist Party, and James Oneal was editor of the New York Call, daily newspaper of the Socialist Party, both published in New York. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owens were editors of The Messenger. 40

in the lap of reactionary labor. The place of all Negro toilers is in the militant ranks of the organized workers, inspired by the principles of Communism. Editorial, The Worker, August 25, 1923. THE NEGRO AND AMERICAN RACE PREJUDICE By Lovett Fort-Whiteman Lovett Fort-Whiteman was among the first Blacks to adhere to the Communists. A graduate of Tuskegee Institute, he had some journalistic experience with The Messenger and The Crusader, as well as with Negro newspapers in New York and Chicago. For a time he was a student at City College of New York but was dismissed because of his radicalism, according to an interview with the New York Times (January 17, 1926). He was a delegate to the Vth Congress of the Communist International, June-July 1924, while a student in Moscow. On his return to the United States in 1925 he was placed in charge of Negro work for the Workers Party, while Robert Minor (see below) retained overall responsibility before the Central Committee. The student of social problems may easily discover, after but little investigation, that race prejudice in almost all cases, has its roots in some form of economic or industrial competition. Race prejudice is not something inherited-transmitted thru the blood from one individual to another. Thus, despite the fact that probably most persons believe such to be the case, one may see in any place in the South Black and white children playing together, even in sections where the greatest degree of animosity exists between the races. Nor is the Negro regarded in any of the European countries as a peculiar object of hatred or prejudice such as in the United States. No social bitterness greeted the Negro at his advent on American shores from Africa. His enslavement was a matter simply of meeting the need of a labor supply in the colonies. Further, it is a well-known fact that there was much intermixing of white women and male Negro slaves before slavery became a definite and recognized institution in the country; that is before the greater value of the Negro as a slave was appreciated. With the growth of the tobacco and cotton interests, there was an ever-increasing legislation restricting and defining the social status of the Negro. And the ruling or slave-owing class, in order to give the position some sort of moral justification, claimed that slavery brought the Negro in touch with civilization, a higher plane of existence. This slave-owning class, controlling the agencies of public opinion, preached the inherent inferiority of the Negro. It should be easy to understand that a public opinion wholly shaped by a slave-owing class, the belief of the inherent inferiority of the Negro and his social unfitness, after a time, became thoroly [sic] established, and part and parcel of the American social consciousness. Even after the emancipation of the Negro from chattel slavery, it has remained to the interest of an exploiting class to maintain a popular opinion of the social inferiority of the Negro. Today, the Lords of Industry, thru a servile press, the school, the church, and other agencies of public opinion, are able to keep the ranks of the working class divided on sentiment of race differences. Some of the unions bar Negroes from membership. And this is greatly to the interest of the 41

capitalist class. This permits a sort of a reserve army of Negro workers that may be employed to break strikes. And to enumerate the most out-standing manifestations of this sickly sentiment of American race prejudice as it effects the Negro, as follows: in the South the latter is compelled to ride in rear seats in street cars, he is politically disfranchised, lynched and burned at the stake, and in the North as well suffers industrial discrimination, residential segregation, and often denial of public accommodation. The Negro worker is unorganized and everythi~g possible is done to keep him thus. We even find such organizations among Negroes as the Urban League, which is maintained by the capitalist class and which functions as a nation-wide labor agency, supplying the Northern industries with raw, cheap, Negro labor from the South. And this has been a leading circumstance in the development of race riots in our Northern cities. When unionized white labor finds itself confronted in the labor market with the Negro who is willing to do the same work for much less money, the natural reaction is one of hostility toward the Negro. And the willingness of the Negro to work for less money than the white man is rather a necessity--as has been shown. Bitterness between the Negro and the white man in America, is stimulated and promoted by the capitalist class who necessarily resort to such a method in order to split the ranks of the working class as a whole and to thus better affect its exploitation. It is simply a case of "divide and rule." But the practice having become deep-seated in our social organism, it has colored the social mind and the unthinking person regards prejudice against the Negro as a natural inheritable mental condition. Yet this principle in the art of subjecting one race or class to another is a world-wide practice and as old as the institution of private property. When England entered India, she found the caste system which had been created by a previous conquering race, yet at the time was in a state of rapid dissolution. It has been of paramount advantage to England to keep this social system alive, thus rendering joint action against her rule impossible. In the British West Indies, she establishes a social cleavage between the mulatto and pure-blood Negro. But in Ireland, where there is but one race, she resorts to the religious sentiment. Protestents and Catholics are inspired to hate one another and even abetted to a state of civil war. The working-class in America shall succeed only after the workers have laid aside all racial bitterness and shall have recognized the fact that class interest far transcends race interest; that as long as the workers fight among themselves and remain disunited, just so long will they be exploited, robbed and plundered by the employing class. Daily Worker, February 9, 1924.

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NEGRO WOMEN WORKERS By Jeannette D. Pearl The following is among the earliest articles in the Communist press to call attention to the harsh exploitation of Black women workers. Negro women who entered industry during the war are fast learning that their lot is still "the last to be hired and the first to be fired." According to a report just issued by the Woman's Bureau at Washington, on the "Negro Women in Industry," a great number of Negro women are being eliminated from industry and those remaining are most ruthlessly exploited. Their hours of toil range all the way from eight to sixteen hours a day and sometimes longer, their pay is miserably small, and the conditions under which they work are most brutal. The report covers a survey of 150 industries employing 11,860 Negro women. The purpose of the investigation was to create a better understanding and greater sympathy among employers of Negro women with the aim of thereby raising the standard of living. This humanitarian aspiration is strongly coupled with repeated emphasis upon the fact that a higher standard of living will yield increased production. Negro women found their opportunity in industry during the world slaughter when the need for munitions of war created a labor shortage in the labor market. The five chief industries that women entered were textiles, clothing, food, tobacco, and footwear. The Negro women in the main filled the gap caused by the advancement of white women into newer and more skilled occupations. Thirty-two and five-tenths per cent of the 11,860 Negro women investigated were working ten hours a day and over; 27.6 per cent were working nine hours a day, and 20.2 per cent were working eight hours a day. Those figures do not tell all of the story. Overtime can and does follow the legal work day. Overtime "is permitted as much as desired." The report tells how workers boast of their thriftiness in beginning work "before hours, after hours, and working during lunch hour." One worker puts it, "You just can't make ends meet unless you do extra work and often you are left in a hole even at that." A typical case is cited indicating how these Negro women live for the most part. Rise at five, cook breakfast, dress children, prepare food and attend to things about the house, report for work at 7, leave at 5:30, resume housework on returning home, frequently continuing this work until midnight, dead tired as a result. One woman worker states "I am so tired when I reach home I can scarcely stand up. My nerves are so bad, I jump in my sleep." Another woman complains, "I'd love to go to the Y.W.C.A., but I am so tired at night I can scarcely go to bed. If I go out at night, I go where there is lots of life and lots of fun; I'd go to sleep at a lecture or club meeting." Another case cited, "I am so worried and worn in my strength that I feel at times as if I can stand it no longer. It is not alone the need of money but the responsibility of being nurse, housekeeper and wage earner at one time." The average pay of the Negro women in industry is about ten dollars a week. The minimum wage is calculated at $16.50. When it is taken into consideration that many of these women have dependents and are sometimes the sole supporters of their families, one wonders whether slavery days before the civil war could have been much worse.

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The frightful conditions under which most of the Negro women work add to the horror of their wretched pay. They are often segregated because of race prejudice, given inferior and harder work and because of their "ignorance" they are shamelessly cheated, false computation of wages, scales wrong, count wrong, etc. At the end of the week "you never know what you are going to get, you just take what• they give you and go." The report points out that there is a strong feeling among Negro women workers that they are not getting a square deal. Since the Negro women are unorganized they a.ccept the most outrageous conditions of employment. They are not alone discriminated against because of their color and often segregated, but they are made to work amidst conditions the United States government would not permit its hogs to live under. Herded together in terrible congestion, in filth, fetid dust-laden, poisonous air, poorly ventilated, still more poorly lighted, these women work and often have to eat in the same atmosphere. The report points out, "Confronted with the need for food, clothing, and shelter and placed in an environment which was unhealthful and sometimes even degrading, they were seen to have lost themselves in the struggle for bare existence. n The treatment accorded most of these workers is well expressed in the words of one of the managers, "They are terribly indolent, careless, and stubborn, but we know HOW to handle them. We give them rough treatment and that quells them for a while." . The report points out that bad working conditions and long hours are a serious menace to the state, that the prosperity of a nation is endangered when its workers are being crippled with exhaustive labor. Loss of human energy due to excessive working hours becomes a national loss and is bound to lessen the nation's productive yield. The reporter, therefore, recommends legislation for a higher standard of living, inasmuch as a higher standard of living will produce greater efficiency in production and greater profits. The report would have self-enlightened employers and the State jointly work out an appropriate "award" as compensation for Negro women in the industries. It would be a sort of benevolent industrialism for greater efficiency and greater national progress for the master class. To that end is also recommended, "A more conscientious training for efficiency in public schools thru fostering of pride in achievement, increasing personal and family thrift, and encouraging of constancy toward a given task, would ensure that 'preparation of life' which is the purpose of all education. n Against such "purposes" in education must be posed the Communist method of education, thru labor solidarity making for self-reliance and self-development. Not a "pathetic" longing for a better day, but a resolute expression in motion for a better day will result from Communist education. Daily Worker, February 16, 1924. THE BLACK TEN MILLIONS By Robert Minor Among the white Communist leaders, Robert Minor was an outstanding example of one who grasped the importance of the Negro question and who devoted much attention and study to the history and social condition of the Negro people. He recognized their own distinctive culture and stressed the revolutionary import of race consciousness among an oppressed 44

people. His sketch of outstanding slave revolts (the details of which are omitted here) is among the earliest in Communist literature; he saw these rebellions as revealing the initiative, courage and daring of the Negro in the continuing struggle "to make his a free race." Emancipation from slavery was not yet completed, he held, pointing specifically to Southern society. He noted the significance of Black defense in the raging race riots of the war and postwar periods. In some ways, his views may be considered not only a great advance over the traditional Socialist approach which still influenced the Communists, but also as suggestive of the later Communist position which defined the Negro situation as that of an oppressed nation. Born in San Antonio, Texas in 1884, Robert Minor taught himself drawing while working at odd jobs in his teens. By 1911 he was the chief editorial cartoonist of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, achieving national prominence. He had become a member of the Catpenters Union in San Antonio and he joined the Socialist Party in St. Louis in 1907. As cartoonist for the New York World during World War I, he left the paper rather than support its pro-war position, and became cartoonist for the New York Call, the Socialist daily, drawing also for The Masses and later The Liberator. He turned to journalism as a war~­ correspondent in Europe. Minor organized the campaign in defense of Torn Mooney and warren K. Billings, labor leaders framed up in connection with the explosion at the Preparedness Day Parade in San Francisco in 1916. He broke away from anarcho-syndicalist ideas and became a Communist, as he explained in his article, "I Change My Mind a Little" in the October 1920 issue of The Liberator, of which.he was an editor. When the Workers Party moved its national headquarters from New York to Chicago in 1922, Minor and his wife Lydia Gibson, poet and painter, moved to the South Side, the Black ghetto, where his home became a gathering place for young Negro radicals. For the rest of his life--Minor died in 1951--he remained a prominent Communist leader. He gave up cartooning in 1926 to devote himself to political activity. The following article was widely noticed and was reprinted in the Amsterdam News of New York. See below for Sanhedrin Conference and for the second part of Minor's article which analyzes that conference. Within the great white city of New York is another city of one-quarter of a million Negroes. Five other great Arnericn cities have within each of them a Black City of more than 100,000 inhabitants. The separateness of the Black Cities within the white is fairly complete. The Negro may freely visit the white town, and may work there the day through but, come the end of his labor, must return, be it to sleep, to eat or to amuse himself, to his own pale. The Black Man has a culture of his own; his musicians, his poets, novelists, actors, students, his bourgeoisie, his scientific men and--his apostles of liberty. The Black Man of the city is a restless man; he wants to break down all the humiliating restrictions that confine him as a lower race, the "white supremacy" that loads his life down with limitations and holds him to a "Black belt" as a prostitute is segregated. 45

The city Negro is the articulate Negro. It is he who forms the many organizations which have the purpose of completing the emancipation of his race. And among the city Negroes it is the Negro "intelligentzia" which at present has the lead. Thus it is characteristic that Professor Kelley Miller, Dean of Howard University, Washington, D.C., and a noted scholar, has sent out the call which brings together in Chicago on February 11, 1924, a national conference of organizations especially concerned with Negro emancipation. It is called the "Sanhedrin Conference," in memory of the ancient Jewish racial council at Jerusalem. The conference is sponsored by the National Associatlon for the Advancement of Colored People, the Equal Rights League and the African Blood Brotherhood. The "Negro Sanhedrin" will be a bold attempt to gather all Negro and mixed pro-Negro organizations into a "united Negro front" on a common program for race emancipation. If it were merely a matter of a few hundred Negro intellectuals gathering decorously to discuss ways and means of smoothing their professional careers, one need pay little attention. But back of these intellectual leaders are the Black Ten Millions that stir in unhappy slavery on plantations from Florida to Texas and in ill-paid labor in factory, mine, mill, and lumbar-camp the country over. The unrest of these is pressing the intellectuals forward to perhaps greater lengths than they as yet dream of going. No matter what mild speaking may be heard from the black prophets of today, the Negro in the vast heart of his race wants, and cannot stop with less than, complete and unqualified equality both in law and in social custom. Leaders may promise to take less, but the Black race will ultimately walk over the faces of any such leaders. Slave Revolts It is a mistake to assume that the Negro was a submissive slave. Even before the American revolution there were twentyfive insurrections of Negroes against slavery in the American colonies. The outstanding fact is that the American Negro has found within his own race both the genius and the daring to fight for his freedom. That the desparate and unsuccessful insurrections of the slavery days were inadequate in method and pitifully ineffective is beside the point: The Negro possesses the initiative and the courage to make his a free race. After "Emancipation" For fifty years after the Civil War the Negro wandered in a fog of republican "emancipation." He was "free"--to starve or to sell himself back to the white landlord. The white ruling class considered merely that they had been deprived of certain property, but not in the least that the Negro had attained "social and political equality with white persons," as a South Carolina statute of 1865 put it. The ex-slave was legally not a citizen, but a "freedman"-quite a different thing; he was property that had been confiscated as a means of punishment of his owners. The Negro had, in Southern eyes, been changed from a domesticated animal to an undomesticated animal. The emancipation of the American Negro from chattel slavery has not yet been completed. The Negro "slave" farmer or tenant-farmer is still to all intents and purposes the slave of his white landlord. The white landlord continues ~o take the product of the labor of the Negro, and gives in return, in almost the same manner as seventy-five years ago, little more 46

than a miserable ration of food. In Turner County, Georgia, in 1913, "the average annual cash income per Negro tenant farmer-usually a family--was only $290." The Negro tenant is kept in debt to his white exploiter, sometimes for an entire lifetime, and his "running away" is often forcibly prevented as long as his white overlord owns a "debt"-interest in his body. Peonage, a close imitation of chattel slavery, is still accomplished with the device of convicting men (both Black and white, nowadays!) of "vagrancy" or "idling" or sometimes for real offenses, and then leasing them out to planters, mine-owners, lumber operators or contractors for periods of months or years. The Negro is still not a citizen in the South. Places of public resort are divided as are the buildings of a farm--houses for the (white) human beings and barns for the (Negro) animals. The railroads provide cattle-cars for cattle and Negro-cars for Negroes. In many parts of the South (Alabama, Florida) Negroes are kept out of public parks and playgrounds; sometimes "Jim Crow" parks and playgrounds are provided. Throughout the South it is taken for granted that Negroes are not to be permitted to live in houses near the residences of the well-to-do whites. Commonly Southern towns have their "red-light" districts and their "nigger-towns"--often jumbled together for the sake of real-estate convenience. Segregation is sometimes accomplished by law--as in Tulsa, Oklahoma, among many other localities--and sometimes by terrorism alone. Occasionally there has come over the white South a panic due to a fear that the Negro parent's zeal for educating his black child is raising the literacy of the Negro child above that of the poor white. But the white man is doing his best to keep the Negro behind the white. In South Carolina, where the Negro population approaches that of the whites, ten million dollars is spent to educate white children, while one million is spent for a similar number of Negro children. It is claimed that in some parts of the South when the Negro progresses too far the Negro schoolhouses are burned. They say that the Negro is not disfranchised in the South and then they explain that he is permitted to vote whenever and to whatever extent that his vote won't win anything. Throughout the South wherever the Negro population outnumbers or dangerously approximates the white population in number, the Negro is frankly and openly excluded from the ballot to an extent sufficient to give the white man a guarantee of control . . The Rise of the Black Giant The tremors of the World War that shook the world to its foundations, did not fail to reach the Negro. To be exempted from conscription was a privilege, and the "damn nigger" received no privilege. 367,710 young Negro men were drafted and given military training. About 200,000 had the amazing experience of a trip to Europe and a flickering glimpse of what is called "social equality"--yes, even between Black men and white women. The American Negro who went to France did not, when he returned, fit into the scheme of the plantation and the overseer. What is more exciting, his neck no longer fitted meekly into the lyncher's noose! The young Negroes who had had the awakening experience of the War, and associates influenced by them, began to transform the lynching into what is called a riot--that is, a two-sided fight . . From March 1919, . . . there has been a long series of incidents called "race riots" in Charleston, S.C., Chicago, Ill, Elaine, Arkansas, Knoxville, Tenn., Longview, Texas, Omaha, Neb., 47

Washington, D.C., Duluth, Minn., Independence, Kansas, Ocoee, Florida, Springfield, Ohio, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Nearly all of these incidents would a few years ago have taken the form of a simple, respectable lynching of a Negro "without disorder." But with what the Negroes call their "new attitude," practically all of these incidents now take the form of terrific two-sided fights in which the Negroes in resisting lynching take white life for Black life. The Great Migration But mobilization in the army was not the biggest means with which the World War wrought its changes in the life of the Negro. Just at the moment when the Northern manufacturers began to book huge orders for war supplies--the war shut off the customary source of American industrial labor: European immigration. Northern manufacturers began to dip into the great stagnant pool of the South for Black labor-power. At first the White South was glad to see the Negro go, but soon began to change its mind and try to stem the tide. The Black Foreigner Afraid that immigrant labor would bring the revolutionary fever of Europe to our shores, Congress passed the severely restrictive immigration law. At the same time began the after-war industrial revival demanding cheap immigrant labor. The Southern Negro became the "immigrant laborer." The rumor of "high wages and human treatment" that had once gathered the millions of Eastern and Southern Europe now swept the Black South of the United States. It is recorded that one Negro church at Lone Oak, Georgia, lost ninety-eight members between a Saturday evening and Sunday morning. 478,700 are said to have migrated in one year. The total of the great migration is roughly estimated at one million. Georgian agriculture is said to have suffered $25,000,000 of damage in 1923 through the loss of its Black peons. Other Southern States had similar experiences. The result of the migration was called by many writers a "revolution." It is said that the South will be forced now to discard its primitive economic processes and to "machinize" itself. And Northern industry is also profoundly affected by the introduction of the new and dark-faced "immigrant labor." But most of all the Negro is affected. James Weldon Johnson, secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is quoted as declaring the great migration to be the greatest single factor in the twentieth century emancipation of the race. Whatever the objective reasons the Negro has his own subjective reasons for no longer "wishing he was in Dixie," and he states them as: Mob violence Inferior schools Low wages Inequality of law enforcement Let no one imagine, however, that the Negro escapes discrimination when he escapes from the South. As fast as the Negro becomes a large factor in the Northern cities and industrial centers, most of the persecutions, petty and large-especially lynching and segregation--follow at his heels. American capitalism cannot accept race equality. In fact, race discrimination appears to be increasing with the bourgeois development. Racial residential segregation is as rigid in the big Northern cities as in those of the South--and seems to be in the process of extension to the Jews! Advertisements for 48

apartments to let often carry the proviso, "for Gentiles," meaning that Jews are excluded as well as Negroes, whose exclusion is taken for granted. Race discrimination is on the up-grade, not the down-grade in these mad days of capitalist decay. The Liberator, February 1924. THE NEGRO WORKER In his report for the Central Executive Committee to the Third National Convention of the Workers Party of America (Chicago, December 30, 1923), C.R. Ruthenberg, the Party Secretary, devoted two sentences to the Negro: "The Negro workers of this country are an especially exploited class. The Workers Party proposes a campaign against all forms of discrimination against the Negroes and will assist them in organizing their strength to make an end to these discriminations." (The Second Year of the Workers Party of America - Theses, Program and Resolutions, Chicago, 1924, pamphlet.) The following lengthier statement on the Negro is from the party program adopted at that convention. The Negro workers of this country are exploited and oppressed more ruthlessly than any other group. The history of the Southern Negro is the history of brutal terrorism, of persecution and murder. During the war tens of thousands of Southern Negroes were brought to the industrial centers of the North to supply the needs of the employers for cheap labor. In the Northern Industrial cities the Negro has found the same bitter discrimination as in the South. The attack upon the Negroes of East St. Louis, Illinois, the riot in Chicago are examples of the additional burden of oppression which is the lot of the Negro worker. Altho the influx of Negro workers in the Northern industrial centers has laid the foundation for a mass movement of Negroes who are industrial workers, because of neglect of this problem by organized labor, little progress has been made in organization of these industrial workers. The Negro has despaired of aid from organized labor, and he has been driven either into the camp of the enemies of labor or has been compelled to develop purely racial organizations which seek purely racial aims. The Workers Party will support the Negroes in their struggle for liberation and will help them in their fight for economic, political and educational equality. It will seek to end the policy of discrimination followed by some labor unions and all other discrimination against the Negro. It will endeavor to destroy altogether the barrier of race prejudice that has been used to keep apart the Black and white workers, and to weld them into a solid union for the struggle against the capitalists who exploit and oppress them. Daily Worker, March 24, 1924.

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II.

THE SANHEDRIN, 1924

51

THE DAILY WORKER GREETS ALL-RACE NEGRO CONGRESS The All-Race Assembly met in Chicago, February 11-15, 1924. It was also known as the Sanhedrin, as the Supreme Council of the ancient Hebrew nation in Jerusalem was known, thus drawing the parallel often made at the time between the oppression of the Negro and the situation of the Jewish people. There were 250 delegates from 20 states, representing 61 national Negro organizations, including the leading civil rights groups which had signed the Call for a Race Conference and the Concordat. Marcus Garvey sent no official representatives, though his supporters were among the delegates. It was the first united front of Negroes in which Communists participated officially. The delegation of the Workers Party consisted of Lovett Fort-Whiteman, Gordon Owens and S.V. Phillips; Otto Huiswood represented the African Blood Brotherhood. The participants included religious bodies, fraternal societies, college fraternities, Black business groups, the Negro press and a few small Negro trade unions. Thus the Assembly was largely middle class and professional in both composition and leadership, with only a minor labor component. Professor Kelly Miller of Howard University, popular lecturer and author, was its prime mover, and its chairman. Among prominent individuals who took part were Negro educators such as Gilbert H. Jones, Dean of Wilberforce College; John Hope, President of Morehouse College, Atlanta; Professor Alain Leroy Locke of Howard; Professor Monroe N. Work of Tuskegee Institute. Others included Jessie Faucet, literary critic, and the editors of the Pittsburgh Courier, Chicago Defender, and Baltimore Afro-American--the three leading Black weeklies--and other publications. Although provisions were made for officers and continuation committees with the purpose of calling another gathering in a year or two, no further Assemblies were held. The only detailed day-to-day report of the proceedings in any daily newspaper appeared in the Daily Worker, which had begun publication only a few weeks before, on January 24, in Chicago. Negro weeklies did summarize the sessions. As the following reports in the Daily Worker show, a fission along class lines soon became apparent. Although a tiny minority at the Assembly, the Workers Party and African Blood Brotherhood delegates together with a handful of supporters, did manage to get their views heard and to get some of their proposals, be they in emasculated form, included in the resolutions. They centered their efforts on the labor programs, particularly on the struggle against the exclusion policy of the established trade unions. On this and other questions they were overruled by an overwhelming majority, led by Kelly Miller, whose attitude was expressed succinctly later when The New York Times (January 17, 1926) reported that he "has come out against Negro unionism, arguing that the best interests of Negro workers would be served by standing with capital." The Workers Party resolutions submitted to the Assembly, given below, raised demands that were 53

enacted by state and federal governments years later--such as legislation fixing and controlling rents, abolition of company towns, laws against school segregation, and measures against discrimination in industry. Besides the three resolutions reported below, the Workers Party delegates also urged recognition of the Soviet Union and abolition of laws against intermarriage. The Brotherhood resolutions urged joint councils of labor and Negro organizations to take action to stop lynching; and an all~ance of the foreign-born and the Negro against the Klu Klux Klan. The ABB proposed that the Assembly send a delegate to visit Soviet Russia. The Daily Worker, as the official organ of the Workers Party of America, extends its greetings to the great conference of American Negroes--The All-Race Assembly--that meets today in Chicago. The overwhelming majority of the American Negroes are workers and no section of the American working class has so many urgent reasons for unity, so many grievances to protest, is so bitterly presecuted and exploited. Other nations oppress subject races in their colonial possessions. The American ruling class brought the Negro~s to America so that the oppression could be more efficient and profitable. The wrongs of 12,000,000 American Negroes give mass testimony to the brutal and callous character of American capitalism. All over the world, since the Russian revolution with its working-class interpretation of the policy of self-determination for races and nationalities brought new hope to the subject peoples, their voices have been heard with increasing clearness. In the Philippines, in Cuba and in Haiti, the American imperialists see the native peoples preparing to throw off their yoke. Great Britain finds India and Egypt restive under her rule. Arbitrary restrictions of the franchise have not prevented the returning of anti-imperialist majorities in the colonial parliaments, nor have the machine-guns and the airplane bombs prevented great mass-uprisings that bring the people of these ancient nations a little closer to national independence. The path of the American Negroes is beset with dangers and difficulties. As workers their problems will be solved only as part of the problem that the working class as a whole has to solve. We hope that the All-Race Congress of the American Negroes will recognize this, organize with the left wing of the American labor movement, and give added strength to the revolutionary forces which are striving to unite the workers of America, regardless of color or creed, into one gigantic and closely-knit group for the overthrow of American capitalism--the common enemy of white and colored workers. We join with the All-Race Congress of American Negroes in sending fraternal greetings to the oppressed races and nationalities of the world over. Daily Worker, February 11, 1924. NEGROES AT ALL-RACE CONGRESS ARE CALLED TO JOIN FOREIGN BORN IN RESISTING COMMON ENEMY, THE KLAN The great Negro All-Race Assembly, or Sanhedrin, faces its supreme test tomorrow or Friday, by which it will be judged by the workingclass of the Negro and white races. 54

The Sanhedrin's test will come when the resolutions for aggressive action against lynching, disfranchisement, peonage, segregation, and Jim Crowism come on the floor. K.K.K. Common Enenmy The Negroes will be called upon in ringing resolutions proposed by the Negro delegates from the Workers Party to unite with foreign born workers against their common enemy, the Ku Klux Klan, which is hunting, torturing and burning the workers in the industries in this country, whether they are Negroes or men born in other countries. Alliance with labor organizations regardless of color is proposed in Local councils composed of representatives of union labor and members of the persecuted race to take action to end the evil which is disgracing America. Negroes and Labor Party Organized labor and the Negro race would further be united thru the proposal submitted by the Workers Party for the Sanhedrin to send delegates to any national convention that may be held for the formation of a Farmer-Labor party. Refusal of the Democratic and Republican parties to enforce the 14th and 15th amendments and protect the Negro in the rights guaranteed to him after the Civil War, call for the formation of a Third Party of Labor, that will enforce these provisions. This is all the more necessary for the Negro because his race is composed of farmer and laborer in larger proportion than any other race. Resolution Assails Strike-Breaking Employers are fiercely assailed in another resolution, for trying to stir up race prejudice by attempting to use whites against Negroes and Negroes against whites, during strikes. Other resolutions denouncing high rent discriminations against Negroes, white juries for Negroes, Jim Crowism in the army and navy, denial of liberty to the colored peoples of America's West Indian possessions, may go thru without any opposition. It is those resolutions which plan for ag~ressive action of the Negroes as workers against the tyranny of white capitalists that will show the temper of the congress--as a group organizing for effective resistance against oppression, or not. The K.K.K. Terror The terror society that masks itself under the cabalistic letters, "K.K.K." is a vital issue for the delegates from the southern states where this terror rides by night. There are southern delegates who say that if they speak their mind about the order they will face the lash and tar and feather pot and very likely the rope when they return home. But the hatred which they all feel towards the hooded order that the white capitalists are using is evident. Klan Murdered His Father One case where the Ku Klux Klan took a hand in heightening the high Negro death rate was told by Dr. A. Wilberforce Williams of Chicago, who addressed the delegates on the health issue yesterday morning. Denying the fiction that the Negro was congenitally weak or short lived, he declared: 55

"My father, born a slave, lived until he was 76--when he was killed by the Ku Klux Klan." Negro mortality from disease is high, however, said the speaker. Insurance statistics give the death rate of babies under one year as 50 per cent. But this is not because of the inherent qualities of the individual or the Race but because of the conditions under which Negroes are forced to live, he declared. Lovett Fort-Whiteman, taking the floor, showed that the Negro death rate is high because they are the poorest paid industrial workers and have to pay the highest rents. The death rate is not a matter of race, he asserted, but of living conditions. As the wages go down the death rate goes up; therefore to lower the Negro death rate, his industrial conditions must be improved. Fort-Whiteman, Labor Committeeman Fort-Whiteman is a member of the Labor Commission appointed by Dean Kelly Miller which will make recommendations for action to the convention. Mr. Eugene Jones is chairman of the commission, and associated with them are Mssrs. T. Arnold Hill, Morris Lewis, J.H. Jones, and Perry Park. Another delegate from the Workers Party, besides Fort-Whiteman, will probably be appointed, Dean Kelly Miller feeling the need of additional labor representation on this important commission. The congress, made up as it is largely by men and women from the professional classes, is making use of the proletarian elements from the Workers Party. Organizations Represented Participating organizations include the Workers Party, the National Baptist Convention, Inc.; National Baptist Convention, Uninc; G.U.O of Odd Fellows; A.M.E.Z. Church; C.M.E. Church; Associated Negro Press; American Woodmen; National Negro Press Association; I.B.P.O.E. of the World; Woodmen of Union; Association of College Presidents; Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity; Omega Psi Phi Fraternity; National Association of Negro Musicians; Young Men's Christian Association; Lott Carey Convention; National Grand Lodge of the United Brothers of Friendship; Sisters of the Mysterious Ten of the World; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Equal Rights League; African Blood Brotherhood; International Uplift League; Friends of Negro Freedom; National Race Congress; National Association of Railway Mechanics; National Medical Association; Supreme Circle of Benevolence; American Negro Academy; National Brotherhood Workers of America; National University of Music; the Knights of Pythias of North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia; Ancient Egyptian Arabic Order of the Mystic Shrine; Deacons Club of Prince Hall Masons; Colored Actors' Union; Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity; Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority; National Negro Business League; Ancient United Knights and Daughters of Africa; National Negro Funeral Directors; Methodist Episcopal Church; Grand United Order Sons and Daughters of Peace; Chi Delta Mu Fraternity; National Urban League; Delta Sigma Theta Sorority; Grand United Order of Locomotive Firemen of America; National Association of Colored Women; National Alliance of Postal Employees; Royal Circle of Friends; National Convention Congregational Workers Among Colored People; Committee for Advancement of Colored Catholics; Omega Psi Phi Fraternity; Association of Colored Railway Trainmen; American Federation of Negro Students; Knights of Pythias, EastePn and Western Hemispheres. Daily Worker, February 13, 1924.

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Negro Literature Needed Mr. W.H. Moore, of Chicago, followed Miss Faucett and urged the creation of a Negro literature that would acquaint the race with itself as the literature of Synge, Lady Gregory, and other Irish writers acquainted the Irish people with themselves during the Gaelic Renaissance. Prof. Monroe N. Work, director of the department of records and research at Tuskegee Institute, urged the need of more race knowledge--knowledge about the past achievements of the race and its present status. The Rape Lie Value of research data was shown at the senate hearings on the Dyer anti-lynching bill when none of the opposition attempted to repeat the old charge that lynchings were made necessary by rape. That charge had been exploded by Tuskegee's research, which showed that only 20 per cent of lynchings were traceable to rape charges--charges which were usually unfounded. Need of a better organized Negro press to cement the race together and expose the atrocities committed against the Negro was emphasized by Mr. Robert L. Van, editor of the Pittsburgh Courier and chairman of the Negro Press Committee at the Sanhedrin, before the session. Daily Worker, February 14, 1924. WORKER'S PARTY RESOLUTIONS PRESENTED TO ALL-RACE ASSEMBLY The Segregation Evil The Sanhedrin Conference declares itself unalterably opposed to the segregation of Negroes into "black belt" residence districts. We declare the discrimination against Negroes in regard to which part of a city they may live in and which part they may not live in, is a political question, and must be dealt with just as we deal with discrimination in voting. The time has come when the living accommodations of the public cannot be left to the private control of a few wealthy parasites who decide where the colored man may live and where he may not live. We demand legislation by which all tenements, apartment houses and homes to let shall be subject to the claim of the first comer, regardless of race or color or the will of the landlord. Whereas, it is common knowledge that Negroes are customarily charged rent at a rate of 20 per cent to 100 per cent higher than is charged for the same apartments rented to white people, we demand legislation for a fixed rental for all places to be let, with heavy penalities and damages whenever a landlord charges higher rents for one race than would be charged another race for similar accommodations. We declare that any Negro real estate agent who connives in charging more rent to his own color than would be paid by whites, is a renegade and a traitor to his own people. In advocating the foregoing measures of relief, we do not regard them as being permanently effective. This conference advocates taking the whole housing question out of the hands of private individuals, and advocates the taking over of all rented residences by the public, to be rented without discrimination of color to the people at a fixed low rental. Whereas, it is a custom of large employers of colored and white labor, such as mine operators and mill owners, to house

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their employees in "company houses" and thereby to control the lives of the workers, being able to throw them out of house and home whenever the bosses please and wherever there is a disagreement about wages or working conditions, we demand any legal measure that may be necessary to prevent any employer of industrial labor owning or controlling tpe homes rented to his employees. Pending legislative relief, and during the present period when the Negro's rights are ignored by governmental agencies, we call upon the residents of all Negro communities to organize colored tenants unions so as to be able in an organized way to refuse to pay exorbitant rents, or to consent to live in inferior buildings or segregated districts. Discrimination in Schools our race in its struggle to complete its racial, political, economical and social emancipations, is hampered and cruelly retarded by laws and customs of Southern states in the matter of education. The Negro men and women who will finally realize complete emancipation and equality are those children and those young men and young women who are today of school age. Their schooling or their lack of schooling is their preparation for future citizenship. In all parts of the South, as well as a large part of the North, they are more or less discriminated against, for we declare that any involuntary separation of the children of the two races in schools is but preparation for a future "Jim Crow" life. Enforced segregation in schools is a necessary preliminary to segregation in street cars, railroad cars, restaurants, residence districts, hotels and theaters, and creates a ground of race distinction which leads to continued disfranchisement at the ballot box. As long as local and state authorities are permitted to put colored children in one school and white children in another, they will give the biggest of their support to the white schools and will let the Negro schools lie in neglect and stagnation for lack of funds and attention. It is often the case that for each dollar spent on the education of a white child, ten cents is spent on the "education" of a Negro child. Such brutal treatment is the direct inheritance of slavery, in which the Negro was forbidden to have any education at all. It is a continuation of the tradition of deliberate degradation of the Negro. This conference declares that the American Negro cannot continue to leave the shaping of the minds of his children in the hands of localities where all institutions are dedicated to the principle of "white supremacy,• that is, Negro inferiority. We protest against unequal appropriations as between the schools of the two races, but in doing so we do not consent to school segregation. We declare that white and Black children who are expected to share citizenship in the future must begin that common citizenship in common schools together. Segregation in schools is as injurious to whites as to Negroes, teaching snobbishness to the whites and race hatred to both races alike; it prevents for all afterlife any understanding between the races; it is the seed of future race riots, bloodshed, and tyranny. We therefore demand: 1. A national constitutional amendment placing the entire public educational system in the hands of the federal government, and taking it out of the hands of local municipal and state authorities. 2. That such constitutional amendment shall forbid any segregation or separation of races or creeds in any public 58

school, and forbid any recognition by law of any distinction of race or creed in public schools. Color Line in Labor Unions We declare the interest of the white workers and the Negro workers to be the same and call for unity and harmony between them. Large industrial employers often stir up friction between the workers of the two races for the sake of dividing the workers along a convenient line and thus keeping the workers of both races in weakness and subjection. We call upon the labor unions to let down all remaining bars to membership in their organizations by colored people and all discriminations and distinctions of color within them. We are not blind to the fact that the American labor movement is in a bad condition today, is getting weaker in some instances, and altogether has organized only a small fraction of the working class. The Negro is a large part of the working class of this country and we declare that the labor unions owe their present weakness in a large part to their neglect of the Negro worker. Hundreds of thousands of Negroes are flooding into the field of industrial labor. We demand of the American Federation of Labor, of the Railroad Brotherhoods and other independent unions, that those Negroes be welcomed into all unions on a basis of equality, and point out that it is for the sake of the white worker as well as the Black worker. We demand: 1. That the American Federation of Labor (and all other bodies of organized labor) make an intensive drive in the immediate future to organize Negro workers wherever found on a basis of equality in the same unions with the whites. 2. That all such labor organizations be fraternally addressed by this body, with the request that such labor bodies shall immediately conduct among their members an official propaganda against discrimination of color and against racial snobbishness in the labor unions and in favor of enrolling all Negro workers into the unions. Further, that such campaign be carried on in collaboration with representatives of the Negro Sanhedrin. 3. That all Negro papers be requested to carry on an intensive propaganda among the race for the joining of labor unions on the basis of equality .. 4. In view of the fact that the Negro in industry is as yet an unskilled laborer as a rule, and as the industrial form of union and the breaking down of craft aristocracy in the unions are in the interest of the Negro, as an unskilled worker, we therefore favor the transformation of all craft unions into industrial unions. However, we are opposed to dual unionism, as well as "Jim Crow" unionism, and favor the Negro joining everywhere the main body of labor organizations. Daily Worker, February 15, 1924. LABOR FIGHTS MACHINE RULE AT SANHEDRIN Denounces Efforts to Ignore Great Issue Labor rose in revolt at the Sanhedrin late yesterday afternoon against the machine rule that has been denying expression to the workers' cause. Labor Ignored The revolt led by members of the Workers Party and the African Blood Brotherhood came at the close of an afternoon of speeches on interracial relationships that followed a morning of 59

speeches on religion. The problem of interracial cooperation was discussed from the standpoint of the Y.M.C.A. and the church and every other point of view but that of labor--altho the Negro race is pre-eminently a labor group and its industrial welfare is bound up with the interracial cooperation with white workers. Four days had gone by and labor had been ignored. Chairman Against Labor Lovett Fort-Whiteman, of the Workers Party, rose and demanded that the greatest of all issues before the Negro race be given attention, declaring there were eighteen representatives of labor whose rights must be respected. He was ruled out of order by the chairman. Otto E. Huiswood arose demanding attention. The chairman tried vainly to shut him up but Huiswood could not be halted and cried out: "I see that labor is an outcast here as it is outside. Audience With Labor The audience applauded with more enthisiasm than it has anything that had been said so far in the convention. Huiswood denounced the conspiracy to keep labor from being heard at this great gathering of the race. He censured the leaders of the convention for providing no place for labor on the program. At Huiswood's insistence that labor be discussed Friday morning the audience again applauded. Fort-Whiteman and other speakers took the floor on the same demand. The chairman could not halt the tide of protest. Against Lynching Lynching is a subject which arouses the just anger of the Negro race. The African Blood Brotherhood has a workable program against this crime of the ages. It is for the Sanhedrin to invite all labor bodies to form joint councils with Negroes to take action to stop lynching. Only interests that are opposed to labor unions can oppose such a program for effective action. The program for equal support from public school funds for the Negro schools now so grossly discriminated against, sometimes to the extent of providing for the Negro pupil at only one-tenth the rate at which the white child is provided is another essential part of the remedial program. The only opposition that has shown its head is from teachers who think their jobs down South might be affected if they fight this system now. K.K.K.

The Common Enemy

A resolute stand against the Ku Klux Klan, calling for an alliance with the foreign-born against the common enemy, is demanded by the African Blood Brotherhood. All classes of the race hate the murderous Klan, tho some delegates from the south fear to voice their enmity, fearing vengeance when they return home. Friendship with Russia Two proposals for clasping the hand of the Russian workers are presented: one by the Workers Party delegates, urging the Sanhedrin to support the movement for the recognition of Russia and the other from the African Blood Brotherhood asking the

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Sanhedrin to elect a delegation to visit Russia for the purpose of making an impartial study of the situation there. The African Blood Brotherhood's resolution declares that the Russian revolution is the most drastic social change that has taken place since the American Civil War, which was also a revolution in as much as it abolished slavery. It cites further the fact that the Russian people have welcomed all visiting Negroes with open arms and that the Negro visitors found themselves for the first time of their lives in a country where they enjoyed complete equality and respect. An apostle of Russia, as a friend of the colored people, is found in Dr. C. S. Brown, president of Lott Carey Convention and head of the Sanhedrin's commission on world-wide race movements. Dr. Brown visited Russia last year on a tour of inspection with a Baptist delegation and he declares that he and another Negro member of the delegation were received with even greater cordiality than their white brothers by the representatives of the Soviet government whom he met. They found the Baptist missions thriving. Today is the day that tests the convention--as a mere getting together affair or as the founding of a great movement for the emancipation of the race. Daily Worker, February 15, 1924. NEGRO WORKERS GET CAUSE BEFORE RACE CONGRESS DESPITE MILLER; DEMAND UNIONS DROP COLOR LINE The Negro All-Race Assembly, or Sanhedrin, closed late last night with the Workers Party representatives winning thru a declaration of a campaign for removing the color line in the labor unions still discriminating against the Negro. This labor program calls for "An appeal to the American Federation of Labor for the fullest and equal recognition of Negro workers, in practice as well as in theory," and it demands that the Negro press give its full cooperation in educating Negro workers to the need of organization. Machine Revising Labor Report At the last moment, before the Daily Worker went to press, it was discovered that Dean Kelly Miller's appointed committee on "Permanent Results," was attempting to revise the labor program and that its revision would not be submitted to the Sanhedrin. It is not believed, however, that the most important feature will be stricken out. The Workers Party educational program calling for a constitutional amendment forbidding any segregation of races will be accepted in modified form by the education committee, but its findings will also go before the Committee for Permanent Results. Real Estate Sharks Oppose Influence of real estate sharks of the Negro race appears to have killed the most vital clause in the workers report on housing which attacks the segregation evil by demanding houses be let to the first comer, regardless of race, at listed prices. Final copies of the resolutions as modified by the Committee on Permanent Results, will be printed in the next issue of the Daily Worker if they are ready then.

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Labor Will Force Issue Negro labor will continue to function in the All Race movement to force thru more and more of its program for the betterment of the workers and farmers who represent 98 per cent of the Race--however much this labor program is opposed by Dean Miller and the business men of the Race working with him. Permanent organization of the Sanhedrin is being effected as this is being written. Seven men will be selected by the Committee for Permanent Results and these seven men will run the organization until the next Congress. Miller Represents Government Dean Miller will sit on the temporary governing body of seven, so the too-respectable, negative policy is in danger of continuing until the next Congress which may not be called for a year. Dean Miller's policy is one that reflects the Negro policy of the government. He is professor of sociology at Howard University, a government subsidized institution at Washington, D.C. Working with him are the most conservative elements in the Race--exploiters of labor and professional men who cater to white capitalists or gain by the maintenance of the policy of segregation. The committee of seven will function until the next Congress which will be elected by all Negro organizations that wish to Join. Each national organization will be allowed five delegates, with an additional one for every 50,000 members; and state organizations will be represented at a decreased rate. The final shape of the new constitution is being worked out in committee and will be reported in the next issue of the Daily Worker. Labor Seizes Convention The indignation which the delegates have been feeling against the machine control of the convention showed in the tumult of applause that came when labor took the floor in spite of Dean Miller yesterday noon. The chairman was announcing that those interested in labor could talk in a small side room while the convention continued in session in the main auditorium on other subjects. He didn't get away with it. Otto Huiswood, a union printer from New York and representative of the African Blood Brotherhood, called out: Labor Sabotaged "Dean Miller, you have been sabotaging this convention from the first day. You promised labor a hearing before the convention because it was the most important issue. We demand a hearing. Ninety-five per cent of the members of our Race are workingmen." There was a burst of handclapping and an elderly clergyman cried out: "Ninety-five per cent--better say ninety-eight." Miller gaveled and said Huiswood was out of order but members of the audience whose labor sympathies had not been known before began popping up demanding the right of labor to be heard. Labor Defeats Chairman The chairman's opposition was in vain. Speaker after speaker began taking the floor and the audience applauded every attack on the chairman's policy of barring the labor issue.

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Miller gave in and turned the meeting over to a labor discussion--first taking pains to have T. Arnold Hill, of the Urban League, a conservative he had appointed to the labor committee, in the chair. Lovett Fort-Whiteman showed the vital need of unionism among the Negroes. Negro girls are being accepted in the garment industries in place of white girls, he said, not because the employer is favoring the race, but because they are unorganized and can be exploited more. Daily Worker, February 16, 1924. THE BLACK TEN MILLIONS By Robert Minor The first part of this article, "The Black Ten Millions," was published in the previous month's issue of The Liberator (see above). Here Robert Minor assesses the Sanhedrin assembly. While pointing out that the failure of the Assembly to meet the major problems facing the Negro people was due to its bourgeois leadership, it is important to note his qualifications: the· petty-bourgeois character of that leadership, wavering between the bourgeoisie and the working class, and its exclusion on race grounds from a position of full equality in the white world. His distinction between race consciousness in the oppressor and in the oppressed is of crucial importance--having a reactionary content in the former and revolutionary meaning in the latter. His positive approach to the Garvey movement, despite its fantastic aspects, as the first compact mass organization of Blacks is notable. "Such a phenomenon," he writes, "cannot occur without revolutionary effect, no matter what its declaration of aims may be." The Negro Sanhedrin How did the Negro fare in the supposedly great gathering of all Negro organizations, the Negro Sanhedrin Conference just closed in Chicago? All of the above questions were placed before the conference. The outcome of each was as follows: When it came to the question of housing, it became evident that the Sanhedrin conference was heavily dominated by Negro business men. These men are theoretically in favor of the emancipation of their race. And they talk eloquently to this effect. But when Negro working people among the delegates, through a delegate representing the Workers Party offered a resolution calling for legislation by which the Black-belt residence district could be broken up and landlords compelled to rent living quarters at a fixed rental to the first comer regardless of color and independently of the landlord's will, this measure was killed because the Negro real-estate men make enormous profits by confining the Negro tenant to a given district and charging him from twenty per cent more to twice as much as is paid for similar residence by white persons. The Negro had to give up that demand in deference to the Negro real-estate men. When approximately the same working-class elements supported a measure demanding the abolition of separate schools for white and Colored children, on the ground that such separation is but the preparation for a future life of segregation, a Negro school-teacher from Virginia arose and protested excitedly against committing the Sanhedrin to such a measure. The very

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evident and scarcely concealed reason was that he was doing very well in a good job; since he profited by segregation of the Negro race in schools the Negro must remain segregated. The Sanhedrin conference was slightly besprinkled with Negro employment agents connected with the white chambers of commerce. So the Sanhedrin flatly and cold-bloodedly rejected the proposal to organize the millions of 'Negro industrial workers and confined their expression to mild and meaningless phrase about equality in the labor unions for such Negro wage-workers as are already organized. When it came to the question of treating the.Negro as a human being before the law in the most intimate phase of life, the phase of marriage--of course, everyone agreed that the Black and the white race have always mixed and are now mixing, and that laws against intermarriage are merely laws protecting the Southern white man in illicit sexual practices. But when the working-class delegates, through the Workers Party delegation, offered a motion demanding the abolition of the laws against intermarriage,--it turned out that so many of the gentlemen and ladies present had to cater to the good-will of white philanthropists that the Sanhedrin conference had to give up any idea of demanding equality in law respecting marriage. Every su99estion of organizing the millions of Black tenant-farmers and share-farmers who live in virtual peonage in the South was too offensive to the well-dressed business-men and women, so the plan to organize the Negro tenant and share-farmer had to be dropped in favor of a meaningless phrase. A vigorous resolution for organized protection against the Ku Klux Klan, introduced by the (working class) African Blood Brotherhood, was coldly rejected. In short, nearly every measure that the Black Ten Millions require ran headlong into one vested interest or another of the Negro bourgeoisie, and expired, leaving this "All-Race" conference of American Negroes on record practically for the preservation of the present condition of the Negro. Why? Because in this conference the Negro business-man and society lady undertook to be the spokesmen of their people. And the Black Ten Millions have, to a certain extent, consented to let them be the spokesmen. The Negro in America is more or less proud of his bourgeoisie, or thinks he is; he has been trained to think, and he is now being propagandized to think that to have a class of prosperous, well-dressed, limousine-riding members of his race, is somehow to get out of the wilderness of oppression. The outcome of this conference ought to be a flash of light to the toiling, suffering black millions: The Negro bourgeoisie is allied, hopelessly tied up with the white bourgeoisie; the white bourgeoisie ruled the Sanhedrin Conference through its allies, the Negro bourgeoisie. In referring to the ''Negro bourgeoisie," however, it must be remembered that it is, correctly speaking, a petty bourgeoisie, subject to wavering between the capitalist and working classes, as was shown by the strong response to speeches of the African Blood Brotherhood and workers Party delegates. Mass Organization But there is much more to the Negro movement than appeared at this gathering. The great, silent millions who had so few champions there, have not been left untouched by the World War. The stirring of the Black Waters in 1917 started a new spring to flowing--the spring of mass-organization. Many important Negro organizations exist and have existed for a long time. But none of them were mass-organizations.

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The close of the war-period brought a new phenomenon-hundreds of thousands closely organized on a program of militant activity for race emancipation. The new phenomenon took place under the fantastic leadership of Marcus Garvey. The biggest and most remarkable of all Negro organizations, the followers of Marcus Garvey, refused to be represented in the Sanhedrin. This is much to be regretted. One may laugh at this self-styled "Emperor of Africa" and point out the hollowness of his program to "redeem the Ancient Kingdom of Ethiopia" by reconquering Africa for the Negro. Garvey may be what his critics call him: a windbag and self-seeker. But that does not close the question, for this writer. For the fact remains that Garvey organized four hundred thousand Negroes--the first compact mass organization of the race ever formed in the world . . . . Which Way? On what road lies the Negro's way to freedom? Can the Negro obtain free admission into the white bourgeois class, while a society of class superiority and class inferiority continues to exist? Of course it is "theoretically" possible that with the retention of an upper and a lower class, the more prosperous Negro might be admitted to the upper class. But in hard reality: 1 Those Negroes who in spite of all handicaps accumulate property, are not admitted to terms of equality with the white bourgeoisie. 2. In the struggle (inevitable and now going on) between the capitalist class and the working class, the capitalist class never fails to stimulate and use every possible race prejudice-one of its chief means of dividing the adversary-class . . The Negro's fate in America lies in the labor movement, and there it is bound up with the exponents of the new order--the "radicals"--those who are fighting against the skilled labor caste system and broadening the labor movement out to the vast millions equally. But the Negro's fate is a political question. Again we say the Negro cannot free himself from lower-class status, nor from the race-hatreds utilized to preserve the class system, until he helps to overthrow the class system. To get out of the exploited class, the Negro must abolish the exploited class . . . . The Liberator, March 1924.

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III.

RACISM AND NATIONALISM, 1924-1925

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VTH CONGRESS OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL The Vth Congress of the Communist International was held in Moscow, June 17-June 8, 1924. The American Negro question was discussed at the 21st and 22nd Sessions on July 1, under the head of the National and Colonial Question, in itself an indication of how the matter was viewed in the International. Three Communists spoke for the American party: John Pepper, representative of the CI to the American party; Israel Amter, a white party leader; and Jackson, probably the alias of Lovett Fort-Whiteman, then a student in Moscow. Pepper spoke mostly about other world national problems and had only this to say about the American Negro: Comrade Manuilsky [whose report opened the discussion] was right in emphasising the revolutionary significance of the selfdetermina tion slogan. But I think that he paid too little attention to the other side of the question. The other slogan which we need is the slogan of complete equality between nations and even races. In many countries we are not in a position to separate the various nationalities or races in a way which would not rob the slogan of self-determination of its concrete meaning. This applies to the Negro question in America, or rather to the whole national question in the U.S.A., where the proletarians of 56 nationalities intermingle and cannot properly develop . . (Abridged Report, p. 207.) These remarks followed almost word for word the comments in a previous session of H. Thalheimer of Germany who, in his supplementary report for the Programme Commission of the Congress, cited the "extraordinary mixed population" and the race question in the United States to show that "the slogan of the right of self-determination cannot solve all national questions." The Commission agreed, he reported, that the self-determination slogan must be supplemented by another slogan: "Equal rights for all nationalities and races." He also reported that the Commission had decided not to define in the draft program of the CI the concept of nation, for no definition could be found to suit the great variety of situations. (Abridged Report, pp. 151-152.) Aside from these remarks, no further mention was made of this matter by other participants. Jackson's emphasis upon the specific needs of the Negro and the necessity for a special approach to his problem is noteworthy. Comrade Jackson (America): The most significant recent development in connection with the Negro question in America is the migration of Negroes from the south of the United States to the north. During the war they were attracted by high wages, but there is more than a mere economic basis for the migration. It is the expression of the growing revolt of the Negroes against the persecutions and discriminations practiced against them in the south. The effect of this migration to the north is that the Negroes, because of the higher standard of living they find in the north, and because they are unorganized, become the tools of the exploiters against the white workers, whose standard of living decreases as a result of Negro competition. The recent race riots are due directly to this economic development and not to anti-race feeling. 69

The Negro problem is a peculiar [unique) psychological problem for the Communists. The Negroes are not discriminated against as a class but as a race. Even the wealthy bourgeoisie among the Negroes suffer from persecution, and a peculiar Negro culture and peculiar psychology have developed. The ideas of Marx have spread only slowly among the Negroes, because the Socialists and even the Communists have not realized that the problem must be dealt with in a specialized way. The same newspapers do not satisfy the needs of the Negro worker which suit the needs of the white. The same speeches, propaganda, literature, will not suffice. The Negro feels no antagonism to Communism, but wants to know where it will satisfy his peculiar needs. In February of this year a Congress took place where all Negroes of all classes were represented. It was dominated by petty bourgeois Negroes, but the Communists were able to insert a few class ideas into the programme.l The Negroes are destined to be the most revolutionary class in America. But Communist propaganda among the Negroes is hampered by the lack of publicity carrying a special appeal. The Negroes in the south are engaged primarily in agriculture, and an agriculture movement is developing there, which the Communists must exploit to the full. NEGROES AND THE UNIONS The following editorial in the monthly organ of the Trade Union Educational League (see above) stresses the self-interest of white workers to overcome race prejudice and welcome Black workers into the unions on the basis of equality in order to preserve the unions. It squarely blames the exclusion policy for the use of Negro workers as strikebreakers. Earl Browder was then the editor of The Labor Herald. Trade unions that neglect or discriminate against the Negroes (and there are many such in this country) are following a narrow, short-sighted policy that will ultimately lead them to disaster unless it is changed. Leaving aside, for the moment, all questions of the interests of the Negroes themselves (which are an essential part of the interests of the working class), and looking at the matter only from the selfish interests of the unions as now constituted, it is becoming plainer every day that if the labor movement is to be saved from destruction at the hands of the "open shop" campaign, the Coolidges and the Dawes, they must break down the prejudices instilled by capitalist institutions, they must accept the Negroes on a basis of equality, they must organize them into complete solidarity with the white workers, native and foreignborn. It is no accident that in the industries dominated by the most militant enemies of labor, the Negroes are being brought in, in constantly increasing numbers. Because the unions are so short-sighted that they neglect the organization and education of our Black brothers, they are thereby infli~ting deep injury

lThe reference is to the Sanhedrin, see above. Fifth Congress of the Communist International. Abridged Report of Meetings held at Moscow June 17th to July 8, 1924. Published by the Communist Party of Great Britain, London, pp. 200-201, 201. 70

upon themselves. They are forcing the Negroes into the position of strike-breakers. They are delivering a terrible weapon into the hands of the employers. For the preservation of the unions, to defeat the "open shoppers," in order to build up working-class power--the Negroes must be brought into the organized labor movement on a mass scale. All discriminations must be abolished. Every worker must be united in the unions without regard to race, creed, or color. It is time to put our high-sounding principles into effect if we would preserve the trade union movement. The Labor Herald, July 1924 THE NEGRO FINDS HIS PLACE--AND A SWORD By Robert Minor This assessment of the 15th Annual Convention of the National Association of Colored People--which met in Philadelphia on June 25, 1924--was entirely positive as compared with the criticism of the recently concluded convention of the UNIA. The NAACP gathering was noteworthy for its open letter to the labor unions urging the admission of Negro workers and proposing joint efforts to this end. It also gave voice to the revolt against the Republican Party, which since the Civil War had the support of Black voters, and turned toward the LaFollette third party movement, only to be rudely rebuffed. Though Minor sees these moves only as "tendencies" he finds them of "revolutionary significance''--a reading which proved illusory, since the NAACP was soon to revert to moderate even conservative positions. The reference to the "first 'Farmer-Labor' party" is to the National Labor Party, formed in Chicago in 1920 from various state . and local labor parties, and largely the joint work of the Chicago Federation of Labor and the labor militants who were soon to form the Trade Union Educational League. In subsequent efforts to expand this movement, in which the Workers Party participated, a split developed between its adherents and the forces led and influenced by the Chicago AFL leaders. Most of the Labor Party followers swung to the rapidly developing Conference for Progressive Political Action which in July 1924 was to nominate Robert M. LaFollette for president and Burton K. Wheeler for vice-president. That ticket received almost five million votes or over 16 per cent of the total vote. Minor's deprecating remark about the petty-bourgeois politicians of the LaFollette movement represented the attitude of the Workers Party. (For a later self-criticism of the sectarian and self-isolating policy, see William z. Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United States, New York, 1952, pp. 219ff.) In this article Minor seems to revert to the old position on the Negro--a labor-class question with full freedom assured only by socialism--although he himself in other writings had gone much beyond that. He also accepts uncritically the prevalent, exaggerated view of the immediate effects of industrialization in the South, which had not yet basically altered the old economic and social structure or the position of the Negro masses.

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There was wide interest among Negroes in the third party movement. For example, the Baltimore Afro-American (May 30, 1924) wrote editorially: "If there is ever a third party there is little doubt but that it will be founded mainly upon the labor and farmer vote. Into this group the majority of colored voters would naturally fall." Referring to the convention in which the Farmer-Labor party split, the same newspaper (June 27, 1924) bemoaned the fact that the "St. Paul Convention flopped body and soul into the hands of the radicals of the Communist style," seeing the split as dooming third party hopes that year. William Pickens, born in South Carolina in 1881, was dean at Morgan State College in Baltimore, and beginning in 1920 was field organizer of the NAACP for many years. The political storm that is sweeping America today, tearing up old political parties and blowing all things into new lines of class arrangement, has reached the Negro. Anyone who attended the recent fifteenth annual conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People must be convinced that a Black avalanche of twelve million people is about to crash through the landmarks of American political life. To the-already roaring torrent of discontented workers and farmers is about to be added the Negro, who is also a worker and a farmer--and discontented. The final significance of the Negro convention just closed in Philadelphia can be summed up in three points: 1. A mass tendency to break away from the Republican party. 2. A tendency to align the Negro liberation movement with the labor movement. 3. A tendency to discard the half-century-old policy of compromise on questions of race equality, and to plunge into a fight for the complete effacement of the caste system in America. These tendencies, taken together, are of revolutionary significance. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is not a revolutionary organization. Its list of directors contains no Bolsheviks, but ranges from Negro bishops, white reform ministers, colored lawyers, social workers and Republican politicians down to "retired" socialists. Yet this organization has undertaken from its beginning to deal with a problem which has no solution that is not revolutionary. It tries hard to be conservative, and at the same time be consistent in a field where consistency is impossible without bordering close upon the edges of revolutionary significance. This is understood only when we realize that the Negro's loyalty to the Republican party has always meant the Negro's solidarity with the American capitalist class. That alliance with the capitalist class was in the beginning an alliance with industrial capitalism against the semi-feudal southern aristocracy. Historically it was perfectly justified; it was progressive--even revolutionary, in its first years. The great Black statesman, Frederick Douglass, spoke well when he called his people to this alliance; but he left them a legacy which now weighs heavy upon them, in the slogan: "The Republican party is the ship; all else is the sea." And now, the dominant note of the Negro convention is the treason of the Republican party to its ward, the Negro. Starting with an explosive remark of R. J. Coles of Philadelphia, that "If the Republican party is the ship, then I personally am going to take to swimming," the note was taken up by speaker after speaker until it threatened for a time to obscure every other concern. James Weldon Johnson, a brilliant young Negro, 72

coldly analyzed and demonstrated the "gentlemen's agreement" between the Democratic and the Republican parties against the Negro, which he said, and proved, had brought about the defeat of the anti-lynching bill in the senate. Groping for a New Alignment The convention expressed its resentment toward the Republican party by issuing a document suggesting the desirability of forming a new party to be composed of the Negro and "other submerged classes." This action was weak and confused enough; only later events brought out the significance that lies in any effort to form a party of the "submerged classes"--with the Negro in it. But for the moment I speak only of the significance of the Negro's beginning to recognize his problem· as a labor problem . • . The Negro's emancipation can be completed only in the manner in which it was begun; by treating it as a labor class problem. Therefore, it was a bold step in advance when the convention adopted the following: Open Letter to the American Federation of Labor, the Railway Brotherhoods, and Other Groups of Organized Labor "Gentlemen: "For many years the American Negro has been demanding admittance to the ranks of union labor. "For many years your organizations have made public profession of your interest in Negro labor, of your desire to have it unionized, and of your hatred of the Black 'scab'. "Notwithstanding this apparent surface agreement, Negro labor in the main is outside the ranks of organized labor, and the reason is first, that white union labor does not want Black labor and secondly, Black labor has ceased to beg admittance to union ranks because of its increasing value and efficiency outside the unions . . . . "Is it not time, that Black and white labor get together? "Is it not time for white unions to stop bluffing and for Black laborers to stop cutting off their noses to spite their faces? "We, therefore, propose that there be formed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the American Federation of Labor, the Railway Brotherhoods and say any other bodies agreed upon, an interracial Labor Commission. "We propose that this Commission undertake: 1. To find out the exact attitude and practice of national labor bodies and local unions toward Negroes and of Negro labor toward unions. 2. To organize systematic propaganda against racial discrimination on the basis of these facts at the great Labor meetings, in local assemblies and in local unions. "The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People stands ready to take part in such a movement and hereby invites the cooperation of all organized labor. The Association hereby solemnly warns American laborers that unless some such step as this is taken and taken soon the position gained by organized labor in this country is threatened with irreparable loss." The strength of this action of the convention lies in the fact that it is a first historical effort of a modern Negro organization of mass influence, to line the Negro masses up with the new class which is destined to rise to power. The Negro's first step to equality is to attain equality in the organized working class. His second and final step to complete freedom

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will come with the rise of that class, Black and white, to the position of the ruling class. In a little Pennsylvania coal mining town a few weeks ago, a group of Czecho-Slovak and South-Slav coaldiggers worried over the fact that they seemed to obtain no adequate representation in the union's affairs, due to their inability to speak English. Their trouble was finally solverl by a method which, I venture to predict, is prophetic of the future. The foreigners observed that not they alone were the outcasts, but that a little group of Negroes was also ignored and despised. Someone hit upon the idea of an alliance with the English-speaking pariahs--the Negroes. The Czecho-Slovak and South-Slav miners elected a Negro to go as their delegate to the Pennsylvania labor party convention, where the young Negro acquitted himself with honor. This incident brings a sudden realization that the hundreds of thousands of Negroes who are flooding into the basic industries are sure to form a very heavy proportion of the English-speaking workers in the basic industries. For, little as it has been noted, the overwhelming majority of the workers in America's basic industries are immigrants from Europe, most of them suffering from unfamiliarity with the language of the country. And it is exactly these "heavy industries'' which the Negroes are entering now in place of the old-time stream qf immigrants from Europe. The Negro convention at Philadelphia wanted to do something tangible toward aligning its people politically with other submerged classes. Right here it suffered from inexperience; it mistook Mr. LaFollette's convention of the "Conference for Progressive Political Action" for a convention of "other submerged classes." It sent a very dignified official letter to the LaFollette convention. The Negroes were apparently unaware of some history of that small businessmen's organization which they might as well learn now. In 1920, when the first "Farmer-Labor" party was formed in Chicago, an offer of the presidential nomination was made to the pmall-businessmen's leader, Senator LaFollette, on condition that he would agree to the platform. Mr. LaFollette refused the nomination on the ground that he objected to two points in the program. These two points were, 1--a meek demand for "industrial democracy," and, 2--a demand for political equality for Negroes. Mr. LaFollette said his objection to the demand for political equality for the Negro was based solely on the ground of expediency. (That's what they all say.) But the Negro convention, apparently not knowing of the incident of 1920, and not yet having learned that the small-business politicians cannot fight for the "submerged classes," sent the letter to the LaFollette convention. They also sent the same people a telegram on the Ku Klux Klan issue. Second only to the question of the Republican party, in recognized importance to the Negroes, was the Klan issue . . . This had not a little to do with everything else decided upon by the convention, including the question of the Republican party. Still inveigled with old memories of "the party of emancipation," the Negroes had anticipated their convention with a letter to President Coolidge asking him to state categorically his position in regard to the Ku Klux Klan. Coolidge had answered with a homily of campaign buncombe, without a mention of the Ku Klux Klan. If the little man in the White House only knew what a coward he made of himself in the eyes of those assembled Negroes! Smarting under the Republican convention's evasion, and then under the insult from Coolidge himself, the Negro convention sent an urgent appeal by telegraph to the LaFollette convention, as follows: 74

"The Fifteenth annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People does hereby express and record its unqualified protest at the action of the two major political parties in evading specific denunciation of the Ku Klux Klan by name. "We urge the coming third party convention at Cleveland to seize this opportunity for courageous action by denouncing the Klan in unqualified terms and by specific designation. "Resolved that this resolution be telegraphed to the resolutions committee of the convention." Both messages were utterly ignored by Mr. LaFollette's convention! "Yes, LaFollette, yes, LaFollette!" Mr. William H. Johnston as chairman would not permit the communications even to be read to the convention. After its own convention was over the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sent its field organizer, William Pickens, to the Cleveland convention to see to the outcome of its requests. Mr. Pickens quite naturally asked a few minutes to address the convention. There was no obvious reason why he should not have been given the floor. But when Chairman Johnston saw the mahogany face of Mr. Pickens, he merely promised the floor "at some time later on.'' Mr. Pickens sat with the audience, and waited. He waited until he saw that Johnston was steering the convention to a sudden end. . . . The tall Black man arose in the audience, shouting with a voice that couldn't be silenced, "You talk about the other groups? What about the American Negro? I guess the American Negro group has a right to be heard here?"--and, marching down the center aisle, jumped uninvited upon the platform . . . . Mr. Pickens made the mistake of his life; he made an eloquent plea that his race be remembered in this "new" political movement--but he failed to read to the convention the telegram on the Ku Klux Klan. Therefore, the delegates never knew that an important convention in Philadelphia had sent a formal message to their convention on one of the big issues of the day. The Cleveland convention closed with the same position on the Klan issue that was taken by the Democratic and Republican conventions: "Cowardly evasion." A few minutes later I asked Mr. Pickens to dinner. He, because of the color of his face, and I, because I was with him, were virtually thrown out of a restaurant. We wandered about the city of Cleveland, hungry and looking for a place where we could get a bite to eat. I had a taste of one of the petty humiliations that the American Negro, north and south, has to face every day of his life. We might almost as well have been in the middle of an uninhabited desert, until at last we found a humble working class "hashery" where we were permitted the privilege of buying a sandwich. An otherwise trivial incident such as this is necessary to teach a white man that any political movement that is going to awaken the great Negro masses to its support will have to delve into this question which obsesses every hour of the day, every day of the lives of millions. But Mr. LaFollette represents an economic class that cannot become an ally of the Negro. Nothing is plainer than the fact that only the working class can espouse the Black man's cause. The question of class alliances plays an interesting role in the history of Negro emancipation. It can be summed up in three periods: 1. The period of primitive independent revolt. 2. The period of alliance with the northern industrial capitalist class, against chattel slavery. 3. The coming new period of alliance with the working class, against wage-slavery. The Liberator, August 1924.

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Workers Party Salutes Big Race Convention Asks Neqroes to Unite With International Struggle For Class and Race Emancipation TO THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION OF THE UNIVERSAL NEGRO IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION Meeting at Liberty Hall, New York, August, 1924 Marcus Garvey was born in Jamaica in 1887. On return from a stay in England he organized the Universal Negro Improvement Association with the aim of liberating Africa from the colonial powers. He came to the United States in 1916 on the invitation of Booker T. Washington and the following year in Harlem he reestablished the UNIA, which was to become the biggest mass organization among Negroes in the postwar period. It advocated the creation of a strong Black Nation in Africa, and "Africa for Africans" was the slogan of its newspaper, The Negro World. Known as the Garvey Movement and the Back-to-Africa Movement, in its first years it also advocated equal rights, admission to trade unions, defense against lynching and other domestic demands. By 1921, at its second convention, over 25,000 Negroes from the United States, West Indies, Africa and elsewhere attended, and Garvey was proclaimed the Provisional President-General of Africa. At its height in 1924-25 its dues-paying membership was variously estimated as between 500,000 and four million. Strongly rabe-conscious, the Garvey Movement aroused pride in blackness, self-reliance, and defiance of racism--the first mass Black nationalist rising. In 1922 Garvey was arrested and in the following year he was sentenced in a federal court for using the mails to defraud in connection with the Black Star Line, which he set up to transport American Blacks to Africa. After serving two years he was deported in 1927 to Jamaica. He died in London in 1940. The UNIA began to disintegrate in 1925, torn by internal strife following the imprisonment and deportation of Garvey. The following letter of the Workers Party to the convention of the Garvey organization illustrates its attitude of critical support. Without directly mentioning the Back-to-Africa slogan, for example, it urges instead self-determination for the peoples of Africa and a coordinated struggle of American Blacks with Africans to drive out the imperialists. It is characteristic of the general stand of the party at the time to present for consideration at this mass gathering its full program for the overthrow of capitalism and imperialism and the establishment of working class rule. In like manner, it sets the Communist International as the alternative to the League of Nations. However, the main thrust is for the common front of American Blacks with·colonial and oppressed peoples of color throughout the world. The letter notes the retreat of the UNIA from its 1920 progrim with respect to three major issues: the role of the imperialist powers, the Ku Klux Klan, and the labor movement. The latter question was not even on the agenda of the convention. Notably, the emphasis is not only on the labor question, though its central importance is stressed, 76

but on the broader struggle for freedom--"for full and complete equality without reservation or evasion." Pertinent to the evolution of policy, is the use here of the concept of caste to denote the nature of the Negro position in the United States. Such usage does indicate that the simple class position is no longer acceptable. The reference to President Harding at Birmingham, Alabama, is to his speech at that city in October 1921, in which he declared himself and his Republican Party as "uncompromisingly against every suggestion of social equality." It was part of the Republican effort to penetrate the South by identifying with the dogma of white superiority. (See, below, statement of Workers Party on results of Convention.) BROTHERS AND SISTERS, COMRADES:-The Workers Party of America extends to you its fraternal greetings. May your work in this historic convention be fruitful for the liberation of your Race. We live in a world ruled by a capitalist class which for its own purposes cultivates a superstitious belief in the "superiority" of certain races and, within those races, of an upper class supposed to be divinely endowed with the right to rule over all other peoples, especially those of darker color. The great majority of the world's population is composed of peoples of darker color. More than half the world today labors under colonial bondage to imperialist powers whose ruling class considers that men of color exist only to be exploited under colonial regimes. At the same time, within each imperialist nation the laboring class of the population, altho creating all of the wealth of the country, is robbed of its product and exists only to be exploited by the ruling class. Capitalist exploitation for profit is the basis of all colonial and domestic oppression, from which to seek your freedom is your purpose in assembling here. Times of Change But you are meeting in a time of momentous change in the world's affairs. The great imperialist States have had their foundations shaken by the World War and by the breakdown of their economic system, as well as by the great unrest of their working classes and among their colonial subjects. Within a decade three of the mightiest empires have fallen. The world's most terrible autocracy, Tsarist Russia, has crumbled under the blows of its most oppressed class, and upon its rule has been erected a new form of State thru which the "hewers of wood and drawers of water" of the great Russian nation have made themselves the rulers and builders of their own destiny . . The Colonial Upheaval Africa, the great Black continent whose people have suffered for four centuries under the unrestrained violence of predatory government, with its people dragged off to be sold in slavery, its boundless natural wealth held to be the natural loot for foreign aggression, has at last entered upon the period which will see its opportunity for liberation. Asia, the vast yellow and brown continent containing more than half the world's population, is a great cauldron boiling with rebellion. India's 300,000,000 are preparing to revolt against the oppressor. China's 444,000,000 of despised yellow people have at last realized that their only friend among

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established nations is revolutionary Russia, and are preparing to assert their freedom against the imperialist enemies. Likewise the little Negro republic of Haiti, the brown men of the Philippines and the other island peoples of color--all are stirring in the great unrest of today. Under these circumstances the representatives of hundreds of thousands of an oppressed race, coming in a great international assembly, have but fearlessly to face their duty in order to become makers of history. Africa Your duty calls you to struggle against the Imperialists who are looting Africa and subjugating the peoples of that continent. Your determination should be to fight with your Black brothers of that continent for their full and free right to self- determination, with their right to build whatever independent nation or nations they may desire. Not only as a political party within the borders of the United States, but as a section of the great international political party, the Communist International, we stand for driving the imperialist powers out of Africa and for the right of self-determination of the peoples of Africa . . Education We gladly observe that you intend to discuss the question of education from the point of view of rejecting the so-called educational matter prepared by a ruling class for the poisoning of the minds of the Negro youth, teaching the ideas of inferiority and of submission as willing servants of the class which oppresses them. The educational system of this country is one of the institutions by which the system of oppression is maintained. We are confident that you will remember that the real history of the Negro people is not found in the literature of the class-society which regards them as inferior. The Negro must work to establish his own independent educational material, full with the dignity of his race and its noble achievements, with especial emphasis upon its brave struggle for freedom. Negro Political Union Your proposal to discuss the formation of a "NEGRO POLITICAL UNION" is one of highest importance. Political action is action toward taking over the power to rule. Therefore when an oppressed and exploited people boldly and militantly enters this field it is time for tyrants to tremble. You approach this subject, correctly, as both an international and a domestic problem. Your militant solidarity with the oppressed colonial peoples internationally is an honor to your organization. Your apparent determination to make an equally militant fight for the rights of your people in all lands where they now reside, including the battle against the caste system in the United States, will add to the honor which is due you. For he who will not battle for his rights where he is, can win no rights anywhere. The most hopeful portent of the future of the UNIVERSAL NEGRO IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION is to be found in the class composition of your organization. For your membership is overwhelmingly composed of the class which will control the future of all nations--the working class . .

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In Addressing Kings and Presidents We observe in your agenda that you are contemplating sending petitions to "His Excellency the President of the United States," and to "His Majesty King George V, and the Parliament and House of Lords of Great Britain," and to the kings of Italy, Spain and Belgium, and their parliaments, and to the presidents of France and Portugal. Your intended address to these gentlemen whould be on behalf of the rights of the Negro in Africa, America and the colonies. We fraternally suggest to you that, these "Excellencies" and "Majesties'' are the heads of the imperialist powers which are now engaged in pillaging and strangling the darker races of the earth, as wel~ as exploiting and oppressing the working class, of whatever race, at home. Their power is built upon the exploitation of the groaning millions of colonial and working peoples. To ask the king of Belgium to cease murding and plundering the Black people of the Congo is to ask him to cease to be "His Majesty'' and to destroy the vast structure of blood and tyranny of which he is the figure-head, and which largely furnishes the basis of the life of ease and luxury of the ruling class of Belgium. To ask the king of England and his parliament and House of Lords to withhold the whip from the backs of the toiling millions of Africa or India, is to ask them to abdicate and pull down the vast pyramid of empire which it is their function to protect. The same applies to such requests to the rulers of Spain, Italy and Portugal. The president of France can and will do nothing for the Negro; but on the contrary must continue the work of enslaving Africa as the "back yard" of an European empire. The American president can and will do practically nothing for the Negro either in Africa, Haiti or America. If he turns his attention to Africa, it will be only to compete with the Belgian, French and British governments to seize a portion of Africa for exploitation by American financiers, as Haiti, San Domingo and the Philippines are exploited and their people subjected. About the Negro's rights in America, the president will do nothing but to suppress them and to help the southern ruling class to preserve the caste system as an aid to class exploitation, just as his predecessor, President Harding promised to do in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1921. Nor will Mr. Coolidge do anything to help the Negro to leave America, for the American capitalist class for whom the president is the spokesman needs the Negro as exploited wage-slaves or as legions of conscripted soldiers to send throughout the world to die for the ruling class gain, for the subjection of their Black, brown and yellow brothers in foreign colonies or the subjection of the working class everywhere. The Enemies of Your Enemies We suggest that it is not to your enemies that you should direct your appeals, but to the enemies of your enemies--to those who suffer with you and who have a common interest with you in overthrowing your enemies. In this connection we will mention again that there is a class struggle going on within each of those imperialist countries--against those "Excellencies" and "Majesties" and against the ruling class which they represent. In each of those imperialist countries there is a powerful revolutionary working class movement called the communist Party (in America the Workers Party) which has the same enemies as you and the same interest in overthrowing those enemies.

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League of Nations We note that you will discuss the question of sending an appeal to the League of Nations for tur·1ing over to the Negro peoples certain mandatories in Africa, and for amicable adjustments of the race issue and a rearrangement of the system, under which Negroes are governed, and that you will discuss the question of the sincerity of the League of Nations as a clearing house for the ills of the world. The so-called "League of Nations" has from the first day of its inception shown itself to be, not a league of nations, but a league of imperialists to strangle the nations . . . . We trust that your discussion of the League of Nations will result in your reaffirming the position taken in your "Declaration of Independence" adopted by your 1920 convention: "Be it further resolved that we as a race of people declare the League of Nations null and void as far as the Negro is concerned, in that it seeks to deprive Negroes of their Liberty." Communist International We fraternally suggest that there is another international league which is far more potent to give aid to the classes and races struggling for freedom. The League of Nations is the international organization for the purpose of holding down all suppressed classes and peoples. The Communist International is the international league for the liberation of all suppressed classes and peoples. It is to this body that such appeals can more effectively be addressed. At the world congresses of the Communist International the representatives of oppressed colonial peoples and of the working class everywhere come together for the sole purpose of considering ways and means for liberation. Your representatives would find themselves honored guests at its deliberations. The peoples of the world will be led to freedom by the Communist International, over the ruins of the so-called "League of Nations." The American Negro . . . The twelve million Negroes of the United States are no longer the meek, sad, hopeless group, consenting to remain under the yoke of a superior class, which they were supposed to be before the world war. They are now fired with the determination to take and hold their place as the equals of all other men. You, as leaders of your race, meet in the greatest Negro city in the world, the metropolis of the country which is the cultural center of the Negro world. Yet as you meet here today you are not accorded the full rights of men and women in the civilization which surrounds you, as evidenced by the fact that the accommodations of this city, hotels, restaurants and theaters, although partly the product of the industry and the genius of your people, will be largely closed to you as to a lower and despised caste, in disregard of the dignity and importance of your mission. In resentment of such injustice we join you, as well, as in determination not to rest until the last vestige of this caste system is removed. The labor and suffering of millions of Black men and women have been a major factor in transforming a wilderness and building the wealth of this country. This is as much a Negro's as it is a white man's country, and it is the duty of the Negro to claim his equal rights within it.

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Race Problem in South You propose to discuss ways and means of adjusting the race problem of the southern states "to the satisfaction of all concerned." We would not be willing to join in any attempt to settle the race problem to the satisfaction of the southern white ruling caste. We should like, however, to join you in settling the race question to the satisfaction of the Negro workers and the white workers on the basis of exact equality and the complete abolition of the caste system. Ku Klux Klan The WORKERS PARTY observes that you propose to discuss the Ku Klux Klan and that you specify that the discussion should be "without prejudice." This is a subject which is extremely difficult for us to approach without prejudice. We frankly admit that we have been prejudiced against the Ku Klux Klan by the following unquestionable facts: 1. The Klan is devoted to the principle of "White Supremacy," meaning the preservation and further enlargement of a caste system in the United States on the theory that the Negro must forever remain a despised and terrorized caste, subject to murder and pillage as well as inhuman exploitation, without political, social or industrial equality . . 2. The organization based upon this false, unscientific, debased and contemptible attitude toward the Negro, attempts to put its theory in practice by mobbing, hanging, burning at the stake, disfranchising and terrorizing the colored population of the United States, and in communities where the Negroes "form the majority population" as well as where they are a minority. 3. The Klan takes a similar attitude toward, and attempts the same methods against, members of other races and of religious faiths different from their own. 4. The Klan, altho it deludes some workingmen into its support, is in effect a weapon of violence and terror against the entire working class, Black and white, for the benefit of the ruling class. It is a class instrument for the oppression of the working class, of whatever race. In view of the facts regarding the Klan, we trust that you will pledge yourselves with us not to rest until the last vestige of the Klan is exterminated from the land, and until its philosophy of "White (capitalist class) Supremacy" and hatred of the Negro as a lower caste is rooted out. The Negro and the Labor Movement The WORKERS PARTY notes with interest that your program adopted in 1920 contains the articles: "VII. We are discriminated against and denied an equal chance to earn wages for the support of our families, and in many instances are refused admission into labor unions, and nearly everywhere are paid smaller wages than white men,"--and "23. We declare it inhuman and unfair to boycott Negroes from industries and labor in any part of the world." The WORKERS PARTY regrets that the direct question of Negro LABOR, as treated above, does not appear on your agenda this year for further development and for the consideration of concrete plans to win the rights of the Negro in the industrial labor movement. The fact that certain middle-class Negro and mixed organizations have taken up this issue, some assuming the most treacherous and reactionary position and others taking more advanced positions, makes it doubly necessary that your organization should consider this vital question which is more

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pressing today than every before. More than one-third of the Negro people in the United States, since the northward migration, live in cities and towns, a larger proportion of them engaging in industrial labor. Your organization is composed overwhelm- ingly of the best class in modern society--the industrial working class. This is the class which is historically destined to lead in the coming liberation of the world. The WORKERS PARTY fraternally suggests the urgent need of your taking up at your convention the question of the Negro's rights and duties to the Labor Movement, and discussing it on the basis of the primary demand for full social, political, and industrial equality of all races, and the solidarity of the working class. On this basis we will promise you our most energetic support. We should especially like to coordinate our efforts with yours in a drive to open the doors of all labor unions (or such of them as now discriminate) to the full and equal admission of Negro workers, with the demand for equal wages and no discrimination in obtaining work and, further, in a plan for the complete organization of Negro labor with the white workers in the same unions. This involves the need of educating the white workers to eradicate the influence of capitalist propaganda which purposely plays each race against the other. We stand uncompromisingly for the right of Negroes to engage in industrial or any other work on an equal basis with white workers. Crystalizing of Class Lines We take the liberty of reminding you that the drawing of class lines within the Negro race is an inevitable historical fact, bound to be more and more evident as the struggle sharpens. This is already shown by the numerous cases in which prominent Negroes have for their own sordid interests gone into the service of the ruling class and are cast as purveyors of "Negro support." We find colored politicians slavishly serving the governmental and political machine which represses their people. We find Negro teachers who deliberately attempt to defend the segregated school system on the servile theory that only in "Jim Crow'' schools can Negroes teach, instead of taking the manly stand that Negro teachers have the right to teach in any school and that color discrimination in schools but lays the foundation for all of the future "jim-crow" existence of the Negro. We find Negro real estate speculators deliberately supporting the segregation of Negroes in "black belt" districts to give themselves the better opportunity to exploit their own peple at exorbitant rents. Worst of all, we find certain Negro leaders trying to demoralize the Negro working class in the interest of the capitalist exploiters. The Religious Question We note that a subject on your agenda for discussion is the religious question. This quite naturally follows from the historical fact that nearly all movements for the Negro's emancipation in the past have been associated ·with religious movements. One of the first phases of the struggle was the movement for the Negro's right to participate in the religious observance of the white race, the earliest forms of Negro slave gatherings and organizations were of religious nature. It was no accident that the brave Negro preacher, Nat Turner, was one to organize and lead his people in a revolt for freedom. It was in the logic of history that the early leaders of the Negro people have been preachers. But as your leader, President-General 82

Garvey, has had occasion to point out, the ruling class of this country has not had the interests of the Negro at heart in teaching him the religion of the ruling class. We trust that in your discussion of the religous question, progress will be made toward the realization that the Negro's road to freedom lies not in imitating the beliefs of and institutions of a societythat was built upon his subjection, but in freeing himself from all superstitions and embracing modern scientific thought. The WORKERS PARTY OF AMERICA greets you. Brothers and Sisters of all lands, wishing the utmost success to the struggle of your Race for freedom. THE WORKERS PARTY OF AMERICA, WILLIAM Z. FOSTER, National Chairman, C. E. RUTHENBERG, National Executive Secretary Daily Worker, August 5, 1924. WORKERS PARTY DELEGATES ADDRESSES U.N.I.A. CONVENTION Mrs. Olivia Whiteman was a delegate of the Workers Party to the Fourth UNIA Convention. Two speeches she gave there are given below. The first was a plea to stand up for Negro rights in the United States, and the second asked for reconsideration of a resolution adopted by the Convention appealing to Governors of Southern States. She objected to the statement in the resolution that Negroes do not want social equality. Negroes in America must stand firm for the redemption of Africa from the imperialists who are oppressing it, but in doing so, they must not let themselves become a weak and submissive people here in this country. I cannot see how men, millions strong, who will permit their rights to be deprived and their initiative crushed, will ever survive long enough to protect the great wealth of Africa, whose wealth any country will put up a strong battle to hold. Don't ever think that Negro liberty can be redeemed by a submissive spirit. It is going to take men with experience and training in courage and backbone to claim their own. Men who do not stand up for their rights here, when they start off for Africa will find it a little late for training. In order to have an army of men worthwhile, it is necessary to have a first-class training camp. Train them here in contending for their rights here. When such men go to Africa, they will be able to stand on their own whatever the storm may be. I note a tendency here by some delegates to address their appeals to preachers instead of to the masses of Negro people. The preachers are a group of persons who have always known the oppressed condition of the Negro, and to my mind they have always given their official blessing to slavery and have always supported the government which oppresses my people. Colored women are compelled to endure special mistreatment in this country. Whether we be in Alabama, Mississippi, Illinois, or New York, we must take a definite and independent stand against permitting Negro women to be deprived of their rights and proper respect. Daily Worker, August 15, 1924. I make this request because I notice for one thing that the resolution says that the Negroes do not seek social equality. Now I don't think there is a man or woman here who does not think that he or she is the social equal of any white person on earth--or at least I hope there is no such person here. 83

I for one indend to fight for the equality of my people--any kind of equality, and every kind of equality, everywhere-including social equality. I am not a Republican, as so many Negroes here. And I am not a Democrat. I am a Communist, a member of the Workers Party. And in that political party we believe in and practice the dignity of the Negro people as the equals of anybody. As a Communist I could not give my consent that the Negro should give up his demand for social equality, or to consent to any limitation of the equality of the Negro. "Social equality?" Well, what is social inequality? That means Jim Crow! That means being kicked and cursed around as an inferior, and being exploited more and paid less than the white person, and lynched if we don't get off a sidewalk for some bully with a white face. I think we are obliged, for our own dignity, to reconsider this matter. I also think the resolution is mistaken in being addressed to the southern authorities instead of Negroes. Daily Worker, August 19, 1924. WORKERS PARTY CRITICIZES UNIA FOR FAILING TO TAKE STAND AGAINST KLAN The following communication was sent to the UNIA Convention by the Central Executive Committee of the Workers Party over the signature of William Z. Foster, National Chairman, and C.E. Ruthenberg, National Executive Secretary. It asked for reconsideration of the Convention's resolution on the Ku Klux Klan which stated that the Convention "regards the alleged attitude of the Ku Klux Klan to the Negro as fairly representative of the feelings of the majority of the white race towards us, and places on record the conviction that the only solution of the crucial situation is . . the securing for ourselves as rapidly as possible a government of our own on African soil." After citing the resolution, the lengthy statement continues: Before passing the foregoing resolution, you defeated a substitute proposed by Mr. Wallace which provided "that the brutalities and atrocities perpetrated upon the members of the Negro Race by the Klan be condemned." The debate indicated that this substitute was defeated partly because it stated plainly that brutalities and atrocities are perpetuated by the Klan, while the second resolution passed speaks only of such brutalities and atrocities "alleged to be perpetrated" by the Klan. From the foregoing facts it is evident: First - That the Universal Negro Improvement Association offers the Negro people no program for meeting the atrocities of the Klan in the United States, except the plan for securing a government in Africa. Second - That the Universal Negro Improvement Association refuses to say that the Ku Klux Klan is guilty of crimes against Negroes. The Workers Party of America, composed of Negro and white workers alike, fraternally requests you to reconsider the above action. We believe that if this convention fails to make an outright attack upon the Klan, boldly accusing it of its crimes against the Negro people and laying down a concrete plan for combatting it, that such a failure will work untold injury to the Negro people and to the working class generally. We believe, furthermore, that your failure officially to declare your enmity 84

to and your determination to fight against that organization will result in weakening the struggle of the colored peoples throughout the world against their oppressors . . . . The terrorizing of the Negro in America is not simply a local matter, to be dealt with opportunistically, but it is a part of the world-wide effort to degrade the Negro and to establish the "principle" that he is inferior." Any surrender to or conciliation with the Klan here will only serve to demoralize and discourage the fight against race and class oppression throughout the world. Don't Demoralize the Fight We are fully aware that the best members of your organization know perfectly well that the Klan is no friend of the Negro, but that it burns, hangs, tortures and terrorizes Negro men, women and children. In the debate Mr. Sherill, even in supporting the resolutions, pointed out that the Klan is no friend of the Negro, and that to state otherwise would be both untrue and cowardly. We know furthermore that no matter what position this convention may take on the subject, the American Negro will have to fight the Klan. What Does the Klan Want of the Negro? There are some who think that because the Klan hates the Negro, the Klan will be glad to get rid of the Negro by encouraging large migrations to Africa. To any who may think this way, we say that the Klan hates the Negro, not to get rid of him, but to keep him working in the cotton fields and the work shops, and to suppress any aspiration the Negro may have to escape exploitation. We warn you that the Klan's hatred of the Negro has an economic basis. The Klan is an expression of the American capitalist class, or at least of the petty capitalist class, and it is utterly unable to act in any way that is not in the interest of capitalism. It is entirely possible that the Klan anti-Negro organization may make promises of friendliness to the emigration of Negroes from America. But if the Klan does so it will be only to induce the Negro to give up the fight for his political, economic and social equality. What of Africa? The rights of the Negro in Africa are not free for the taking. They have to be fought for, no less than the rights of the Negro in America. The African continent is now under the brutal domination of the most powerful capitalist governments on earth . . Is it, then, possible that these predatory governments would permit or encourage a migration into Africa of a large number of Negroes going there for the purpose of winning their own nationhood and freeing the millions of African people from the exploitation of these very powers? . . . The Ku Klux Klan will not help you destroy its father and mother, capitalism and imperialism. It will fight you. You must fight it . . . . On behalf of the Negro workers and white workers and workers of all races who are members of our party, we most earnestly request the convention of the Universal Negro Improvement Association to reconsider the resolutions which were passed on the subject of the Ku Klux Klan. We ask you, for the sake of not betraying the Negro Race and the class to which you

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and we belong, to Klan and all that determination not exterminated from

declare your undying antagonism to the Ku Klux it stands for, and to join us in the to rest until the last, filthy trace of it is this country. Daily worker, August 23, 1924. (Abridged.) THE NEGRO IN AMERICA By James Jackson

The following article and editorial comment on it, appearing in the magazine Communist International, again illustrates that the Third International offered a tribune from which American Blacks could discuss frankly the problem of racism as it affected the party. The author, James Jackson, is unidentified, but it is the name used by Lovett Fort-Whiteman in Moscow. The author emphasizes the "general social grievances of the race," and finds that Communist influence among Blacks is weak because "the Communists have not recognized and accepted as a starting basis the peculiar social disabilities imposed upon the race." The editorial comment agrees that middle class Blacks as well as Black workers are persecuted, and ' urges a two-pronged approach: fighting race prejudice among American workers while fighting for full equal rights for Blacks. The Communist International was the monthly journal of the Executive Committee of the Communist International . . The coming of the Negro into the Northern industries has been responsible for much friction between the white and Black workers. The Negro migrant being wholly unorganized and finding conditions much better than in his Southern home, though much inferior to those of the Northern white worker, at once becomes a tool in the hands of the employing class to beat back the resistance of organized white workers. The latter, clearly conscious of the tendency of a reduction of his standard of living because of the presence of the Negro, evinces his resentment through physical attacks on the Negro. The series of bloody race riots which have occurred during recent years are basically the result of this conflict of the white and Black worker in the labour market. But of course, this real and fundamental cause is seldom apparent, for the masses of American white workers are so permeated with the virus of race-hatred as a result of their bourgeois ideology, that often the most minor provocation of a race-riot is interpreted as the real cause. This race-hatred between Blacks and whites in America has its origin and growth in the political forms and methods employed by the ruling class to safeguard and promote its economic class interest. This race-hatred on the part of the white masses extends to all classes of the Negro race. A member of the Negro petty bourgeoisie could no more get accommodation in a first class hotel, cafe, restaurant or purchase a first-class ticket in a theatre than the most ordinary Negro worker. In the Southern States, there are separate schools for all Negroes, separate and inferior accommodation for Negroes on tramways and railways, and enforced by State laws. The Negro being of a pronouncedly different race and colour, his complexion becomes a sort of natural badge by which he is at once recognized as historically of the most oppressed and exploited group in American society. All Negroes of whatever class are subject to lynching, Jim Crowism, mob violence,

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segregation, political disfranchisement in the Southern States, etc. And all Negroes are interested and lend support to societies and associations endeavouring to affect the eradication of these particular social evis. Any projected Communist work among American Negroes must take as a concrete basis the general social grievances of the race. The slow growth of Marxism among Negroes has been wholly due to the inability both of the social democrats and the Communists to approach the Negro on his own mental grounds, and to interpret his peculiar social situation in terms of the class struggle. Today the American Negro has evolved his own bourgeoisie, even though as yet but petty. And more and more the lines sharpen in the conflict between the white and Black bourgeoisies. The Negro petty bourgeoisie rallies the Negro masses to him in his struggle against the more powerful white bourgeoisie, and the Negro masses are permeated with the belief that their social degradation flows from the mere fact that they are markedly of a different race, and are not white. It is a waste of time to circulate the same Communist literature among Negroes that you would among white workers, or to make the same speech before an audience of the Negro workers that you would before that of white workers. In the Southern States, the great majority of Negroes are engaged in agricultural pursuits, and at present it is encouraging to note, an agrarian movement is developing for both races. Here the American Communists can find a new field for action. The Negro has always regarded his social problem as a world problem in so far as he has believed that all Negroes the world over have a common cause. The most successful organizations among the race at present with direct aims of improving the political and social status of the Negro are international in their outlook and programme. No organization in the history of the American Negro has stirred the masses as has the Garvey Movement. This is a Negro nationalist movement, with Africa as its objective. It has been phenomenal in growth, overwhelming in its savage steadfastness of purpose. It represents a perfect embodiment of all the pent-up hatred and rebellious discontent towards American institutions. So far the Communist achievements among Negroes are but slight, and this primarily because as above stated, the Communists have not recognized and accepted as a starting basis the peculiar social disabilities imposed upon the race. Everywhere there is increasing discontent within the race. And the Communist Movement cannot afford to overlook the Negro in America, for he holds a large place in industrial life, and if left alone could constitute a tremendous weapon for reaction. EDITORIAL COMMENT ON "THE NEGRO QUESTION" The article written by James Jackson, an emigrant of the oppressed Negro race, is a testimony that our American comrades of the ruling race have not yet been able to approach the Negro question in a right and proper manner, either in their agitation among white workers, or in their work among the Negroes. Negro persecution in America has assumed the form of a race struggle--a struggle of the whites against the Blacks; on the one hand, we find among the persecutors in the white camp considerable sections of workers side by side with the bourgeoisie, who hate and despise Negroes not only as strike breakers, but as people of a lower race. On the other hand, the persecuted in the Black camp include Negro merchants as well as Negro workers. In view of such a situation, race antagonism cannot be ignored as immaterial for a party carrying on the class 87

struggle, and communist propaganda among Negro workers cannot be conducted in the same way as among white workers. This would be merely adopting an ostrich policy, which would be doomed to remaain fruitless. The attitude of our Party in America must not consist in evading the ticklish question of race antagonism in America, but in exposing its class basis. Our Party in America must sound the alarm with respect to the growing race antagonism. It must make clear that it is a product of a society divided into classes, that it serves the selfish interests of the ruling classes, and that it will only disappear when the proletariat is victorious. Negroes were not born with saddles on their backs, neither were whites born with spurs to their feet. Racial persecution made its appearance at the dawn of a class society, it gained in strength during the capitalist development in connection with the development of the colonial policy of the bourgeoisie, and reached its culminating point during the imperialist epoch. It was not a chance occurrence that on the eve of the imperialist war the "racial theory" made its appearance in German bourgeoise science, in accordance with which theory there are lower and higher races even among the white--"the German race" belonging to the latter. The bourgeoisie is, of course, endeavouring to disguise by all manner of means the class nature of racial antagonism. But it is our task to expose this fraud and to smash to pieces the arguments of the followers of all kinds of "racial theories." The fact that Negro merchants are as hated and persecuted as Negro workers is certainly not a proof that racial antagonism has nothing to do with class: although the imperialist bourgeois infringes to a certain extent upon the rights of the native bourgeoisie in pursuance of its colonial policy, the main motive of the latter is--the acquisition of excess profit from the colonists. The champions of the racial theory cannot justify their actions by the fact that Negroes frequently act as strike breakers, and that many of them are corrupt: the bourgeoisie deliberately develops in the Negro masses these slave instincts and traits, and keeps them purposely ignorant. Finally, it must be said that the contemptuous attitude of white workers to the Negroes does not disprove the class character of the antagonism between the white and Black races in America. For it merely proves that a considerable section of white American workers is still under the ideological influence of the bourgeoisie and has been contaminated by bourgeois prejudices against which we must fight with the utmost energy. By ignoring the question of racial antagonism our Party has allowed the Negro liberation movement in America to take a wrong path and to get into the hands of the Negro petty bourgeoisie which has launched the nationalist slogan--"Back to Africa." We Communists must energetically support not only African but all Negroes settled in definite territories in their aspirations for self-determination, namely in their desire to establish independent States and to drive out the colonizers. We must, of course, urge American Negroes to support this movement of their kinsmen. But the slogan "Back to Africa,'' in connection with the 12 million Negroes scattered throughout the United States of North America, which is reminiscent of the Zionist slogan of the Jews--"Back to Palestin~," must be rejected by us as utopian and based on the illusion that there is in the world (beside the Soviet Republic) another such promised land where national and racial oppression does not exist. There can be no such land, since everywhere capitalism reigns supreme. But we must, however, admit that these dreams and illusions of American Negro workers, which weaken their interest in the class struggle of the white American proletariat, are stimulated 88

by the fact that American white workers are still under the sway of racial bourgeois prejudices. Therefore, the main task of our American comrades as to this question must consist in fighting against these prejudices, and in energetic action for full equality of rights regardless of race as well as for the extirpation of all humiliating customs which draw a dividing line between whites and Blacks. It is only under such conditions that it will be possible to draw the Negro masses in America into the general fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Communist International, November 1924, pp. 50-54. OWENS GIVEN OVATION AT CHICAGO RALLY FOR FOSTER Following the collapse of the Farmer-Labor Party and the refusal of the Workers Party to support the LaFollette campaign, the communists ran their own candidate for president, William Z. Foster. He received 33,316 votes in the 13 states where the party was on the ballot. Gordon W. Owens was a member of the Chicago post of the African Blood Brotherhood, an early recruit to the Workers Party, and among the first Blacks to run for an elective post as a candidate of that party. In a letter to the Daily Worker (February 11, 1924) he wrote of the efforts to stop the showing in Chicago of "Birth of a Nation," a racist film about Reconstruction. A tremendous ovation greeted the appearance on the platform of Gordon Owens, a colored comrade, who is running for congre~sman from the first congressional district. For fully five minutes after Owens had been announced, the cheers and shouts of an enthusiastic audience prevented him from speaking. Comrade Owens spoke of the twelve million Negroes in the United States who present to revolutionists a problem that is complex in the extreme. "The great majority of the Negroes are proletarians, but thru the insidious influence of the schools, the press, and false leaders, both Black and white, they have been prevented from becoming class-conscious," said Owens. "Even some of their most influential leaders teach them to look on the Negro problem as a race problem, rather than as the class problem that it really is. "Today all this is changing. The Negroes are leaving the capitalist parties by the hundreds and coming into the Communist ranks. They are beginning to understand that their real enemy is the capitalist, both the Black and the white capitalist, and that their real task is the overthrowing of the capitalist system with its law of hunger, war and death." A thunderous burst of applause greeted the announcement that Robert Minor, one of the party's best known cartoonists, writers and speakers, was to address the rally. Daily Worker, October 13, 1924. NEGROES IN AMERICAN INDUSTRIES By William F. Dunne William F. Dunne, like Robert Minor, early on grasped the importance of the Negro and paid serious attention to his situation. Particularly noteworthy in the following article is the distinction he makes between race prejudice among white workers and the distrust of white by Negroes. He finds the latter fully justified, resulting from the historic oppres- sion of 89

Blacks and their present condition. He holds the white workers responsible for bringing Blacks into the labor movement, especially the Left wing which, he urges, "must carry on a constant and fearless struggle against every manifestation of racial prejudice . . . . As always the Communists must take the lead." He insists on the need to develop Negro Communist leadership. Dunne came from the militant wing of the labor movement. During World War I he led a strike of 27,000 metal workers in Butte, Montana, during which the IWW organizer, Frank Little, was lynched by vigilantes. He participated with William Z. Foster in the formation of the Trade Union Educational League in Chicago in 1922 and was a member of its National Committee. At the Portland AFL Convention in 1923, where he was the officially elected delegate of the Butte labor trades council, he was expelled from the gathering as a Communist--to dramatize the expulsion policy against all militants that was to extend throughout the 1920s. Dunne remained prominent in the TUEL (and later in the Trade Union Unity League), a leader in its principal strike struggles. The Workers Monthly began publication in Chicago in November 1924, as the official organ of the Workers Party and the Trade Union Educational League, with Earl R. Browder as editor. The problem of the Negro in industry as well as in American society as a whole, is a problem created by the background of chattel slavery and intimately connected with its traditions, the propagation of a whole series of falsehoods and fetishes, scientifically untenable, but which by repetition and a certain superficial plausibility, have become dogmas which to question 'means social ostracism in the former slave states--the historical home of chattel slavery whose conceptions of the Negro as a social inferior who menaces white supremacy is the obscene fountain from which flows all of the poisonous streams that carry the virus of race hatred into the ranks of the American working class and the labor movement . . . . The problem of the Negro in history--it is really the problem of the dominant white workers if a white working-class exploited as the American working class is can be termed dominant--must be approached from two viewpoints--that of the Negro and that of the white worker. Both have their prejudices. Both are victims of constant and cunning misinformation supplied them with a deliberate aim and a diabolical cleverness hard to combat. But it must never be forgotten by those who see the danger to the workers of both races and consequently to the whole working class movement, that while the prejudices of the white workers have absolutely no foundation in fact, those of the Negro workers are, although a grave danger to working class solidarity and serious obstacles to organizing work, based upon enslavement, persecution and torture of Black by white since 1619 . . . . Borrowed Prejudices The opinions of the working class in all social epochs up to the immediate period preceding revolution, according to the easily demonstrable Marxian theory, are the opinions of the ruling class. This applies with the greatest force to the opinions held by whites of the Negro. The white ruling class of the south has conspired since the Civil War to deprive the Negro of every economic and political right. The rise of a Negro middle class has been fought consistently, and white workers, imbued with the prejudices of their rulers have been only too 90

glad to have inferiors to whom they could transmit the kicks given their own posteriors by the feudal aristocracy and the rising industrial capitalists of Dixieland. The final argument for the suppression of the Negro, with which disagreement must be accompanied by readiness to defend one's life against both white southern workers and capitalists and the social strata lying between, takes the form of the inevitable question: "Would you want your sister to marry a black blankety blankety blank blank blank?" This is the form into which the hatred and fear of granting equal opportunity to the Negro rationalises itself. It is the sexual motif which lies like a thick and fetid blanket over the whole south, extending into the north as well, but as a thinner fabric in which rents are appearing, rents torn by the inexorable forces of industrial, political and social development in the United States. Into the labor movement itself has been catapulted the monstrous fallacy, promulgated by a decadent fuedalism based on complete subjection of the Negroes that the Black race individually and collectively, lusts with an ungovernable passion for the bodies of white women. This false dogma has been and is used to excuse all overt acts against the Negro on the part of whites when all other excuses fail . . . A volume could be written on this phase of the race question alone but it is enough to say here that in other countries where there are large Negro populations, the sexual question does not arise. In the British West Indies, where the Negroes outnumber the whites 50 or 60 to one, according to the statement of Lord Olivier, formerly governor-general of Jamaica, no case is on record of an attack on a white woman by a Negro. This instance alone is enough to discredit the whole myth of rape of white women as the basis of hostility to the Negro even if there were not available the testimony of competent and unprejudiced investigators who, without significant exception, are agreed that the opposite is true--a pronounced penchant of white southerners for Negro women--the millions of mulattoes are alone proof of the soundness of this conclusion--and that it is extremely doubtful if a dozen cases of attack on white women could be proved as fact in the whole horrid history of the innumerable lynchings of Negroes . • . Is the Negro a "Natural" Strikebreaker? But the discrimination of the unions against the Negro worker is justified by the white workers on other than moral grounds in the north. He is accused of being an incurable strikebreaker and therefore a willing tool of the employers. The influx of Negro workers into industry during the last decade has brought the question of his role in the labor and revolutionary movement squarely before the American working class. The expansion of American industry during the world war and the stoppage of immigration created a great demand for labor. The drafting of thousands of southern Negroes into the army intensified the racial antagonism south of the Mason and Dixon line, tore them loose from their feudal environment and gave them an immensely broader outlook. Increasing persecution in the south and the demand for labor in the north brought hundreds of them into northern industrial centers into contact and competition with white labor. Chicago, Pittsburg, New York, Boston, Gary, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo and Toledo in the industrial east and middle west immensely increased their Negro working class as did cities lying halfway between north and south like St. Louis, Kansas City and Cincinnati . . . •

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Migration to North Chicago is the heart of industrial America and from these figures we can gain a good idea of the magnitude of the problem created for the Negro himself, the labor movement and the Workers (Communist) Party, by a social phenomenon which is well expressed in statistics showing that already in 1920 about 20 percent of the workers in Chicago, the greatest industrial center in America, were Negroes. The influx of Negro workers did not cease in 1920. It continued thru 1921-22-23, and figures made public by the southern state governments show that in this period more than 500,000 Negroes took their scanty belongings and left the southern exploiters to sulk in helpless rage. The Negro has at last found a way to avenge himself on his southern persecutors. In 1924 the number of Negroes "gain No'th" decreased due to the demand for agricultural labor in the south, where several million acres had reverted to the jungle because of the scarcity of labor. The figures on lynching of Negroes in the south for 1924 speak volumes--they show a decrease of fifty per cent with a total of "only 19" Negroes done to death; horrible enough, but eloquent in that they show the increased safety of life and improved treatment in the drop from the 1923 total of 38 as a result of the withdrawal by the Negroes of their labor. The unions of the industrial north and of southern states like Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia that are rapidly becoming industrialized, can no longer shut their eyes and presume that only in isolated instances will they be called upon to make a decision. One-fifth of the American industrial workers now have Black skins. They are in industry and are going to stay there. Two tendencies show themselves in the labor movement. One is the blind, dangerous and senseless hatred of the Negro workers, encouraged by the unscrupulous capitalists and carried on by the camp followers of capitalism--real estate sharks, prostitute journalists, labor misleaders and all the carrion crew that live on the offal of the system. This is the tendency that brought white and Negro workers into conflict in the Chicago race riots in 1919, in which 23 Negroes and 15 whites were killed and 537 persons of both races injured. The other tendency, mainfested only by the Communist Party and the most intelligent and militant of the workers outside its ranks, is perhaps best illustrated by the white workers who gave their lives in an armed struggle to protect a Negro organizer of the Timber Workers' Union from the attack of gunmen of the Great Southern Lumber Company, November 22, 1919.1 That Negroes were used to break strikes in the meat packing, steel and transportation industries, that they are undoubtedly hard to organize in some of the existing unions and are in many cases prejudiced against them, complicates the situation, but it no more proves that the Negro is a natural strikebreaker than the seduction of Negro women by white men proves that the whole male white race is engaged in this pastime. The fact that in those occupations and industries where there are functioning labor unions and where there are any

lFour white officials of the Timber Workers Union were killed in Bogalusa, Louisiana, when they protected a Negro organizer against company thugs. 92

considerable number of Negro workers, but little complaint of the attitude of the Negro workers is heard, is proof that Negro workers can be organized successfully. In the United Mine Workers of America there are not only hundreds of Negro coal miners but Negro organizers as well; in the Teamsters' union, the Building Laborers' union, the Longshoremen's union, organizations that have something of a mass character, there is practically no color discrimination and none of the racial prejudice found in other unions of the purely craft type. This brings us again to the two principal reasons for the lack of organization among the Negro workers. They are: 1. The baseless prejudice of the organized white workers caused by: (a) Artifically created racial antagonism-- sexual jealousy fanned by the constant stream of propaganda, belief in the mental inferiority of the Negro, etc. (b) The belief that the Negro worker is a natural strikebreaker as a result of his use as such in strikes of longshoremen, packinghouse workers, steel workers and other strikes. (c) The distrust of the organized workers of any new element in the ranks of the working class (the Negro inherits the labor union prejudice formerly displayed against the foreign-born worker). 2. The Negro workers coming into industry are peasants with the lack of organizational experience characteristic of peasants the world over and with all of the ignorant peasant's suspicion of the city worker. (a) Under the very poorest conditions in industry they have better wages, better food and better living than they have ever experienced before; they must acquire an entirely new standard of comparison before they are interested in unions. It must not be forgotten in making any estimate of the importance of the first reason given, that of the whole American working class, numbering approximately 28,000,000, less than 4,000,000 are organized, and even though we broaden the definition of "union" to include many organizations that are not unions at all in the correct sense of the word. The weakness of the labor movement is an important contributing factor to the unorganized condition of the Negro workers . . . . In the south, in 1910, 78.8 per cent of the Negro population lived in rural communities and 62 per cent of all those employed were in agriculature. The peasant character of the Negro migrants is therefore clearly established and no one who has had any experience with American farmers and agricultural workers at the time of or soon after their transplantation into industry, will be inclined to blame the Negro peasant who is in process of becoming an industrial worker, for his lack of interest in unions. If in addition to the well-known difficulty of organizing farmers from the northern states, who in bad crop years have established quite a strike- breaking record of their own, we take into account the fact that the agricultural south is comparable to the last years of feudal society in Europe; that in the state of Mississippi as an example, the amount until recently allotted to the public schools was but $6 per capita, we gain a larger insight into the background of the overwhelming majority of the Negroes who came into industry since 1915. It is useless to rail at workers who are the product of such an environment as this. There must be understanding and the patience which can come only from understanding. Upon the white workers rests the responsibility for bringing the Negro workers into the class struggle. When the 93

white workers rid themselves of their ruling class-inspired prejudices, when they see the Negro worker not as an enemy but at as ally, when they realize and acknowledge in tones that can be heard by the Negro workers (and by the capitalists who profit from and foment division of the races), that the Negro workers are necessary for the victory in both the daily struggle and the final victory over capitalism, the task of organizing the Negro workers will be found to be not so difficult after all. In every union the left wing must carry on a constant and fearless struggle against every manifestation of racial prejudice. The militants must be prepared to challenge the trade union bureaucracy on this issue just as they have on the general questions of policy and tactics of the labor movement and as always the communists must take the lead. The work among the Negroes in industry must parallel the work done in the unions of white workers, but for some time it will be of a more elementary character and can only progress as the Negro workers can be shown by concrete instances that the American labor movement wants them as equals and because they are workers. The Negro workers must be shown that the Workers (Communist) Party is the only party that fights their class and racial struggle uncompromisingly and without counting the cost. They must be shown by actual activity that the Communists-are the foe of every enemy of the Negro worker whether he be Negro-hating trade union official or capitalist. Like the white workers the Negroes are victimized and misled by the middle class. There is nothing more despicable in American life than the Negro business man, the Negro preacher, the Negro politician and the Negro journalist who smirk and grovel to the white tyrants and who teach the men and women of their race that the way to secure concessions and recognition is by servility and meekness, by trying to outdo the white man in smug respectibility. It is a matter of record that some of these traitors have sold their followers into industrial slavery by means of fake unions which were nothing but scab agencies. These two-time betrayers--betrayers of the Black race and betrayers of the Black working class--must be fought and discredited and this will have to be done by Negro Communists, revolutionary Negro workers who understand both the racial and class issues in the struggle. The Workers (Communist) Party must train Negro organizers and Negro writers so that as the labor movement is forced by economic pressure to organize the Negro workers, the Negro workers, acquainted by these leaders of their own race with the true role of the labor movement, can become a tower of strength to the revolutionary elements within it . . . The task that confronts the American Workers (Communist) Party, in organizing the Negro workers and rallying them for the daily struggle and the final overthrow of capitalism side by side with the white workers, is no light one. On the contrary, it is a difficult and dangerous job. No one who does not appreciate this fact should be allowed to come within a thousand miles of the work. It is something that cannot be expedited by undue optimism nor can the work be furthered by magnifying to Negro comrades the mistakes of the party and exaggerating its present strength and abilities. Ill-balanced comrades who know little of the role of the Negro in American industry and less of the labor movement, comrades who appear to think that the whole problem centers around the right of the races to inter-marry, whose utterances give one the impression that they believe the labor movement a product as it is of historical conditions in America, is a ' conscious conspiracy against the Negro workers, comrades who 94

without thought of possible consequences would have the party begin immediately the organization of dual independent Negro unions, such comrades as these are useless in this work. There are two things necessary before we can mobilize any great number of Negro workers for our program. The first is the development of some Communist Negro leadership. The second is a point of contact with the Negro masses . . . . There must be established as soon as possible a Communist Negro Press as a vital part of the party machinery. The existing Negro press is feeble when it is not actually traitorious. The problem of the Negro in American industry has taken on an important international aspect . . . . From among the American Negroes in industry must come the leadership of their race in its struggle for freedom in the colonial countries. In spite of the denial of equal opportunity to the Negro under American capitalism, his advantages are so far superior to those of the subject colonial Negroes in the educational, political and industrial fields that he is alone able to furnish the agitational and organizational ability that the situation demands. The American Communist Negroes are the historical leaders of their comrades in Africa and to fit them for dealing the most telling blows to world imperialism as allies of the world's working class is enough to justify all of the time and energy that the Workers (Communist) Party must devote to the mobilization for the revolutionary struggle of the Negro workers in American industry. The Workers Monthly, March-April, 1925. (Abridged.) THE RACIAL QUESTION IN SOVIET RUSSIA By Lovett Fort-Whiteman This article was written shortly after the author's return from Soviet Russia where, by his own account, he spent eight months in travel and study of the situation of the peoples formerly oppressed by tsarism. He finds a similarity between such tsarist oppression and the conditions of Blacks in the United States, especially between them and the Jews of Russia, and is struck by the absence of racial hostility under the Soviets. He also makes a parallel between the oppression of Negroes in the United States and of colonial peoples in general under imperialism, particularly in the arrogance and feeling of racial superiority induced by imperialism in the working classes of the dominant race. There was no country in the world more harrassed with racial problems than Russia before the revolution. In the Crimea, it was Tatar against Turk; in the Caucuses, Georgian against Armenian; in the Ukraine, Gentile against Jew; and in Asiatic Russia, Moslem against Christian. It might be said that the Jew was the Negro of Russia, insofar as the Jewish question exhibited in its general outlines many features common to the Negro problem of America. Under the czarist regime, the Jew was not permitted to live in the larger and important cities of Russia, and in only a few places was he permitted to carry on agricultural pursuits. A fundamental measure of the czarist policy toward the Jewish race in Russia was that of segregation, and thus the Jew was confined to what was called the Pale Settlement, a strip of territory on the Austrian border. 95

The Jew was subjected to periodic wholesale lynchings, termed in Russia "pogroms." No Russian of reputed respectability would patronize a cafe that served Jews. The Jew was in every sense of the term a pariah in Russian society. In Asiatic Russia, particularly in Turkestan, the native people were not given equal accommodations on tramways, in theaters, in restaurants, etc., nor were adequate school facilities afforded them. No Moslem native was permitted to live in what was known as the European section of the cities in Turkestan. Of the many racial groups within the old Russian empire, each and every one had its social problems. Racial maladjustment was an outstanding fact in the social life of old Russia. But following the proletarian revolution, the Bolsheviki approached these racial problems with a directness and a scientific understanding such as characterizes the statesmanship of no other country in the world. Wherever the Jew, prior to the revolution, was strictly segregated and ostracized from the full life of the nation, today he has become a complete integer of national life. He lives wherever he chooses, and the question of the Jew no longer constitutes a subject of political discussion. In respect to the races of the Caucuses, of Crimea, and of Eastern Russia, which constituted colonials within the old Russian empire, the recent territorial realignment made by the Soviet government has meant the creation of a number uf republics in which each of these races may enjoy group autonomy as a solution of the national and racial problems and the means by which every trace of racial friction is obliterated. The native race of Turkestan is the Usbek people, but since October, Turkestan has been converted into what is known as Uzbekistan. An Uzbek race which, before the revolution was subject to the most repressive policy on the part of the czar, finds itself today a quite free and independent and a politically important people. The Kirghiz people, a nomadic race of the Russian steppes, have for themselves a Kirghiz republic. The Turkomans, of middle Asia, have their republic. The Armenians, who have suffered much both under the sultan of Turkey and the czar of Russia, have their own republic. It is the same with the Tatars, the Georgians, etc. These many republics do not stand alone as small political entities, isolated from the larger and more developed Russian life, but together they constitute the Russian Federation of Socialist Soviet Republics, or the Russian Union of Socialist Republics . . . . A prime motive of my trip to Russia was to ascertain to what extent the Soviet system of government was able to effect a solution of the many vexatious racial problems of old czarist Russia. My eight months stay in Russia, attended with travel and study, has rendered me thoroughly convinced that the solution of the Negro problem in America is possible only after the revolutionizing of the American social order. Race prejudice is not an inherent thing in the mental makeup of the individual, but springs from the capitalist order of the society . . . . It is probable that no colonial people suffer the weight of imperialism to the extent that the Negro does~ whether he be in the new world or in Africa. If we look at the map of Africa, we note that there are only two free and independent Negro states--the Republic of Liberia on the West coast, and the Abyssinian empire on the Eastern coast. The rest of Africa has been.parcelled out among the imperialist nations of Europe, and we find Portugal politically responsible for territory in Africa twenty-one times the size of Portugal itself; Belgium with territory almost forty times its size; and Britain and France

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ruling far more Black than white men, all in all. This is an unnatural situation and certainly cannot continue. The extent of the power of any given imperialist state over the darker races may be a fine measurement of the extent to which racial problems obtain within that particular state, for in the very nature of imperialism the working class of the dominant race assumes an attitude of arrogance and racial superiority towards the colonial peoples in that state . • . The American Negro has never been contented under his social conditions; he has begun many movements with the definite aim of his social uplift. The outstanding social abuses always uppermost in the mind of the Negro masses are those of lynching, Jim Crow-ism, residential segregation, political disfranchisement in the South, industrial discrimination, etc. His reformist organizations are directed primarily towards the removal of these social inequalities. But we find that those who direct the fate of the race are themselves so involved in the interests of the ruling class of this country that they, out of self-interest, are always compelled to limit their actions. Race riots, lynchings, racial hostility in general between the Black and white worker are conditions conducive to the maintenance of the system. The Negro petty-bourgeois leader, the Negro intellectual, have betrayed the interests of the working class of the race time and time again. And if the Negro is developing at this time a real revolutionary group, it is because more and more of the members of the race are coming to see that freedom and the solution of the Negro problem can only come through a mass movement on the part of the Negro working class. The Negro proletariat holds the key of salvation of the race. The Communist society of the future alone will save the race, and it will be in the new society only that the inherent and native power of the race will be enabled to bloom forth in full fruition, and the Negro to give his true and real worth to human progress. The Workers Party is the Communist Party of America, and it is the logical party to which the Negro race should ally itself, for it alone is the only party which can propagate the idea of equality for all peoples. Daily Worker, May 7, 1925. RESOLUTION OF PARITY COMMISSION The following resolution was unanimously adopted by the Parity Commission for submission to the National Convention of Workers (Communist) Party to be held August 21, 1925. The Parity Commission was established on the advice of the Communist International in preparation for the forthcoming convention in an effort to overcome the sharp factional struggle in the party, which arose to a great degree from differences over the Labor Party and the La Follette movement during 1922-24. The Commission was composed of three each from the Foster-Bittelman group and the Ruthenberg-PepperLovestone group, with a CI representative as chairman. Both groups were given equal representation in the new Central Executive Committee approved by the convention, although the Ruthenberg faction managed to retain the key posts. (See Dunne's discussion of the Parity Resolution below in "Our Party and the Negro Masses.") The Resolution given here is the most comprehensive statement of the party position on the Negro question during that period.

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The Negro Industrial Worker . The tremendous transformation among the Negro masses resulting from the world war and after war conditions, with the heavy migration of Negro agricultural laborers and tenant farmers into the cities and industrial districts, has placed the Negro definitely in a new position in relation to the American labor movement. From being a sectional question, the Negro problem became a national question. From being a secondary factor in industrial labor, the Negro moves into the position of a great mass, employed in basic industries, and already in notable strikes in the coal fields, etc., he has shown himself eminently fitted for the front ranks of militant organized labor. The question of the full and unstinting admission of the Negro to the trade unions is placed more sharply than ever before at the door of the trade unions. The constitutions of many of the trade unions exclude the Negro from the unions. In the case of those unions which have no such provisions in their constitution, the Negro is nevertheless discriminated against. The increasing pressure of the Negro worker for admittance into the trade unions is an instrument for profound revolutionary change in the labor movement. It is no accident that the "Gompers" bureaucracy opposes the entry of the newly industrialized Negro proletarians into the trade unions. As an important and growing part of the most exploited section of the proletariat which does not share in the miserable bribes with which imperialism poisons the upper section of the working class, the mass of Negro industrial workers is objectively and potentially a part of the left wing of the labor movement. In those unions into which the Negroes are being admitted, for instance the coal mining unions, the teamsters, longshoremen, building laborers, janitors, etc., the Negro plays an important part in strengthening the militant section of the working class. The obstinate failure to organize the general mass of unskilled proletarians, whose entry into the labor movement would serve as a further basis for proletarianizing the ideology of the trade unions and revitalizing the class struggle, is a part of the general service which the trade union bureaucracy contributes to its capitalistic masters. And the failure to make a clean sweep of all obstacles to the Negroes' entry into the unions is an especially significant part of this service to capitalist reaction, for race prejudice of the white worker against the Black worker is today more than ever a powerful weapon against the solidarity of the working class. The cause of the Negro in the labor movement is essentially a left wing fight, and one which must energetically be championed by the Workers (Communist) Party. Our party must make itself the foremost spokesman for the real abolition of all discriminations against Negroes in trade unions and for the organization of the as yet largely unorganized Negro workers in the same unions with the white workers on the basis of equality of membership, equality of right to employment in all branches of work and equality in pay. Our party shall bring pressure on the unions thru the activity of our Communist fractions among the Negroes already in the unions, getting them to fight militantly for the abolition of the color line and by the activity of the whole left wing forcing the abolition of all racial discrimination. Our party must work among the unorganized Negro workers destroying whatever prejudice may exist against the trade unions which is being cultivated by the white capitalists, the Negro petty-bourgeoisie, and the opposition of the reactionary bureaucracy as such, and must arouse them to demand and fight for admission. Our aim must be

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to show to the white workers that only by complete solidarity of the races can any progress be made by either and to show to the Negro workers that in spite of the anti-Negro character of some unions that in those unions where Negroes are admitted the racial question has been liquidated to the largest degree. Our demand is for the inclusion of the Negro workers in the existing unions, as against racial separation, as against dual unionism. Where Negroes are not permitted to be in the existing "white" trade unions, it is the duty of the Communists to take the initiative in the formation of organizations of Negro workers declaring in principle against dual unionism and against racial separation, and declaring as a primary purpose the struggle for admission into the existing unions, but functioning as full-fledged Negro unions during the struggle. The Negro Tenant-Farmer and Agricultural Worker Eight million Negro agricultural workers, share-croppers and tenant farmers live in the southern states in a condition in some respects resembling the serfdom of Europe two hundred years ago. Agricultural laborers are forcibly held in compulsory labor under corporal punishment. Tenant and share farmers are bound to the earth, by force prevented from leaving a locality where they are adjudged to be in debt to landlords who exercise the rights of feudal masters. A racial caste system, remaining from the chattel slave period, sharply divides the exploited masses into Black and white, thus facilitating the most cruel exploitation. Political rights are practically withheld from the Negro laborer and farmer. It is the duty of our party to take the initiative in organizing Negro agricultural workers into labor unions, together with white agricultural workers if possible, but separately if unavoidable, and to bring such unions into the general labor movement. Another supremely important duty of the party is to promote the organization of Negro tenant farmers, sharecroppers and small farmers generally (together with white farmers of the same exploited class if possible) and to bring such organizations into cooperation as allies of the labor movement. The Negro and the Labor Party The task of the Communists among the Negro worker, as elswhere, is in its first stage to bring about class consciousness and to crystallize this in independent class political action against the capitalist class. The profound social changes of the war and post-war period have already shown indications of a partial exodus of Negro masses from the Republican party, and this represents a break with tradition, a visible evidence of the beginning of the end of the alliance of the Negro with the capitalist class. The labor party slogan and campaign possesses a peculiar usefulness in the work of bringing the Negro workers into the economic as well as the political labor movement. We shall advance the idea of the Negro workers taking an initiatory and leading part in the formation of the labor party. With this in view we shall in every labor party action prominently raise the issues of discrimination against the Negro politically, industrially, and in public customs. The disfranchisement of the Negro in the Southern states must be made an especially urgent reason for the political organization of the Negro workers thru collective affiliation with the labor party; and the winning of political rights for the Negro proletarians must be placed before both white and Negro workers as an immediate

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objective of the labor party movement and a necessity for giving the workers' political movement its full strength. Negro Membership in the Communist Party It is absolutely essential that greater numbers of Negro workers capable of a leading part in the struggle be immediately drawn into the Workers (Communist) Party. In all of our party actions, all party units must make an especial effort to reach and enlist the most advanced Negro workers into our ranks. In order to meet our problems, it is necessary to draw these comrades into responsible party work. A great significance of our work among Negroes is that it will facilitate the task of enlarging and establishing our party in the southern states, which has become a prime necessity that can no longer be postponed. "Social Demands" of the Negroes All slogans of equality which are current among the Negro masses, or which can be awakened among them, which express the aspirations for equal rights and equal treatment of Negroes in political and economic life and in public customs, are placed among the demands of the Workers (Communist) Party. Such are the demands for political equality, the right to vote, social equality, abolition of jim-crow laws and also jim-crow customs not written into law, the right to serve on juries, the abolition of segregation in schools and the right of Negro teachers to teach in all schools; equal rights of soldiers and sailors in army and navy without segregation in colored regiments, the right to frequent all places of public resort without segregation (hotels, theatres, restaurants, etc.) and the abolition of all anti-intermarriage laws. In the course of the struggle with such demands we will demonstrate through experience that these aspirations can be realized only as a result of the successful class struggle against capitalism and with the establishment of the rule of the working class in the Soviet form. . . . Lynching and Race Riots It is the duty of our party to meet the problem of lynching and race riots, not merely with words of sympathy, but the concrete organizational methods which can be effectively applied. The essence of the problem is to create a united class front of the working class. We shall endeavor to have established in localities where both Negro and white industrial workers are employed, permanent interracial labor committees against lynching, against terrorization of Negro and white workers, against the Ku Klux Klan, against the use of one race of workers against the other in strikes, against inequality of pay, against race discrimination in obtaining employment, for the full admission of Negro workers into the unions with equality of membership rights, for the complete organization of both Negro and white workers into the same unions. It shall be our endeavor to have such inter-racial committees of workers serve as a medium through which the solidarity and co-operation of the working class and all workers organizations can be obtained in terms of crisis such as strikes, race riots, attempted lynchings, etc., to prevent conflicts between the workers of the two races and to prevent lynchings.

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The Negro and the Army With the world war and the conscription of the Negro Youth, resentment of discrimination and other brutal treatment in the army and navy became a major phenomenon among Negro toilers. Out of this mass conception arise many slogans and demands which the Workers (Communist) Party must energetically champion, and which especially the Young Workers League can well champion: The movement against segregation of Negroes in "jim-crow" regiments; against discrimination in the kinds of tasks assigned to Negro troop units; against discrimination against individual Negro soldiers; against the sharp and brutal punishment of whole groups of Negro troops ("24th Negro Infantry" case--13 summarily hanged, 56 imprisoned); against the principle of "white officers for Negro troops"; against Negro officers' failure to defend the Negro troops from discrimination, etc. The customary employment of Negro tro~ps in imperialistic aggression against weaker peoples (Spanish war, the Philippines, and Mexico in 1916) intensifies the duty of the Communists to awaken among the Negro masses a sense of their own relation to the class struggle in the United States and their relation to the present world awakening of the suppressed races; their relation to the new world-wide capitalist slogan of "white supremacy" (as in China); in short an understanding of the international role of capitalist governments and their own role in the revolutionary epoch. Negro Race Movements Partly as a result of the internal transformation among the Negro population in the United States and the West Indies, and also partly as a reaction to the war and the national liberation movements throughout the world (especially the colonial ferment in Africa, Asia, the Philippines, Haiti, etc.), a Negro race movement centering in the United States has been stimulated to large proportions. This movement was first crystallized into organizational form among West Indian working class immigrants in New York and other United States seaports, as well as the British West Indian possessions, but spread rapidly among the native American Negroes, mostly of the working class. Under the name of the Universal Negro Improvement Association a fluctuating membership, at times approaching the half-million mark, was organized. At first it showed distinctly anti-imperialist tendencies, with specific working class demands such as the demand for opening the trade unions to Negroes with equality of pay, etc., as shown in the 1920 program of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. At all times these demands have been confusedly mixed with Utopian conceptions. Rapidly, however, under the leadership of its principal founder, Marcus Garvey, the Utopian pacifist conception that the oppression of the Negro in America and the world could be remedied by the building of a national Negro state in Africa, and that hence the struggle in this country is unnecessary, has become the dominant note of the organization. The exploitation of the Negro masses by demagogic leaders of this organization who copy the arts of the Jewish Zionist movement, soliciting funds from white capitalists on the ground that they will teach the Negro toilers to submit to "white supremacy" (i.e., capitalist supremacy in this country) while officially denying but in fact cultivating the dream of mass migration to Africa, is one of the cruellest aspects of betrayal to which the Black worker is subjected. An intense sympathy with the colonial revolts of the Chinese, the Riffians, Sudanese, East Indian, West Indian and Javanise peoples against imperialism is, however, an almost 101

universal phenomenon among American Negro workers. It exists in a militant aggressive non-pacifist form, not only among some of the rank and file of the before mentioned organization, but also widely beyond the limits of any organized form. This phenomenon is found in its highest development among Negro industrial workers who completely repudiate the cult of submission in America and who conceive their fate to be bound up with the American labor movement • . • • In the Negro race movements and organizations, it is necessary constantly to emphasize the colonial program of the Communist International, pointing out that only with a united world front of all the exploited, only with the conjunction of the proletarian revolution with the revolt of the colonial peoples, can victory be attained. We should encourage the Negro workers to take an interest in and support the movement for freedom of the suppressed colonial peoples. But it is not permissible to encourage the Utopian idea that the Negroes in this country can win their emancipation through mass migration or through the establishment of a Negro nation in Africa. The reformist leaders (Garvey, etc.) do not have a program for the liberation of the Negro peoples throughout the world. The revolutionary movement headed by the Communist International has a program which will liberate the peoples of Africa, Asia, etc. together with the proletariat of the countries. The Communist International, and its American section, is a friend of all liberation movements of oppressed peoples, and opposses only the misleaders and betrayers of the mass organizations of Negroes. Other Negro Race Movements The African Blood Brotherhood, with a program of class struggle combined with a militant championing of the special demands of the Negro workers against racial discrimination, is an organization which has done a pioneer work of considerable value in organizing a militant advance-guard of Negro workers. Otherwise its chief successes have been those cases when it has employed the united front tactics for enlarging its contact with and influence upon wide circles. Our policy in relation to this organization is to have the local organizations merge with the units of the American Negro Labor Congress. In the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Negro Petty bourgeoisie, together with middle class white reformists, and under the partial leadership of the bourgeoisie (such as represented by Senator Burton, chairman of the last Republican national convention) find the chief medium for reformist operations. Yet it is a singular paradox, and a reflection of the now passing period of the patronizing of the Negro's cause by the capitalist class, that this organization at its last convention appeared in the role of championing, though in a timid and "respectable" way, the Negro workers' right to admittance in the trade unions. Even in this organization, under present circumstances, it is permissible and necessary for selected Communists (not the party membership as a whole) to enter its conventions and to make proposals calculated to enlighten the Negro masses under its influence as to the nature and necessity of the class struggle, the identity of their exploiters and their leaders in the same persons, and the treacherous nature of the reformist measures proposed. However, it is only when the Communist work is so broadened and extended in the field of Negro movements as to make our party stand out as the only real champion of the Negro against lynching, all discriminating and all oppression and exploitation, that we can successfully combat the influence of such bourgeois movements.

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The aim of our party in our work among the Negro masses is to create a powerful proletarian movement which will fight and lead the struggle of the Negro race against exploitation and oppression in every form, and which will be a militant part of the revolutionary movement of the whole American working class, to strengthen the American revolutionary movement by bringing into it the 11,500,000 Negro workers and farmers in the United States, to broaden the struggles of the American Negro workers and farmers, connect them with the struggles of the national minorities and colonial peoples of all the world and thereby further the cause of the world revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Daily Worker, June 28, 1925. OUR PARTY AND THE NEGRO MASSES By William F. Dunne The author opens by quoting that part of the Resolution drafted by Lenin for the II Congress of the Communist International which includes the American Negro among the "subject nations," but he makes no further comment on it. He does argue against those who opposed the economic to the social demands of the Negro, holding they cannot be separated since the social demands reflect the reality of the inferior social status imposed by capitalism. In the discussion of the Parity Resolution, it should be noted, the author's emphasis is almost entirely on the role of the Northern Black proletariat while ignoring middle class elements and Southern semi-feudalism. He also takes a more negative attitude to the Garvey movement than others, like Robert Minor. The theses of the Second Congress of the Communist International on the National and Colonial Question drawn by Comrade Lenin, and constituting one of his greatest contributions to the theory and practice of the proletarian revolution, say: "The constant violations of the equality of nations and the infringements on the rights of national minorities practiced in all the capitalist states in spite of the democratic constitutions, must be denounced in all propaganda and agitational activity of the Communist International, within, as well as outside parliament. It is likewise necessary, first, to explain constantly that only the Soviet regime is able to give the nations real equality, by uniting the proletariat and all the masses of workers in the struggle against the bourgeoisie; second, to support the revolutionary movement among the subject nations (for example, Ireland, American Negroes, etc.), and in the colonies." The resolution of the Parity Commission on the question of our party among the American Negro masses gives a practical expression to the theses of the Second Congress and the contributions of the role of Communist parties among colonial peoples and national and racial minorities made by the Fifth Congress in the light of the rich experiences gained since the Second Congress . • • . But between the general tasks as outlined in the theses of the second congress and the goal towards which we drive described in the conclusion of the Parity Commission decision, there is a long series of immediate problems and tasks with which the Parity resolution deals. For that reason, it is necessary that all party members read carefully the resolution and understand it, not as an academic expression of our attitude 103

towards the Negro masses, but as a program which must be followed and given life in our daily work. The Parity Commission resolution points out the leading role of the Negro industrial worker and the important part he plays in the liberation of both his race and the whole working class. Speaking of the one-third of the Negroes who live in cities and towns, the resolution says: "From the Negro industrial workers the leadership of the American Negro mass movement must come." This categorical statement of the Parity Commission Resolution should dispel effectively any tendency to make the Negro rural population the main center of our activity. The Negro farmers, like the white farmers, have a mighty part to play in the proletarian revolution but the hegemony of the national liberation movements which precede it must always be vested in the working class vanguard. The importance of the trade unions as centers for the struggle against discrimination within their own ranks and as weapons in the battle for full social, political and economic equality is emphatically stated in this parity commission resolution. The tasks of our party inside the unions in organizing the Negro and left wing white trade unionists for struggle against racial hatred and the resulting enmity and restrictions, as well as our task in stimulating organization among unorganized Negro workers to force entrance to the unions on an equal basis, are fully stated. No comrade who reads this portion of the resolution can have any excuse for minimizing the importance of breaking down all barriers to Negroes in the trade unions as a major task, and of the tremendous part the unions can play as joint organizations for the struggles of Black and white workers. As in all other important problems of our party, differences of opinion have arisen and discussion has raged over the relative importance of social and economic demands of the Negro masses as the basis for Communist agitation, propaganda and organization. In the heat of the discussion some comrades have lost sight of the fact that the two cannot be separated but inevitably combine into and make up the political demands around which center the liberation struggles of the American Negroes. In other words, the social demand slogans serve to direct the attention of the Negro masses to the concrete facts of the inferior social status forced upon them by American capitalism, and to direct their attention to the class nature of society as the cause of this oppression. It is obvious that social demands vary in importance for the work of our party in proportion to the success of the Negro masses in different sections of the country in securing relief from the more flagrant forms of oppression and persecution. It is necessary that our slogans are not realized simply as random shots but that they are adjusted to the various concrete situations that exist. The correct attitude of our party towards the Garvey movement with its hopeless program of migration to Africa is stated by the resolution in its section dealing with the American Negro Labor Congress: "In connection with the linking of the struggle of the American Negroes with those of their African comrades, the congress should point out the error of holding up Africa as a Negro Mecca. This should serve to correct the tendency, heretofore manifested by some leading comrades, to look upon Garvey as a "natural" leader of the American Negro masses and thereby unconsciously aid his work of confusion and betrayal . . . 104

From among the Negro trade unionists, the unorganized industrial workers and from such organizations at the American Negro Labor Congress, we must draw into our ranks the most conscious and militant of the Negro workers, building Communist leadership as a result of our mass activity . . Our work in this field will require much patience and persistence and we will do well to remember the words of Lenin: "The age-old oppression of colonial and weak nationalities by the imperialist powers has not only filled the working masses of the oppressed countries with animosity towards the oppressor nations, but has also aroused distrust in these nations in general, even in their proletariat. . . . These prejudices are bound to die out slowly, for they can disappear only after imperialism and capitalism have disappeared in the advanced countries. . . . It is therefore the duty of the class-conscious Communist proletariat of all countries to regard with particular caution and attention the survivals of national sentiments in the countries and among nationalities which have been oppressed the longest; it is equally necessary to make certain concessions with a view to more rapidly overcoming this distrust and this prejudice. Complete victory over capitalism cannot be won unless the proletariat and, following it, the mass of working people in all countries and nations throughout the world voluntarily strive for alliance and unite."l Daily Worker, August 13, 1925.

lv.I. Lenin, from "Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and Colonial Questions," in Lenin: Selected Works, International Publishers, N.Y., 1967, Vol. 3, p. 427.

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IV.

AMERICAN NEGRO LABOR CONGRESS, 1925

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A CALL TO ACTION The Call for the American Negro Labor Congress was issued probably in the late Spring of 1925, in accordance with the proposal originating with the Workers (Communist) Party. (See, for example, the Resolution of the Parity Commission, above.) It represents the first significant effort of that party to organize Negro masses, with emphasis upon the working class. Although the Call set "some time in the summer" for the projected Congress, it did not convene until October 25, 1925, in Chicago. Among the 17 signers at least six were members of the party-- Edward L. Doty, H.V. Phillips, Otto Hall, Otto Huiswood, Lovett Fort-Whiteman and John Owens. It is notable that the Call for the Congress, while stressing labor primarily, covered the broad range of Black rights. Today, during the closing year of the first quarter of the twentieth century, we note with pride the world-wide stirring of the darker races against European imperialism. The Riff people of Morocco, in Northern Africa, have signally defeated the Spanish Army and driven the invaders from their soil. The natives of the Sudan are in armed revolt against England's policy of hypocritically pretending to give Egypt her independence and at the same time retaining the richest part, the Sudan, as an organic part of the British empire. In South Africa, the Negro is daily asserting himself, and is throwing the full force of his organizational strength against the unjust measures for his oppression. During recent years, France has endeavored to institute in her Congo possessions in Africa the barbarous "Red Rubber system" of King Leopold of Belgium, but each day increases the rising tide of revolt on the part of the native people. The present conflict in China arises from the organized opposition of the Chinese working class to bold aggressions of the European imperialists. The workers and peasants of India are determined to drive every vestige of British authority from the soil of India. We might go on giving example after example of the growing political self-consciousness of the darker races in other parts of the world and their pronounced determination to free themselves from the yoke of their oppressors. Yet if we stop to think, there is no racial group in the world more borne down by handicaps of social restraint than the twelve million Negroes of North America. And yet the American Negro is not helpless, for today he holds a large place in the industrial life of the country and his chief weapon is his mass organizational strength. Any by virtue of this, the Negro working class alone has the power with which to bring the new emancipation to the race in general. More and more we are coming to recognize this fact. But it means that this particular social force latent in the life of the race must first be mobilized, co-ordinated and shaped into a great national medium expressing the social, political and cultural aspirations of the race. The idea of the American Negro Labor Congress is to bring together the most potent elements of the Negro race for delitleration and action upon those most irritating and oppressive social problems affecting the life of the race in general and the Negro working class in particular. The Negro race of America was freed from the bonds of chattel slavery sixty-two years ago. Yet if we examine our present condition, we are obiiged to recognize that much of the condition of chattel slavery still clings to us. 109

The American Negro Labor Congress will consider such problems as the payment of equal wages for equal work, regardless of race and sex. It is a common condition throughout America to find a white worker and a Negro worker employed side by side, and often the white receiving fifty per cent more than the Negro worker. It is the same with respect to women doing the same work as men, yet receiving much less pay. The American Labor Congress will fight for the abolition of industrial discrimination in factories, mills, mines, on the railroads, and in all places where labor is employed. This is a condition that is responsible for there being so few avenues of occupation open to the Negro Man and woman of America, resulting in a constant and extraordinary element of unemployment in the race. This condition reflects itself in our moral life, giving rise to prostitution and too often to an imperfect home life among our people. The American Negro Labor Congress proposes to stir the working masses to take some organized action against the unjust conditions of residential segregation imposed upon the Negro in our larger cities, which results in our being compelled to pay exorbitantly high rents. Today the matter of paying house rents has become a supreme factor in our daily life, and we note with chagrin an increasing parasitical class within our own race that grows fat on the transfer of apartment houses from whites to Negroes at increased rents. The white and Black workers must be made to see that they have a common cause in the proposal of the American Negro Labor Congress to make plans for the waging of war against the policy of the officialdom of the trade unions which bar Negroes from membership, our aim being, to break down this racial discrimination. We shall assume an attitude of helpfulness towards the many groups in every part of the country which are at present agitating a nationwide campaign for shorter hours of the working day for both men and women. In view of the many futile appeals to our national congress to make lynching a federal crime, the American Negro Labor Congress shall propose that the seat of action be changed to the masses themselves, and shall endeavor to stimulate and promote the organization of inter-racial committees, throughout the nation with the aim of bringing about a better feeling between white and Black workers as a remedy against lynching and race riots. Racial antagonisms arise from class exploitation. Racial antagonism is not an inherent thing in the mental make-up of the individual. The child, it may be noted in the most remote sections of the Southern states, does not affect racial arrogance until brought in touch with public institutions--the school, the church, the press, etc. Racial antagonism springs from the present order of capitalist society in which less than ten per cent of the people own and control everything, including the agencies of public opinion, and through these agencies of public opinion they carefully cultivate the spirit of hostility between the workers on the basis of racial and religious differences. By so doing, they make it easier for the rulers to exploit, rob and plunder white and Black worker alike. Not only must the American Negro and white worker be made to see that they have a common aim, but they must learn that both have a common cause with the working class of the world. The American Negro Labor Congress shall demand the abolition of Jim Crowism, not only in the Southern states, but throughout the nation.

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The American Negro Labor Congress shall bring to bear the full force of its organized strength against any measures on the part of any section of the nation to curtail the right of the ballot of any section of th~ working class. We shall demand the right of Negro pupils to attend all schools anywhere within the nation and the right of Negro teachers to teach in any school. We shall endeavor to arouse the agricultural workers, tenant and share-farmers of the South, to the necessity of organizing among themselves, supported by the industrial workers of the cities, for the purpose of uprooting the hated peonage system and landlordism practiced in the backward agricultural districts of the South. We shall demapd the right of the Negro to equal accommodations with whites in all theaters, restaurants, hotels, etc., better working conditions for Negro men and women everywhere, and the full abolition of child labor. These, as well as many other social abuses weighing heavily upon the life of the Negro, shall be treated by the American Negro Labor Congress. The American Negro Labor Congress will mark a new epoch in the life of the American Negro, yet at the same time we as a race must take on something of an international view-point and come to see that the Negro question is a part of the great and important world question. The Congress shall be composed of delegates from the various independent Negro labor unions, from mixed unions (white and Black), from unorganized factory groups of Negro workers, of representatives of Negro agricultural workers and of individual advocates, both Negro and white, who are well-known for their championship of the cause of the Negro working class in particular. It is planned that the Congress shall take place in Chicago sometime during the summer, the exact date of its opening to be decided later. Every Negro working class organization, every Negro leader who is genuinely interested in the uplift of the Negro working class, is being asked to cooperate to make this Congress not a mere passing affair in our daily life, but a great and historical event that shall ever remain influential and far-reaching in the national life of the American Negro. The American Negro may well look with sympathy upon any plans to free Africa from the grip of French and British imperialism. But we cannot escape from the conditions here at home, and we must devote our best energies toward abolishing the social evils that daily affect the life of the Negro here. The strength of the race rests in its working class, and it alone has the power to lift the race out of the mire and break the shackles of the oppressor! STAND BEHIND THE NEGRO WORKING CLASS! RALLY TO THE AMERICAN NEGRO LABOR CONGRESS! PROMOTE UNITY AND HARMONY BETWEEN THE WORKERS OF ALL RACES! Signed: William Bryant, Business Manager of Asphalt Workers Union, Milwaukee, Wis. Edward L. Doty, Organizer of Negro Plumbers, Chicago. H.V. Phillips, Organizer of Negro Working-Class Youth, Chicago. Elizabeth Griffin, President of Chicago Negro Women's Household League. Everett Greene, Chicago Correspondent of Afro-American. Baltimore, Md. William Scarville, of the Pittsburgh-American. Charles Henry, Representative of Unorganized Negro Steel Workers, Chicago. 111

Otto Hall, Waiters and Cooks Association, Chicago. Louis Hunter, Longshoremen's Protective and Benevolent Union, New Orleans, La. Otto Huiswood, African Blood Brotherhood, New York City. Lovett Fort-Whiteman, Organizer of Congress. Aaron Davis, Neighborhood Protective Association, Toomsuba, Miss. John Owens, Organizer of Negro Agricultural Workers, Tipley, Ca. Rosina Davis, Secretary of Chicago Negro Women's Household League. E. A. Lynch, Fraternal Delegate from West African Seaman's Union, Liverpool. Jack Edwards, Representative Negro Pullman Car Workers, Chicago. Sahir Karimja, Fraternal Delegate from Natal Agricultural Workers, South Africa. Four-page pamphlet, published in Chicago by the Daily Worker Publishing Co., (n.d., probably Spring of 1925), in editor's possession. Herbert Aptheker, Editor, A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, 1910-1932, Citadel Press, Secaucus, N.J., 1973, pp. 488-493. PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO LABOR CONGRESS The American Negro Labor Congress opened in Chicago on October 25, 1925, with no more than 40 accredited delegates. The following proceedings are condensed from the daily reports of the sessions in the Daily Worker, the Chicago Defender, and a few other Black weeklies that carried digests of the proceedings. The generally hostile atmosphere was accentuated by the presence of numerous police officers and secret service men in and around the meeting hall. At the opening mass meeting the delegates were welcomed to Chicago by A. Andrew Torrence, on behalf of the Negro press, and by N.S. Taylor, on behalf of the lawyers. A telegram of support was sent to Dr. Ossian H. Sweet of Detroit, who, together with 10 co-defendants, was charged with first degree murder while defending his home against a racist mob, September 9, 1925. With the support of the NAACP and with Clarence Darrow as his lawyer, he won the case. George Wells Parker, mentioned as a principal speaker at the last session, was a young Black scholar who lectured widely on Negro history, hitting at racism and encouraging Black confidence and pride. He died shortly after his speech at the ANLC. Bishop William Montgomery Brown, making his first public appearance after being unfrocked as bishop of the Protestent Episcopal Church, spoke at the evening session on October 27. He was 81 years old. His speech was printed in full in the Chicago Defender, November 7, 1925, and excerpts from it are given separately below. The opening mass meeting of the American Negro Labor Congress on Sunday night received with boundless enthusiasm the reports of Lovett Fort-Whiteman, national organizer of the congress, and H.V. Phillips, its national secretary. The keynote of the congress was struck by Fort-Whiteman when he said that "The aim of the American Negro Labor Congress is to gather to mobilize, and to co-ordinate into a fighting machine the mos~ 112

enlightened and militant and class conscious workers of the race in the struggle for the abolition of lynching, jim-crowism, industrial discrimination, political disfranchisement, segregation, etc., of the race." No Color Line There Over forty delegates participated in the opening sessions of the congress, together with an audience of colored and white workers who crowded the hall to its doors. The crowd met with applause and cheers the statement of Richard Moore, delegate from New York City, that "the American Negro Labor Congress repudiates forever the policy of slavish submission preached by such so-called leaders of the race as Booker T. Washington who was perfectly willing to repudiate the demand of the race for social equality." Neither the scurrilious attacks of William Green who "warned" the colored workers to stay away from the congress, nor the vile and slanderous attacks of the capitalist press, seem to have dampened the enthusiasm of the colored workers for the congress. Telegrams of Greetings Read Telegrams of greeting have been received from labor organizations all over the world. Among others, the South African Industrial and Commercial Union of Negro Miners, the Peasants' International, and the Defense League of Italian Peasants have sent messages hailing the congress as a great step forward in the emancipation of the oppressed people. C.W. Fulp, president of the local union of the United Mine Workers of America in Primrose, Pennsylvania, and Norval Allen, southern organizer of the American Negro Labor Congress, told of fights waged by Negro workers to enter the trade unions and urged the delegates to adopt concrete measures of organization. The entire capitalist press, including the race press owned and controlled by a few wealthy Negroes, has been carrying out what Lovett Fort-Whiteman, national organizer of the congress, characterized before the congress as a "conspiracy of silence." Months before the congress opened, the capitalist newspapers were carrying "exposes" of this gathering of Negro labor, branding it as "a tool of Moscow, which will only fool and betray the colored workers." One and all, they "warned" the colored workers to keep away from this congress--to boycott it. And now that their efforts have resulted in complete failure--these papers have resorted to the expedient of ignoring the congress. Since the congress opened, only one or two of the capitalist papers have mentioned the gathering. The others have dismissed it with a notice, and a lying sentence or two. The American Negro Labor Congress completed a discussion of the Negro worker and the trade unions with a mass meeting on Monday night, [the subject of the first business session on that day]. The subject of the mass meeting was the bar of color prejudice raised by the officialdom of the trade unions with the result that very few Negro workers can gain admittance to the unions. The speakers discussed ways and means of organizing the colored workers to fight their way into the unions, and stressed the necessity of a united front of labor, Black and white, against the aggressions of the bosses. Again and again the speakers pointed out to the audience the ~logan which was stretched across the front of the hall: "Organization is the first step to freedom." Otto Huiswood, a colored worker from New York and a delegate to the congress, urged the congress to take concrete 113

steps toward the organization of the Negroes into labor unions. He pointed out that when color prejudice works in such a way as to keep Negroes out of various other organizations, they do not for this reason remain on the outside of these activities but organize their own. The Negro workers must take the same stand with regard to the trade union question, Huiswood pointed out. If they cannot force the A.F. of L. officialdom to admit the Negro workers, then these workers must organize their own unions and use these organizations not to fight the white workers but to get into the movement of the whole working class and fight with it in its struggles against the owners. Daily Worker, October 28, 1925. Brother c.w. Fulp, a delegate from the United Mine Workers, Local 2012, was chairman of the evening session and, after a few introductory words, introduced Lovett Fort-Whiteman, national organizer of the American Negro Labor Congress. Lovett Fort-Whiteman read the following answer to the telegram sent by the American Negro Labor Congress to Dr. Ossian H. Sweet: "We, Dr. O.H. Sweet and ten co-defendants thank you for your sympathy and support. With such people we cannot fail to fight to establish the right of any American citizen to buy and live in homes commensurate with their means and aspiration." Another telegram was read from the striking Polish miners of Shamokin, Pa., who expressed their solidarity with the purpose of the American Negro Labor Congress. George Wells Parker then addressed the Congress: "It was five or six weeks ago that I learned of the American Negro Labor Congress. When I read the article by William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, warning the Negro to stay away from this congress because he said it was directly connected with the Soviets of Russia, the moment I read the article I became interested in the congress. "There was a time when they said freedom was bad for the Negro. They also said education was bad for the Negro. They said association with whites was bad for the Negro. No matter what the Negro wants, what he desires, it is a bad thing for the Negro. So when Mr. Green said this congress was a bad thing for the Negro, I became interested." Parker then began to show the relation of the Negro to the Ku Klux Klan. In decrying the attempts of many Negro workers to ignore the Klan issue, he said: "The Klan is not dying. The Klan is going ahead by leaps and bounds. I receive at my desk fifteen different Klan papers. They are organizing chapters in every hamlet and town. They have set 1935 as the year when they shall take government. " Parker then read a part of the Klan ritual: "The social chasm between whites and Blacks is greater now than it has ever been and it must still be made greater by teaching the inferiority of all races excepting the white. We must not only constantly teach that they are inferior and destroy all facts that might prove otherwise, but we must suit our actions to these teachings so that they will forever believe in their inferiority." "This Klan is drawn up so true," declared Parker, "so deep (psychologically) that it is not possible to circumvent them except by organization." He then finished his speech with a rousing cry to the Negro to know more of his own race and rid himself of the inferiority complex which he suffers and called upon him to unite with the workers of all lands in the common struggle against the common foe.

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R.B. Moore, of the Ethiopian Students' Alliance of New York, followed Parker. He called upon the Negro workers not only to tell of the things they are going to do, but also to do them. In speaking of the future that America holds for the Negro, he said: "The United States is the darkest place in the world for the poor man. When we look to the east, we see the dawn, the rise of a new movement that is taking hold of the minds of men. It is not a golden dawn, but a crimson dawn." He then began to describe the accomplishments of the workers of Russia, who thru mastering the principles of organization were able to overthrow the most despotic government in the world, and the Jew, whom he described as the Russian Negro, today is safe from pogroms and has been armed by the Bolsheviks in power to prevent recurrences of pogroms. In decrying the present Negro leadership of doctors, lawyers, etc., who have always betrayed the workers of the race, Moore said: "You Negroes have to develop a new type of leader. He must come from the workers, one who will not bend the knee." Daily Worker, October 30, 1925. Bishop Brown's Speech Church All Wrong When I preached about God and Heaven and a brimstone hell, I was no living voice crying out of the present; I was a phonograph grinding out an outworn message from a dead past. I knew nothing about what God really was and why talk about what you don't know. The other bishops didn't know either. Bishops as a rule, do little thinking; they are too busy building up dogma. For the same reason they do little work. There's only one religion--the desire to make the most out of life. There's only one politics--the effort to find a way to accomplish this. What difference does it make whether you're a Catholic, Protestant, or Jew? I could be all of them. If there is a still, small voice calling within you and urging you on in a fully, nobler and more abundant life, than you have the true religion, regardless of whether it happens to be in style or not. Fashions in religion change. Even Golden Rules change, wear out, and get in the rubbish heap. The old Hebrew golden rule was "An eye for an eye," but it gave way to the so-called Christian rule of "Do unto others." Now the time has come for that to give way to a raceless, classless, creedless golden rule: "Unto all according to their abilities, unto each according to his needs." The world is being damned instead of saved by a religion which insists upon literal belief in supernaturalism. There is not a word of truth in it, and salvation depends upon knowing the truth. Bishops and ministers who try to make a 20th century world slow up to a 13th century religion serve no useful purpose. The hell of fire and brimstone may have scared the 13th century religionists, but we have our own hells of mob violence, lynching and discrimination. We need a religion which will face the reality of the present. Not A Creed Religion is not a creed, it is not belief in anything. It is merely a desire for a fuller and better life. It is a burning passion that makes men aspire to higher things; without it all men die. People are longing for just that sort of religion, and while they wait for its expression in the churches, the church 115

busies itself asking leaders whether they believe literally in some fairy story. Oh, my soul! As if any literal interpretation of any Bible could free a people from slavery. The time is ripe for a change. We must find a way to articulate the religion of the times. And it is you workingmen who will lead in the change. Labor is human life. It is the holiest cause.I know. No religion has any right to be called holy which does not lead to a freer life for the masses of men, and the masses toil. The church needs you. It needs to feel the great religious significance of meetings like these. The capitalistic church has no solution for present ills. Workers have. The Christian church was started by workers, and you workers must take it back and redeem it. Chicago Defender, November 7, 1925 (Abridged). WILLIAM GREEN'S ATTACK ON ANLC Statement of American Negro Labor Congress The press gave prominence to the warning of William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, that Black trade unionists were "being led into a trap." The Communists called the Congress, he thundered, to mislead Negroes into believing "all , their grievances will be remedied by overturning the government of the United States and establishing a Soviet Republic," and to instill "race hatred into the lives of that race." Not all Black newspapers swallowed that bait. The Baltimore Afro-American (August 15, 1925), for example, responded editorially: "If the American Federation of Labor has something better to offer the American Negro than the Communists of Moscow, they need not fear any widespread development of this radicalism among the group." And it commented further (October 17, 1925) that the Congress movement meant not the danger of Communism among Blacks but was "an expression of dissatisfaction with present economic and social conditions." The attitude assumed by the president of the American Federation of Labor toward the American Negro Labor Congress, in published statements, is clearly erroneous, harmful and prejudicial to the best interests of the American labor movement. These statements alleging this congress to be an effort of Bolsheviks to stir up hatred between the races are distinctly contrary to facts and can only serve the ends of the most reactionary oppressors of labor whose foul purpose it is to destroy every genuine attempt of workers to unite for their protection and improvement. Mr. Green must know that such tactics are the chief stock-in-trade of open shop, union-hating, labor-grinding bosses--the abuse and vilification of the striking miners of West Virginia, who are fighting heroically for a decent existence is a clear example--and in resorting to these injurious tactics he helps to strengthen this pernicious anti-union propaganda which must prove a boomerang to the American Federation of Labor itself and to the entire organized labor movement of America. It is doubtful whether the author of these statements altogether grasps their full significance for they imply logically that the only group in the American labor movement genuinely and sufficiently interested in the Negro workers to aid them in their struggles, and to undertake earnestly and practically to organize and unite them with their white fellowworkers, is the very same Communist group which they denounce.

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A further implication, one which will be strongly resented by every intelligent manly Negro worker is the insulting idea that they are fools and tools; that they lack sufficient intelligence and manhood themselves to realize their oppression and to initiate a movement for their emancipation. The truth of the matter is that the American Negro Labor Congress was organized by Negro workers who, while welcoming the cooperation and support of all sections of the labor movement, reserve the determination of its policies and destiny and property to the congress in session assembled. The congress would not have been surprised to be denounced by the enemies of labor but certainly did not expect to be denounced by the responsible head of a great labor organization which includes in its ranks the largest number of organized Negro workers and which thereby had the power, if it desired, to have the largest delegation in the congress thru which to guide and shape the policies of the congress in session. Such an attack upon the congress, therefore, cannot fail to be interpreted by the majority of Negro workers as an unwarranted attempt to destroy their first nation-wide effort to find their place in the organized labor movement and will tend to confirm their suspicions of the sincerity of those labor organizations which do no more than pass paper resolutions about unity of Black and white workers. The American Negro Labor Congress, therefore, deeply deplores this erroneous and harmful attitude and calls upon the American Federation of Labor to correct the misleading characterization of this congress and to cooperate with it whole-heartedly to realize in fact that unity of the Black and white workers of America which alone can incur their protection, advancement, and emancipation. Daily Worker, October 29, 1925. RESOLUTIONS OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO LABOR CONGRESS Trade Unions Trade unions are the organs devised by the working class as a result of its struggle with the capitalists. Trade unions which fail to unite all workers regardless of nationality, color or religion on the basis of the common necessity for resistance to the tyrannies of the bosses . likewise fail in their duty to the working class. The failure of the American Federation of Labor officialdom, under pressure of race prejudice benefiting only the capitalists of the north and south, to stamp out race hatred in the unions, to organize the Negro workers and to build a solid front of the workers of both races against American capitalism, is a crime against the whole working class. We condemn those who would fasten the stigma of "strikebreaker" upon our race, and we likewise condemn those unscrupulous members of our race who, acting in behalf of capitalist agencies, attempt to recruit scabs, create suspicion and division in the ranks of the working class and bring discredit to our race. We demand the immediate removal of all restrictions in all unions upon the membership of workers of our race in them, whether openly stated as in the constitution of the International Association of Machinists or enforced by the so-called "gentlemen's agreements" in other unions. We instruct our members in all unions to wage an uncompromising fight for the removal of all such bars to Negro membership. We declare our readiness to engage in all struggles of the working class. 117

Should the A. F. of L. unions persist in their policy of discrimination, the Negro workers will organize themselves and use their own unions as weapons in the fight to enter the general movement of the workers. Daily Worker, October 27, 1925. FULL EQUALITY · The so-called democratic society in the United States of America is so organized that a distinction is made between races. Regardless of written laws, political and civil rights are not given to the Negro in the same degree as to persons of the white race. Especially in the southern states, nearly all rights as men and citizens are taken away from the Negro. It is a fundamental custom of public life to treat the Negro as an inferior caste both in the North and in the South. The Negro people are confined to the most miserable residence districts as an outcast people who cannot choose their place of residence among the general population. We are segregated in miserable separate railroad cars as tho we were cattle unfit to mix with human beings. In many cases we are segregated in separate labor unions, or denied the right to organize at all. In employment we are generally segregated, being confined to the hardest and most disagreeable kinds.of labor. Our children are in many places not permitted to attend the general public schools, but begin life as a segregated caste. Negro teachers are not permitted to teach according to their ability in most of the public schools. In hotels, restaurants, theaters and such places of public resort for the general population, we are usually excluded and driven away at the cost of much inconvenience, suffering and humiliation. These social customs which degrade our people to a place of inequality in the nation, either legalized or established by tradition, show that a racial caste system is a fundamental feature of the social, industrial and political organization of this country. This social degrading of our people, which has become as consciously a part of the political system that a late president of the United States publicly declared a political principal "uncompromisingly against every suggestion of social equality"*--this social degrading is not a question of relationships between individuals, but a question of relationship of classes. It is an attempt to create and perpetuate a permanent class of doubly exploited workers at the bottom of the social system. Intent upon holding down the workers of all races as a general lower class, our masters wish to make us a lower class within a lower class. The white worker must be made to realize that this discrimination against the Negro worker comes back against him ultimately. To reduce the Negro worker to a lower level, tends to drag the whole working class down to a similar level, and in the South, where the caste system is most extreme, the condition of the poor white people is the proof. The first American Negro Labor Congress solemnly believes that the Negro workers and farmers of this country will abolish the system of race discrimination. We declare that race discrimination, degradation and general inequality of racial groups--the whole caste system--must be absolutely and completely abolished. We demand the full equality of the Negro people in the social system of the United States, and everywhere. Against

*Hoover, at an address in New Orleans. 118

social inequality we raise the standard of social equality. We unqualifiedly refuse to regard our people as inferior in any respect. We demand the full equality of the Negro people in the social system of the United States and everywhere. We demand the abolition of all laws which openly or by subterfuge discriminate against our people, or which in any way recognize a distinction of races. We champion this demand, not only for our own race, but also for all other races, yellow or brown. We declare that all claims of the inherent difference between races are ignorant and unscientific if not pure hypocrisy. We demand: 1. The abolition of all laws which result in segregation. 2. The abolition of all Jim Crow laws. 3. The abolition of all laws which disfranchise the Negroes, or any working people, on the basis of color or race or place of birth, ancestry, the lack of a permanent home, the lack of property, or for any other reason. 4. The abolition of all laws and public administrative measures which prohibit or in practice prevent colored children or youths from attending the general public schools or universities. We also take notice of those established customs which discriminate against Negroes in practice, altho not written into law. We demand: 1. The abolition of the right of landlords and real estate agents to discriminate against the colored race in renting or selling homes and to this purpose we demand that the renting and selling of homes shall be taken out of the hands of all private persons and be made a matter of public administration with the first applicant served regardless of races. 2. We demand the full and equal admittance of our people to all theaters, restaurants, hotels, railroad station waiting-rooms, and all other places of public resort, and no separation or recognition of color distinction and that heavy penalties be imposed against persons who discriminate. We regard these political and social demands as embodying the demand of full social equality for the Negro people. Daily Worker, October 28, 1925. Ku Klux Klan The ku klux klan declares its purpose to preserve white supremacy meaning to keep the Negro permanently out of his rights of equal citizenship, and degraded to the conditions of a wild animal to be persecuted, hunted, tortured, and burned at the pleasure of white individuals or mobs not content with the legal means of suppressing the Negro under "democratic" government, which are bad enough. The ku klux klan forms itself into a criminal band for illegal murder, coercion and terrorization assuming to act as a secondary government. The klan directs its venom, criminality and bigotry not only against the Negro but also against other hard-working people who happen to have been born in other countries and brought here to do the hardest labor of the industries of this country and also against religious liberty. This criminal organization shares the authority of the government in many places; it is semi-officially recognized in some states and has complete control of other state governments. Not only does the federal government fail or refuse to act against the band of bigotry and crime, but the influence of the klan can be seen in refusal of congress to enforce the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments; and can also be seen in legislation recommended to congress, including the proposals 119

which seek to force all foreign-born working people to carry passports and be registered with the police and to be segregated in special residence districts as the Negroes are segregated. Therefore BE IT RESOLVED by the American Negro Labor Congress that we declare the ku klux klan an enemy of humanity and that we will fight it to the bitter end, and will make common cause with foreign-born workers and others who are persecuted by it. Juries It is a general custom of police and criminal courts to accord every white defendant a jury composed of white persons, but at the same time to exclude Negroes from juries to try Negro defendants in important cases. This custom is based on the theory that the white man alone proves the presence of race prejudice in every such trial; therefore be it RESOLVED by the American Negro Labor Congress that as long as the principle of white supremacy exists, a Negro cannot get a fair trial before a white jury or a mixed jury; and we demand that a belief in "white supremacy" shall be a legal bar to anyone serving on a jury, to try a Negro, be it further RESOLVED, that no Negro owes any respect or obedience to the decisions of any court in which he is discriminated against. Free Speech, Press and Assemblage The constitution guarantees the freedom of speech, press and assemblage, but in recent years certain reactionary groups which succeeded in winning political power in various sections of the nation, have robbed the poorer class of people of the above mentioned rights. Therefore be it RESOLVED, that the American Negro Labor Congress condemns such acts, whether legislative or otherwise, as a tyrannous infringement on the rights of the working people. Army and Navy Be it RESOLVED, that we demand that congress pass a law forbidding the army and navy to make or keep any record whatsoever making any distinction of Negro and white in the military, air and naval forces in time of peace or war or in any way to segregate the races in these services, and be it further RESOLVED, that we deny the right of any nation to conscript any Negro while such nation holds our race and class in subjection and inequality. Daily Worker, October 30, 1925. Negro Youth When thousands of young Negroes entered the industries of the north during the migration, the bosses did their best to stir up racial prejudices between the young Negro and the young white workers. They did this because they wanted to keep the young Negroes working for even lower wages than the young white workers. These young Negroes who are discriminated against in this way are forced to work for the lowest imaginable wages and in certain shops and industries young Negroes are employed almost entirely in an effort to keep the wages down and increase the profits. These young ~egro workers get as low as $10 to $15 a week, the young Negro girls and women getting nearer the lower scale. On this they are expected to live. These young Negroes who are 120

being forced to work in greater and greater numbers on account of the low wages their parents receive are an important source of cheap labor for the bosses and are used by them in cutting down the wages of the other workers. Daily Worker, October 20, 1925. Negro Children and Child Labor Most of the Negro child laborers are found in the south, where records show that almost 1,000,000 Negro children of school age are not enrolled in the public schools . . . . Not only is segregation the common practice in the public schools of both the south and the north, but especially in the south the states discriminate against the Negro school chidren thru unequal expenditures for education, etc. For example, in South Carolina, there is only $5 invested in school property for Negroes, while there is $60 invested for the whites. Similarly there is only $8 invested in school property for Negroes to $74 for white in Louisiana, and much the same in the other states throughout the south. . . . The school term is shortened so that the Negro children can be sent to work in the cotton fields as early as possible. . . . In the north, the most marked discrimination consists in segregation, housing of Negro children in the oldest, most unsafe and unsanitary school buildings and inferior educational arrangements of all kinds. Daily Worker, October 20, 1925. Housing Segregation The American Negro Labor Congress declares itself unalterably opposed to the segregation of our people in separate residence districts. We declare the discrimination against Negroes, in regard to which part of a city they may live in and which part they may not live in, is a political question and must be dealt with just as we deal with discrimination in voting. The time has come when the living accommodations of the public cannot be left to the private control of a few wealthy parasites who decide where the colored man may live and where he may not live, or whether he can have a house to live in at all. We demand legislation by which all tenements, apartment houses and homes to let shall be subject to the claim of the first comer, regardless of race or color or the will of the landlord. It is common knowledge that Negroes are customarily charged rent at a rate of twenty percent to one hundred percent higher than is charged for the same apartments rented to white people. We demand legislation for a fixed rental for all places to be let, with heavy penalities and damages whenever a landlord charges higher rents for one race than would be charged another race for similar accommodations. We declare that any Negro real estate agent who connives in charging more rent to his own people than would be paid by whites, is a renegade and a traitor to his own people. In advocating the foregoing measures of relief, we do not regard them as being permanently effective. This congress advocates taking the whole housing question out of the hands of private individuals and advocates taking over of all rented residences by the public, to be rented without discrimination of color to the people at a fixed low rental. We further advocate that the housing shortage in the cities and towns be relieved by the local government building modern apartment houses to be rented on the above basis. It is also a custom of large employers of colored and white labor, such as mine operators and mill owners, to house their 121

employees in "company houses" and thereby to control the lives of the workers, being able to throw them out of house and home whenever the bosses please and whenever there is a disagreement about wages or working conditions. We demand any legal measure that may be necessary to prevent any employer of industrial labor owning or controlling homes rented to his employees. Pending legislative relief, and during the present period when the Negro's rights are ignored by governmental agencies, we call upon the residents of all Negro communities to organize colored tenants' unions so as to be able in an organized way to refuse to pay exorbitant rents, or to consent to live in inferior buildings or segregated districts. Daily Worker, November 14, 1925 (magazine section). Imperialism and the American Negro Imperialism is the enslavement of the entire world by capitalist nations or groups of capitalist nations, bringing under their oppressive rule the 1,100,000,000 darker colored peoples in Asia, Africa, the Philippines, Mexico, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Central and North America. From the colonies and semi-colonial regions, the imperialist nations secure immense supplies of raw materials produced at a lower labor cost by reason of the inferior social, economic and political status forced upon the darker-skinned peoples. In these regions also the imperialist nations find markets for the output of their factories. Here also they conscript recruits for the armies with which the imperialist nations wage war on one another, on Soviet Russia, on the colonial peoples themselves and on the working class. By force, bribery and debauchery, the imperialist powers maintain division among the darker-skinned peoples, and from the proceeds of the robbery practiced upon them, are able in turn to bribe and debauch certain upp~r sections of the working class in the imperialist nations. Without the profits from the conquest and sweating of the darker-skinned peoples, the great imperialist nations cannot maintain themselves. For these reasons the complete liberation of all the darker-skinned peoples of Africa, Asia, America and South America from the rule of world imperialism is of life and death importance to the whole working and farming classes--colored and white--in the imperialist nations, their colonies and spheres of influence. We call attention of the American Negro masses to the recent announcement of the entry of American imperialism on an immense scale in the $100,000,000 Liberian project of the Firestone Rubber company into the African continent--hitherto the exclusive field of Great Britain, France, Belgium and Holland--and in an imperialist industry monopolized by Great Britain. We declare that this new rivalry arising over the question as to whether British or American imperialism shall have the power to oppress and rob millions of our race, means an added menace of imperialist war in which our race, unless awake to its danger, will be conscripted by both sets of imperialists and slaughtered by the millions. But there is encouraging evidence that our race, and the natives of India, China, Egypt and Morocco, are moving to break their chains of bloody bondage. [There follows a description of national liberation and anti-imperialist struggles, in addition to the above-named nations, in the Philippines and Panama, and the extension and intrigue of U.S. imperialism in Mexico, and throughout South America.) 122

In the United States, the Negro masses are given the cruelest mockery of freedom. Their social status is that of a colonial people. In the southern states our race is subjected to lynching, accompanied by bestial tortures, victimized by vicious peonage and contract labor systems, denied the franchise, segregated, deprived of anything but the most meager educational opportunities, discriminated against and oppressed in every conceivable manner. In the north we are denied entrance to many unions, murdered in race wars fomented by real estate agencies and capitalist enterprises bent upon fanning race hatred and further dividing the Negro and white workers, discriminating against the Negro workers in wages and conditions of labor. Our grievances and our cause are those of our race brothers in Africa and the darker-skinned peoples in the colonies of world imperialism. Our oppression, our cause and our enemies are the same as those of hundreds of millions of workers and farmers in Asia and Africa. This congress declares for unity of the masses of our race in America with the masses of Africa and Asia. In the world struggle against imperialism, we, Negro workers are to occupy an important place. Cursed tho we are with intolerable oppression, we have thru our struggles with the rulers of the most advanced capitalist country in the world, gained valuable experience in the fields of industry, politics and organization, experience that has been denied members of our race in most other lands. In the light of the lessons we have learned from the terrible struggle we have been forced to wage, it is not too much to say that from our ranks will come the leadership of our race in its fight for liberation from imperialist oppression. It is with the full knowledge of our responsibilities to our race that we hail the rising liberation movements in Africa and Asia, that we welcome the long-delayed recognition of the necessity for solidarity of all oppressed, Black, white and brown, as shown by the French workers in support of the Riffian struggle, the sympathetic attitude of the British workers to the Chinese and Indian Independence movements, the growing unity of the working class and colonial peoples against their common enemy. The white workers cannot free themselves without the aid of us dark-skinned people, and we cannot liberate ourselves unless they join with us in an assault of the world bastions of imperialism. We hail the workers' and farmers' government of Soviet Russia as the first to bring into being full social, political and economic equality for all peoples, white and dark-skinned. We call upon the members of our race to recognize this signal accomplishment of the first workers' and peasants' government as the sign manual of what the future holds for the toiling masses of the whole world when the workers and farmers follow its example and imperialism has been driven from the face of the earth. As a first step in connecting the struggles of our race in America with its world-wide struggle against imperialism, this congress of Negro workers and farmers instructs the national executive committee to convene a world congress of our race. It further instructs the American Negro delegates to this world congress to lay the foundation for a world organization of the workers and farmers of our race and to make this organization a leader and fighter in the liberation movements of all the darker-skinned peoples in the colonies of imperialism everywhere. Welcome Soviet Russia--the friend and ally of the oppressed of all races! 123

Welcome to all who join with us in the fight for emancipation from imperialist slavery! Daily Worker, November 14, 1925. EDITORIAL COMMENT ON THE AMERICAN NEGRO LABOR CONGRESS The American Negro Labor Congress was commented upon widely in the press and the journals. Typical of the white newspapers was the lengthy review beginning on page one of the New York Times (January 17, 1926), headed "Communists Boring into Negro Labor." It concluded that the ANLC "bears the same 'left-wing' relationship to the negro labor movement as William z. Foster's Trade Union Educational League bears to white labor"--both "directed from Moscow" and seeking to create "red nuclei" in the trade unions in order to subvert them. A round-up of white press opinion in The Literary Digest (November 21, 1925) recorded similar views expressed by other leading newspapers; for example, the Chicago Tribune: behind the ANLC "is a plot of Red Russia to spread Communism among the colored people of the entire world" and "to stir up race hatred and disorder." Others chose to emphasize the futility of the Congress. The Philadelphia Record found "ridiculously childish" the idea that the American Negro could be "bolshevized." The Memphis Commercial Appeal found it a "vain undertaking," the Philadelphia Bulletin predicted it will "have no influence," the Minneapolis Journal saw no reason to "lose sleep" over it. The Virginia Pilot agreed it would end in a "complete fizzle," but warned if conditions did not improve for the Negro, he will become radical. Among the Negro press the response was quite different. True, many expressed caution or suspicion, as did the Cleveland Gazette (August 15, 1925) on the eve of the Congress: "We cannot afford to flirt with the 'reds' of this or any other country." Others were circumspect in their criticism, for example, the conservative Opportunity magazine of the Urban League (December 1925): "It cannot be denied that there has been agreement among Negroes with all the grievances as expressed by the American Negro Labor Congress, but an equal indifference" to its "ultimate" purpose, communism. With respect to William Green's warning it commended sharply: "It has seemed peculiar that they [the Negroes) should be urged to keep away from a working group that asked merely to call them 'brother' by another group which in so many instances spurned that opportunity." The Baltimore Afro-American was outspoken in its defense of the Congress. You may call it communism or bolshevism, it editorialized (November 7, 1925), but what the ANLC has been saying about the exploited Negro workers "is the naked truth. Neither radical or red are the resolutions [of the Congress] which have been adopted in one form or another by every Negro organization." Commenting on a speech by Lovett Fort-Whiteman in Baltimore summarizing the ANLC program, columnist William N. Jones (March 13, 1926) wrote: "If this is Red Propaganda, then for God's sake let our readers supply themselves with a pot and brush and give 12,000,000 colored people in this country a generous coating." 124

The Chicago Defender, the Black weekly with perhaps the largest circulation, gave rather full summaries of the sessions of the Congress, and its comment was supportive. "The only outward evidence of the 'red' terror, which was alleged to have dominated the convention, occurred in the brilliant display of color at the Vincennes dance and frolic [the closing event of Congress]" (November 7, 1925). In the same issue it editorially called William Green "head of the largest Jim Crow organization in the world [issuing] warnings to his segregated charges," and declared "we are bound to admit that [the Congress] manifesto is true." In a biting, sarcastic editorial entitled "Bolshevize Us? Oh, No!" it gave "some 4,000'' reasons why Blacks love America--all acts of racial oppression. In The Crisis, edited by W.E.B. Du Bois (issue of April 1926), Abram L. Harris, then executive secretary of the Minneapolis Urban League and to become an outstanding Negro historian, wrote a lengthy appraisal of the Congress entitled "Lenin Casts His Shadow Upon Africa." "The national press," he wrote, "suffered paroxysms of fear" over the ANLC, but one could not "conclude that it was a very revolutionary assembly" since it expressed· the real grievances of the Negros. "Not Soviet gold," he continued, "but social facts furnish the explanation for the convention's radicalism and its departure from the racial assumptions and logic of the older Negro social institutions. When the promise of racial equality . . is reinforced by daily observance of equality in social practice as is done in the Workers' Party, it must have a tremendous appeal to a disadvantaged group such as the Negro." He ends his article with a question: "After Garvey--What?" and answers "Communism." Bolshevize Us?

Oh, No!

They are afraid our Race will turn Bolsheviki. All America seems to be upset about it--that is, white America. They say that we--15,000,000 of us--are ripe for Bolshevizing and that Moscow is now preparing to reap the harvest of a Black Communistic America. That's what they say, but they are wrong. There are about 4,000 reasons why we will never turn Bolsheviki. In every walk of American life we see them, they face us in church, in our homes, on the streets, in our government halls, in the cemetaries and in all places of amusement. We live in a great country--great in natural resources, teeming with opportunities, overflowing with prosperity, producing three-fourths of the world's wealth and dictating the political and economic policies of the universe. We form an integral part of this country; we have grown up with it from its infancy, have taken a delight in its progress and have contributed our part toward making it what it is. We have tilled its soils, hewn its forests and laid the stones for the foundation of its greatness. We have fought in its wars, showing our utmost devotion in sacrifice. And now they say we would turn against it. They say we would cast our lot with Moscow and sow the seeds of revolution in our virgin country. God forbid! Why should we want to become Bolsheviks? Are we not satisfied with conditions as they are in this country? Do we not have the real privileges of witnessing our women abused by white men almost any day in the year? Aren't we entertained with lynchings at the rate of a man or woman a week--and 125

sometimes more--throughout the years as regularly as they come? Don't they provide special traveling accommodations for us on southern trains, where we can, by paying the same fares as whites, sit in filthy, unsanitary and unsafe compartments for days at a time. Don't many of these cars provide one toilet for men and women, and don't they make it possible for us to listen to funny, though obscene, jokes told by white trainmen and certain traveling salesmen who occupy our car for smoking purposes and gambling? Our race turn Bolsheviki, when we can remain loyal to our country and enjoy its blessings and these beautiful conditions? We should say not~ We are perfectly satisfied to be refused decent seats in theaters because of our color. We are more than pleased when we are arrested because we seek to buy food in an eating place. We are overjoyed at having a mob stone our home because our white neighbors object to our color. We think of Dr. Sweet in Detroit being tried for murder because he defends his own home, and we naturally renew our fealty to the government that tries him and swear eternal allegiance. We gloat when we read of the Rhinelander case in New York--when we read of this imbecile millionaire youth declaring that he wants to be freed from his wife because she happens to be of Negro extraction. We shout gleefully when we see a beautiful church wrecked by a bomb, because we know that.our white Americans did the bombing, and we know that it is an extraordinary part of our American existence. We encourage the passing of laws against intermarriage because we know that these laws protect white womanhood while exposing our women to the brute passions of white American men who have already filled this country with mulattoes--with people who have no race to which they can rightfully lay claim. Why should we even consider Bolshevism when we are barred from many of the labor unions and are robbed of a means to earn an honest living? Are we not content to have our government bar us from its buildings--herd us like pigs into prison camps--keep us out of the naval and air forces and our tax-maintained institutions for military training? Don't we have the distinction of being Jim Crowed in our own government buildings where we are employed, in separate toilets and locker rooms, and are we not even herded into separate sections to work. With these conditions facing us in this country, to which we have grown accustomed and with which we are in perfect accord, is there any chance that we will ever turn to Bolshevism as a solution of our own peculiar problem? No, not one. We are Americans first, last and always. We are with America in all her perversities and while we look disdainfully at Moscow, with her overtures of complete equality and justice, we demand that our country remove these very things set out above, of which we have appeared to boast by our silence and inaction. Ho-hum Chicago Defender, November 21, 1925. THE FIRST NEGRO WORKERS' CONGRESS By Robert Minor In this appraisal of the American Negro Labor Congress, Robert Minor sees its central significance as the first gathering of its kind, setting the course for a mass movement clearly based on the Black working class, and raising the prospect of that class influencing and eventually leading the Negro liberation movement as a whole. But he proves more realistic than some friendly commentators in the

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non-Communist press when he concludes that it cannot be said "that this movement is as yet a mass movement," which was still to be shown. He notes the few organized Negro workers behind the delegates, of whom only a handful directly represented labor unions, as well as the complete absence of representatives of Black farmers. He welcomes the rise of young, able Black organizers as shown by the Congress, and seems to place on their shoulders the sole responsibility for carrying on its work. Neither the fears of the bourgeois press, nor the expectations of the Communists and their associates, proved realistic. Only a few local councils of the ANLC were established, consisting mostly of Communists and their supporters, and the joint local committees of labor and Black organizations envisioned by the Congress did not appear. The ANLC was a determined effort by the Communists to initiate work among the Black masses, and it was significant for that reason. It also exposed to wider attention the party program on the Negro, and brought into prominence a core of Black Communists, some of whom were to become leaders in the party. But the ANLC gradually faded away. Writing in the Communist International magazine only three years after the formation of the ANLC, James Ford and William L. Patterson judged the work of that organization "entirely insignificant," and found it adhered so closely to the Communist program that it "appears as a Negro Communist Party." (See below under VIth World Congress.) In his The Negro in the Democratic Front (New York, 1938, p. 32) Ford wrote ten years later that the ANLC "was almost completely isolated from the basic masses of the Negro people." Another Congress was not held until 1930, when the ANLC was transformed into the League of Struggle for Negro Rights . . But what mass character did the congress really The answer to this question is the important thing. Anyone who regards the matter of the American Negro masses as one of deep, primary importance, and not as one of secondary importance--not as a thing to be judged by the scale of tempests in teapots--will not be ready to say that this movement is as yet a mass movement. The practically universal admission of antagonistic newspapers (both the white capitalist and Negro newspapers) that this congress was a large mass affair, must not be taken too seriously by the earnest young men and women who are at the head of the movement. The fact that its enemies called it a mass movement shows what a low standard has been set for "mass" movements among such enemies. This makes a curiously interesting and profitable study. A look behind the scenes of all Negro movements shows that they have practically all been nothing more than periodical conferences of "prominent persons," delegated by nobody and present only by virtue of a vague general recognition and possession of the price of a railroad ticket. That method of constituting Negro "conventions" was the outgrowth of old traditions. And how easily it was assumed to be the only method was rather humorously proved at this Negro Labor Congress, which reversed the method. A Mr. Reed appeared at this congress asking to be seated. Having realized that some sort of credentials would be required, he presented a document signed by the governor of the state of Oklahoma, which certified that he was appointed as a delegate to the Negro Labor have?

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Congress.l It was a perfectly serious document, and strictly in accord with precedent. It meant that Mr. Reed was a prominent Negro citizen, and according to all tradition this was the sole requisite entitling him to a voice in any Negro conventions or congress. (He was seated as a fraternal delegate.) It must be said that organization, in the true sense of the word, is a new phenomenon among the Negro masses. And when we understand this, and when we see the reversal of the traditions and forms of the past, we get closer to the answer as to whether there was a mass character to the American Negro Labor Congress. A hard-boiled organizer will have to say that there were only a very few thousand of organized Negro workers behind the delegates who sat in the American Negro Labor Congress. There was only a small handful who directly represented trade unions, and to anyone who appreciates the essence of this as a Negro labor congress, the matter is highly important. Undoubtedly, however, the significance of this weakness is mitigated by the fact that many Negro "federal" labor unions which wanted to send delegates and which were watching with earnest sympathy its results, were finally terrorized out of sending their delegates by the threat of the president of the American Federation of Labor, who implied that these unions would be deprived of their charters if they participated. (A considerable number of unions were represented indirectly through the delegates of "local councils" in which they participated.) Another very serious weakness lay in the complete absence of representation of Negro farmers. Must Build on New Foundation . . . The successful formulation of a clear program, and the reception of this program by the crowds of Negro workers who attended the congress, are also matters of much importance. A factor of primary significance in this congress is that it makes a big step toward the hegemony of the Negro workingclass organization in the general Negro race movement. Hithertoo there has been professional-class leadership, as a matter of course, and with no organizational basis. Now for the first time, groups of Negro industrial workers begin to elect their delegates. That this tends to throw the center of gravity of the Negro movement into the Negro laborers' ranks is obvious. And that many Negro middle-class intellectuals are bewildered and frightened by the fact, is but natural . . As the Negro Labor Congress had at least a spinkling of representation from most of the big industrial centers, the

l[Mr. Reed's credential) To all to whom these presents shall come. Greetings. Know ye, That reposing special trust and confidence in the ability and integrity of Frank W. Reed of Oklahoma City, I, M.E. Tropp, governor of the state of Oklahoma, do hereby appoint and commission him a delegate to the National Labor Congress of Colored Workers to be held in Chicago, Illinois. ~iven under my hand at the City of Oklahoma City, the twentieth day of October, in the year of our lord, nineteen hundred and twenty-five, Year of the independence of the United States of America one hundredth and fiftheth. M.E. Tropp. Governor of the state of Oklahoma (Daily Worker, October 28, 1925)

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character of the program, as one adapted to the mass needs of the Negro workers, and as one which is shown to be so adapted by the spontaneous acceptance of it by many hundreds who watched its development, can be considered in connection with the question of the mass character of the congress. I repeat that this question was not answered by this one convention, but is held in abeyance until the organizers show whether it is in them to utilize the nucleus and the connection which they have formed. This was the first American Negro workers' convention. It had a reverberation of considerable magnitude among the Negro masses. It laid the basis for an unprecedented mass organization. It showed that there have developed among the Negro workers a number of strikingly able young leaders. For the first time it has thrown among the confused, misled and swindled Negro toilers a program adapted to the class character of the Negro masses. There is every reason to believe that upon the basis already laid there can be a congress of ten times the size and mass representation, within another year . . . . The Workers' Monthly, December, 1925.

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V~

BEGINNING OF A TURN, 1926-1928

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THE N.A.A.C.P.

TAKES A STEP BACKWARD

By William F. Dunne Compare this critical assessment of the 1926 conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, held in Chicago in June 1926, with the positive appraisal of its 1924 gathering (see above). Note that James Ford, later to become a prominent Communist leader, represented the American Negro Labor Congress at the N.A.A.C.P. convention, where he submitted clear-cut proposals for interracial labor commissions to fight exclusion from the trade unions. It is a different and delicate matter, particularly in the United States where such a complete reaction rules in every sphere of life--social, labor, politics, culture--to criticize an organization which is even making an attempt, although an ineffective one, to raise the subject Negro race to a higher level. But the work of the N.A.A.C.P. is political work and, as a rather well-known Communist once said: "politics is not delicatessen." The first requirement of an individual or an organization acquiring a certain amount of leadership in the political sphere is to be able to estimate a given situation, and adopt a strategy and tactics which will bring the maximum results. Judged by this standard the recent conference of the N.A.A.C.P. registered a complete failure and its "address to the country" is a confession of failure. The reason for this is to be found in the social composition of the conference--middle class intelligentsia for the most part who are unable or unwilling to see that the strength and driving power of the Negro race in America is its working class--the only class among the Negroes which possesses great numerical strength and economic power. With these two qualities, a correct program and militant leadership, the American Negroes can smash the prison walls with which American capitalism has encircled them. Their race cannot be freed by one, or a dozen or a hundred thousand, making their escape and leaving the rest behind. Not the white race, not even the white working class, can or will free the Negro masses. Together it can be done--Black and white workers together with the sympathetic and militant intelligentsia of the Negro race giving what aid they can. As for the Negro middle class as a whole it will stop far short of militant struggle as it did in New Orleans and an organization which bases itself as does the N.A.A.C.P., on the middle class, is led into making such childish statements as: "We are astonished to note under President Coolidge and the republican administration a continuation of that segregation of colored employees in the department at Washington which was begun under President Wilson. We have repeatedly appealed for redress against this grievance and we appeal again to the sense of decency and honor which should exist at the capital of the nation and which should save from insult persons who are serving their country in the organized civil service." (From the N.A.A.C.P. address). Any group of people which can be astonished to find that "honor and decency" are lacking in the national capital certainly lack the qualifications to lead their race in what of necessity 133

must be a terrible struggle. One who has illusions about the enemy is apt to be defeated. similarly on the issue of imperialism. The address states: "Particularly is it possible and right for American Negro voters so to cast their ballots as to restrain financial imperialism which has throttled Haiti and threatened Liberia and Central and South America and which is still using slavery and forced labor to heap up profits in Africa." Just how far the casting of ballots will restrain financial imperialism under any circumstances is a debatable question but in this instance it is worthless because the above recommendation is preceded by the statement that: "Our political salvation and social survival lie in our absolute independence of party allegiance in politics and casting our vote for our friends and against our enemies whoever they may be and whatever party label they carry." Whom will the N.A.A.C.P. urge its followers to vote for to "restrain financial imperialism" in Haiti for instance? For a democrat candidate whose honored party chief, Woodrow Wilson, sent the marines to Haiti, or-A candidate of the republican party whose chief, Calvin Coolidge, keeps the marines there? The N.A.A.C.P. seems to have doubted somewhat the efficiency of the policy it recommends for it says in the next breath: "This may at present give us sorry choice between twin evils but eventually and soon there must come in this land such political reform as will give the honest independent voter, black and white, a chance to cast his ballot for law, decency and democracy." The formulation is ambiguous, the confusion very apparent, but the conference seems to have had a labor party, or farmerlabor party, in mind. Then why not say so? If one believes in a certain method of procedure in racial and class struggles one fights for it if one is honest and courageous. But having accepted the aid of white middle class intelligentsia who oppose a labor party, not wishing to offend the A.F. of L. officialdom which also fights a labor party, the N.A.A.C.P. twists and turns and finally falls between two stools. The same can be said of its stand on the question of organizing the Negro workers. It is afraid to speak out what it knows to be the truth because this involves danger--internal and external. Not all leaders of the N.A.A.C.P. are in favor of organizing Negro workers in unions and the American Federation of Labor officialdom is a powerful enemy whom it might not be wise to offend by frank speaking. So instead of the ringing Philadelphia Declaration, we get the following: "For several years the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has tried on one hand to show white labor of the United States that it must recognize colored labor, bring them into the union ranks and affirm the unity of all laborers in the fight for industrial democracy. On the other hand this Association has sought to impress upon Negro labor its duty to leave no stone unturned in an attempt to co-operate with organized labor and to maintain and advance the standards for which organized labor has so long fought. We are glad to note in the unionization of the Pullman porters a great step toward both these objects. We regret that white union 134

labor is still disappointingly laggard in taking active steps toward organizing black labor." The above statement represents a retreat from the position taken in 1924 and it, like the adoption of the futile "non-partisan" method of conducting election campaigns, is in effect placing the whole struggle of the Negro masses at the mercy of the A.F. of L. officialdom, whose policy is taken as the model, an officialdom whose complete failure to face the Negro problem in any other way than that adopted by the democratic and republican parties is notorious. The N.A.A.C.P. conference cannot be excused on the ground that no alternative policy for the organization of Negro workers was proposed. The conference had before it a very detailed program for this vitally important work in the resolution presented by James Ford, a delegate from the American Negro Labor Congress. We quote the following proposals from this resolution: "The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People again proposes to all national labor bodies, to all state labor bodies, all city central labor bodies, and to individual trade unions, that . an inter-racial commission to be formed by representatives of the N.A.A.C.P., of the American Federation of Labor, of the Railroad Brotherhoods, including the new Brotherhood of Pullman Porters, and other labor bodies willing to participate, as well as other Negro organizations. It is also proposed that for each large city or industrial center in which there are Negro wage earners, local inter-racial labor commissions should likewise be formed. We propose that with the co-operation thus established, a definite campaign be carried thru for the organization of the Negro wage earners in industrial pursuits, to be brought into the existing unions on an exact basis of equality without distinction of race or color either in the union or in the workshop in regard to the choice of employment, wages and conditions. "The services of the officers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will be proffered to assist the trade union movement in such a campaign. "The officers of the Association are instructed to send all international unions and all other labor bodies within the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Philippine Islands, and the West Indies, a questionnaire which shall be formulated with the purpose of establishing the actual conditions of labor and the race relationships between colored and white labor, and especially covering the matter of discrimination either thru constitutional provisions forbidding the membership of certain races in trade unions, or by the tacit practice of discrimination. "The N.A.A.C.P. will establish in each community a department for relief and legal aid for Negro workers in industrial plants." Here are four proposals which certainly cannot be attacked on the ground of impracticability. They are clear and workable and offer at least a basis for action. But precisely the fact on which these proposals are based-the fact that some ninety per cent of the American Negroes belong to the working class--is probably the reason why these measures were sidestepped by the N.A.A.C.P. conference, further proof that the fighting leadership of the American Negroes must come from the toiling masses of the race. 135

The Negro workers--industrial and agricultural--stand in the greatest need of organization--both because of their economic oppression and because social tyranny bears heaviest upon them. If the existing labor organizations will not make the cause of the Negro workers their own, then the Negro workers will have to organize in spite of them. This is the fact which the last conference of the N.A.A.C.P. was afraid to face. It is significant that the practical proposals for organization of the Negro masses did not come from the intelligentsia who dominate the N.A.A.C.P. but from the representative of a Negro organization composed of workers and farmers--the American Negro Labor Congress. Workers Monthly, August, 1926. WORKERS' PARTY ELECTION PLATFORM, 1926 Negro Equality The government has taken no action to enforce the constitutional provisions granting political equality to the Negro, which are being flagrantly violated. The Negro suffers from racial discrimination of every kind and is subjected to "jim crow" laws and "jim crow" customs. The Negro is exploited as a worker or farmer. He is subjected to the same capitalist exploitation which the white workers and farmers suffer from, but must bear the additional burden of racial discrimination. The workers and farmers must fight for the repeal of all laws discriminating against the Negro and for complete political, industrial, educational--in a word, complete social equality for the Negro. American Labor Yearbook, 1927, p. 130. DEATH OR A

PROGRAM~

By Robert Minor In this comprehensive critical appraisal of the Garvey movement, Minor sees the disintegration of the Universal Negro Improvement Association--the most important mass Negro movement--as a calamity which could be avoided only by a workingclass-based Left wing in the organization. The reference to Morocco is to the rebellion of the Riffian tribes led by Abd-el-Krim against Spanish rule which began in 1920, advanced into the French zone in 1925, and was defeated by combined French-Spanish forces the following year. The reference to Egypt is to the struggle for full independence from Britain and for social and economic reforms led by the nationalist Wafd party. The Universal Negro Improvement Association, the largest of all Negro organizations, is in danger of going to pieces. A split is impending, if a split has not already occurred. A breaking up of this Negro association would be a calamity to the Negro people and to the working class as a whole. We say this not because the program or the leadership of the organization is of good quality, but because the Universal Negro Improvement Association is bigger than its leadership, and the deficiencies of its program are directly due to deficiencies of its leaders. The organization itself represents the first and largest experience of the Negro masses in self-organization. It is the largest organization that ever existed among the Negroes of the United States and the West Indies. It claims a large membership in Africa and it certainly has some followers among 136

seafaring Negro workers in many parts of the world. It is composed very largely, if not almost entirely, of Negro workers and impoverished farmers, altho there is a sprinkling of small business men. In any case the proletarian elements constitute the vast majority of the organization. Within its ranks are gathered the largest number of those energetic figures among working class Negroes who have arisen to activity in the period since the world war. We believe that the destruction of such an organization of the Negro masses, under the circumstances, would be a calamity. And the destruction seems to be an imminent danger. It also appears on the surface to be the threatened result of a selfish quarrel among ambitious leaders. The Garvey-Sherrill Feud Marcus Garvey, the principal founder and the PresidentGeneral of the association, is now in the federal penitentiary at Atlanta, Georgia, where he is kept, first, by the United States government, and secondly, directly by the action of Calvin Coolidge who a few weeks ago refused an application for his release. William L. Sherrill is now the acting PresidentGeneral of the association, serving in the place of Garvey because of the latter's imprisonment. Recently a quarrel broke out between Garvey and Sherrill, which finds expression in the present crisis. Garvey from his prison cell declares that Sherrill has been disloyal to him and to the organization. The published utterances of both sides reveal no issue of principle--nothing more than a struggle for power among individuals, precipitated by Coolidge's recent refusal of a commutation of Garvey's sentence. The Social Roots of the Threatened Disruption However, it is an entirely false appearance from which one would judge that the present crisis is due solely to a quarrel among individuals. Anyone who has watched the affairs of this organization during the past several years ought to know that there are deep social causes for the threatened disruption. The Universal Negro Improvement Association has been the victim of a leadership which turned it away from the struggles that were demanded of it. Therefore the organization, as expressed in its leadership, has during the past five years been steadily undermining its own reason for existence. At the first substantial convention of the organization held in New York in 1920, it was apparent that the period of mass organization among Negroes of the working class (not merely organization of intellectuals) which had been made possible by the social changes of and following the world war, was beginning and that it was crystallizing more largely in the U.N.I.A. than elsewhere. Also the rather primitive and unclear expression of working class character in the movement was exhibited by the program adopted in 1920. Among the complaints for which the convention demanded redress were: "VII. We are discriminated against and denied an equal chance to earn wages for the support of our families, and in many instances are refused admission into labor unions, and nearly everywhere are paid smaller wages than white man." (And) " 2. That we believe in the supreme authority of our race in all things racial: that all things are created and given to man as a common possession: that there should be an equitable distribution and apportionment of all such things, and in consideration

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of the fact that as a race we are now deprived of those things that are morally and legally ours, we believe it right that all such things should be acquired and held by whatsoever means possible. "7. We believe that any law or practice that tends to deprive any African of his land or the privileges of free citizenship within his country is unjust and immoral, and no native should respect any such law or practice. "8. . there should be no obligation on the part of the Negro to obey the levy of a tax by any law-making body from which he is excluded and denied representation on account of his race and color. "9. We believe that any law especially directed against the Negro to his detriment and singling him out because of his race or color is unfair and immoral, and should not be respected. "12. We believe that the Negro should adopt every means to protect himself against barbarous practices inflicted upon him because of color. "16. We believe all men should live in peace one with the other, but when races and nations provoke the ire of other races and nations by attempting to infringe upon their rights, war becomes inevitable, and the attempt in any way to free one's self or protect one's rights or heritage becomes justifiable. "17. Whereas, the lynching, by burning, hanging or any other means, of human beings is a barbarous practice, and a shame and disgrace to civilization, we therefore declare any country guilty of such atrocities outside the pale of civilization. "38. We demand complete control of our social institutions without interference by any alien race or races. "45. Be it further resolved that we as a race of people declare the League of Nations null and void as far as the Negro is concerned, in that it seeks to deprive Negroes of their liberty. "47. We declare that no Negro shall engage himself in battle for any alien race without first obtaining the consent of the leader of the Negro people of the world, except in a matter of national self-defense. " Effects of Bourgeois Pressure on the U.N.I.A. But it is certain that fatal weaknesses were present in the organization, and that Garvey, altho he was undoubtedly the chief builder of the organization, was also the chief one that carried into it the poison of opportunism. Upon any movement of a mass character which seeks to organize a large section of the exploited classes, there always begins to be exercised a tremendous pressure. The whole super-structure of capitalist society invariably rushes to its task of adjusting any mass movement in such a manner as to eradicate any tendencies incompatible with the capitalist social system. The effects of such pressure soon began to be apparent in the U.N.I.A., and especially in the trend of Garvey himself. Many incidents, especially occurring in the attempts to organize Negroes in th~ southern cities, brought out sharply the fact that the organization would be fought most bitterly on those issues which had to do with the demands of the Negro masses for organization in trade unions, for political rights, and especially those

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demands which struck out in the direction of the abolition of the general system of social inequality. Under the pressure, Garvey began to give way. Difficulties were encountered by the organizers of the U.N.I.A. on the ground that the organization had "bolshevistic" qualities leading toward economic, political and social equality. Garvey met every difficulty by disclaiming the portions of his organization's program which were under attack at the given moment. By a process of elimination, all demands which were offensive to the ruling class were dropped one by one, and the organization settled down to a policy of disclaiming any idea whatever of demanding any rights for the Negro people in the United States--the policy of declaring that the Universal Negro Improvement Association was not striving to attain any political or social rights of the Negro in America, but was trying only to construct an organization which would bring about the establishment of a "home for the Negro people in Africa." From a negative protestation, the policy evolved into a positive declaration (voiced by Garvey and acquiesced in by his followers) that the Universal Negro Improvement Association recognized the United States as a "white man's country," and that it was therefore opposed to social equality in this country for the Negro. Garvey issued a pamphlet (seemingly for private reading of wealthy white men to whom he sent it in the hope of securing gifts of money and not for circulation among the Negro membership), entitled, "Aims and Objects of Movement for Solution of Negro Program Outlined." In the pamphlet Garvey wrote: "The white man of America has become the natural leader of the world. He, because of his exalted position, is called upon to help in all human efforts. From nations to individuals the appeal is made to him for aid in all things affecting humanity, so naturally, there can be no great mass movement or change without first acquainting the leader on whose sympathy and advice the world moves." The pamphlet says further: "To us, the white race has a right to peaceful possession and occupation of countries of its own and in like manner the yellow and black races have their rights.". All of the old program adopted in 1920 has disappeared from sight. Today if you ask for the program of the U.N.I.A., you are told, in the words of Garvey that "our one purpose, our one object, is the planting of the colors of the Red, the Black and the Green as the African standard that shall give to us a country, a nation of our own." Garvey had, according to his own statements, confined every hope and aim to this one thing. Inevitably this resulted in 1921 in narrowing the chief operation down to the sale of stock in a steamship company, the Black Star, reorganized after prosecution, under the new name of Black Cross Line, which was expected to open up resources with the help of American and other Negroes. Anything that might destroy the illusion of a peaceful penetration into Africa would of course be a severe blow to the structure that Garvey had built. Garveyite Illusions Blasted Along came events which destroyed the illusion. Apparently Garvey did not operate this stock selling plan in a manner free from charlatanry, and the excuse that he had sold stock under false pretenses became the one under which he was finally sent to prison by the United States government,

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after a shamefully arbitrary trial with all the qualities of a political frame-up. But that was not all that served to destroy the illusion. The after war unrest of the suppressed peoples of Africa--the early prelude to the present Morocco trouble, the Egyptian independence movement, etc., had given their alarm to the British, French, Belgian and Spanish governments, and these began taking measures to exclude Garvey's organization and its publications from African colonies. This tended to confine operations to the "independent" republic of Liberia as distinguished from the outright possessions of imperialist powers. The Universal Negro Improvement Association concentrated on Liberia, and according to Garvey's claim, the Liberian government gave a large concession to the Universal Negro Improvement Association (or a subsidiary) for the development of Liberia's rubber and other resources. Upon the claim of the concession to develop the natural resources of Liberia, Garvey based his sole remaining hope. But the illusion was still further to be exploded. The American ruling class does not let anything of value in the way of rubber lands lie around loose. A series of quick and very mysterious operations between Calvin Coolidge, Harvey Firestone, Solomon Porter Hood (a Negro tool of the Firestone Rubber Company appointed by Coolidge as American Minister to Liberia) took place in the summer of 1924 simultaneously with the final arrest and conviction of Garvey and his imprisonment in the federal penitentiary at Atlanta. Garvey went to prison at the same moment that the concessions he claimed in Liberia were given to the Firestone corporation. But what has been the effect upon the internal affairs of the Universal Negro Improvement Association? The effect has been to destroy the possibility of any further illusion of the magic acquisition of the continent of Africa by the "business" operations of an association of Negroes, while the war in Morocco, and the rapidly sharpening struggle against imperialism thruout Africa, helped to wash away the picture of benevolent British statesmen and American millionaires making a present of a continent larger than North America, ladened with untold gold, diamonds, rubber, and every imaginable wealth, to a group of helpless, down-trodden and exploited Negroes, out of pure love and Christian kindness. The one center of the Garvey program had become incredible even to Garvey's credulous followers. The single foundation stone upon which Garvey had built was thus destroyed. Garvey Adopts the Ku Klux Klan "Race Purity" Theory But while the controversy was boiling with all the appearance of being a mere quarrel of individual leaders without any fundamental issues involved, an incident occurred at Richmond, Va., which shows the true nature of the crisis the organization faces. It appears that the Richmond organization of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, having a membership of between 200 and 300, was called together for the purpose of hearing a lecture by three of the most reactionary, Negro-hating, propagandists of "white supremacy." These were John Powell, Major Ernest Cox and Major Percy Hawse. It appears that one or more of these three men is involved in the effort to pass thru the Virginia state legislature a so-called "race integrity" law, forbidding intermarriage of Negroes with white people. But it appears that the membership of the Negro organization was not quite so idiotic as the Garvey leadership had assumed. A number of Negro workers arose in the meeting and

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objected vigorously to allowing the enemy propagandists to speak. The membership supported the objectors, and the three Negro baiters were driven out of the hall by the protest. The Richmond division faces a split, with the left wing clamoring for a repudiation of Garvey's concession that "this is a white man's country." The Revolt of the Left Wing We believe that this incident points to the real basis of the crisis of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. The new Negro--a healthy working class left wing in the organization--refuses any longer to submit to the servile anti-Negro program that Garvey has been adopting to thrust down their throats. Another recent report is to the effect that Mrs. Garvey attempted to speak to the New York membership, assembled at Liberty Hall, and that the membership refused to permit her to speak. As Mrs. Garvey represents the point of view of PresidentGeneral Garvey, the New York demonstration against her speaking probably indicates that the New York membership is at least partly aroused against the servile program . • . • Wm. L. Sherrill, the Center of the Opposition In the meantime how about Mr. William L. Sherrill, the man who is the center of the anti-Garvey leadership? The Hope of the U.N.I.A. Probably it will not be thru the leadership of Sherrill or the leadership of any of the hitherto prominent men of the Universal Negro Improvement Association that the organization may be saved from disaster. The most hope lies in the fact that there has been generated in the organization in the past two or three years a very able corps of young men and women of working class character and undoubted sincerity. These young leaders are instinctively and potentially with any left wing that may be developing in either faction. Inevitably sooner or later there must be a revolt in such a mass organization of working class Negroes against the policy of submission. The left wing has hitherto been diverted into a sort of pseudo-anti-imperialism--a sort of a wordy objection to the conquest of Africa by the great imperialist powers without any tangible action to make the protest effective. The key to the matter is the question of a program of militant struggle for the rights of the Negro here in the United States, in addition to an effective anti-imperialist world program. It is a case of a program or death, for the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Workers' Monthly, April 1926. PROGRAM FOR BUILDING THE TRADE UNIONS Proposals to the A.F. of L. Convention, Detroit, 1926, by the Trade Union Educational League The American labor movement is in a crisis. Everywhere the employers are attacking the working conditions of labor and standard of living and trying to destroy the trade unions. While capital is thoroughly organized, there are only 3,500,000 organized out of 20,000,000 organizable workers. The

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unions have lost more than a million members in the open shop war. Company unionism is gaining, with over a million workers bound up in these fake organizations. The trade unions, weakened by craft divisions and top-heavy with an official bureaucracy, which refuses to fight the employers, have retreated almost everywhere under the employers' attacks. . . . , To remedy these conditions and to build the trade unions into powerful organizations, the following measures are necessary: (1) Organize the Unorganized; (2) Demands for Improved Living Standards; (3) A Policy of Militant Action; (4) A Labor Party; (5) Save the Miners' Union; (6) Nationalization of Industry; (7) Against American Imperialism; (8) Wage an intensive war against Company Unions; (9) Fight Against Injunctions; (10) Wage a vigorous campaign for the release of all political prisoners; (11) Against Racial Discrimination. The trade unions must include wage workers regardless of race, creed, sex, age or color. The A.F. of L. must declare for the removal of all bars against Negroes, Japanese, Mexicans and other races and national groups which are discriminated against in entering the trade unions. It must demand the abolition of all Jim Crow laws, practices and discriminations, and the elimination of lynching. The A.F. of L. shall initiate an active campaign to organize the Negro workers, and demand that they be given equal pay for equal work, and extend them the utmost protection of the trade unions. Special campaigns should be launched to organize the Mexican and Japanese workers in this country. Daily Worker, September 4, 1926. NEGROES MUST BE ORGANIZED SAYS RANDOLPH This news account indicates early Communist support for the drive to organize the Pullman car porters, led by A. Philip Randolph, editor of the Socialist magazine, The Messenger. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was launched in 1925, and it took a long and hard struggle to gain union recognition. The Brotherhood was not chartered by the AFL until 1936, and finally recognized by the Pullman company the following year. Randolph was elected president of the Brotherhood at its first national convention in 1929. Cleveland, Ohio, Oct. 8--A. Philip Randolph, organizer for the colored Pullman porters, spoke here recently on organization to a large audience at the big Zion Baptist church, colored. "The Pullman porters are entitled to real wages," Randolph said. "Their work is as much social work as any other. They do not want to be beggars and dependent for their living on the tips that are handed to them by travelers. The Pullman porters must be unionized just as well as all the other workers on the railroads and if there were a strong union of Pullman porters, it would strengthen immeasurably the railroad brotherhoods and all the unions of the railways. "The white workers look upon the colored workers largely as scabs, and this is due naturally to the fact that since the Negro workers are unorganized they are wanted in times of strikes, as involuntary strikebreakers. "The white workers sooner or later will be forced to the realization that there can be no real organization in this country while the Negro workers 142

remain on the outside and unorganized. It will be shown that for the benefit of workers white and colored that they must support this movement for the unionization of colored workers." "No other group," said Randolph, "in this country has suffered so long and so deeply as the colored race. No other group has been used so miserably; no other group has waited so long for emancipation. We can no longer sit down with folded hands. We must no longer be afraid to go forward and make our just demands. If our demands are worthwhile, then they are worth fighting for. Let us get together. "There are others who will support us in our demands. A union of the colored Pullman porters that can force its demand of living wages to take the place of the miserable tip system that robs a man of self-respect, will be a demonstration of what Negroes can do with organization and will be the beginning of a movement of all the colored workers into trade unions. Let the beginning be a 100 per cent organization of the Pullman porters and let us not rest until our demands for wages becomes an accomplished fact in this country." Daily Worker, October 9, 1926. FINDS NO RACE DISCRIMINATION IN SOVIET UNION By Thomas L. Dabney Federated Press The "spontaneously formed" student delegation, referred to here, is not to be confused with the First American Student Delegation to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1927 which consisted of members delegated by college student bodies and organizations. More than 70 nationalities and ethnic groups were represented in the student body of the University of the Toilers (not "Minorities") of the East, in which were six American Negroes of whom Dabney met five. The Federated Press was an independent agency which served labor papers. (Dabney is a member of the Teachers' Union, a former Brookwood Labor College student who went with the spontaneously formed American student delegation to Russia during the summer.--Ed.) There is no discrimination against a worker in Russia because of his race or nationality. Every worker has the same economic and political rights and advantages, whether he be the member of the largest social group--the Great Russians--or a minority race like the Volga Germans or an undeveloped race like the Tartars. I was convinced of this during my travels in Russia the past summer. I talked with the heads of shop committees in Nijni Novgorod, Saratov and other cities where different nationalities were employed. I found no evidence of discrimination in any factory on account of race. No Negro Discrimination In Moscow I met five Negro students from the Communist University of the Minorities of the East. In my conversation with one of them he said: "We are treated well by the Russians. We have suffered no discrimination on account of color. On the contrary, we are accorded absolute equality and 143

freedom everywhere. Some Russians, of course, have seen no Negroes, so they eye us curiously and seem a little shy at first. But they lose this after they come to know us." Council of Nationalities The Soviet government has made the greatest contribution to democratic government in modern times in its handling of the problems of race and nationality. This unique achievement was accomplished by the Soviet system of representation in the legislative body of the republic. The Soviet legislative organ--the central executive committee--is composed of two bodies, the Union Council and the Council of Nationalities. The Union Council is composed of members elected by the Union Congress from among delegates of all the republics, in proportion to the population of the respective republics. The races and nationalities are represented in the Council of Nationalities, which is composed of five representatives from each autonomous and allied republic and one representative from each autonomous territory. The function of this body is to protect and further the interests and rights of the various races and minorities in the Soviet Union. All Are Satisfied The races and minorities seem to be satisfied with this system. The commissar of education of the Volga German Commune assured our delegation that the Germans were enjoying all the rights and advantages granted by the Soviet authorities to other races. Before the revolution they were denied the privilege of studying German; now both German and Russian are taught in the schools. In Kasan, capital of the Tartar republic, the commissar of education reiterated the story told us in the German Volga Commune. At the hills of the Caucasus we visited a village inhabited by a branch of the Turkish race where the tribes were without a written language during the days of the czar. Since the revolution the Soviet authorities have worked out a written language in their schools. Every race and minority group is free to develop its own culture and to worship as it pleases. As a result of this policy racial conflicts have ceased and all peoples are loyal to the Soviet government. Daily Worker, November 19, 1926. NATIONAL PLATFORM OF THE WORKERS (COMMUNIST) PARTY, 1928 XII.

Oppression of the Negroes

The nominating convention of the Workers (Communist) Party was held in New York, May 25, 1928, and nominated William z. Foster for president and Benjamin Gitlow for vice president. The convention had 24 Black delegates, and the party ran a number of Negro candidates for legislative and local office. A notable feature of the election campaign was Foqter's tour of the South, where he spoke in Louisville, Ky., Birmingham, Ala., New Orleans, La., Atlanta, Ga., and in Norfolk and Richmond, Va. Foster and other campaign workers were arrested in Wilmington, Del. because the publicity for the meeting included the demand for Negro equality. In Texas the party ran John Rust, inventor of the mechanical cotton picker, as its candidate for

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the U.S. Senate. On the ballot in 34 states, Foster polled 48,228 votes, more than triple the 1924 vote. The section of the platform dealing with the Negro may be considered among the most satisfactory party statements on the subject until then. Though it still speaks vaguely of the ''racial class system," it also states categorically, "The Communist Party is the party of the liberation of the Negro race from all white oppression." The platform covers a wide range of Black demands. It also recognizes the distinctive semi-feudal nature of the agrarian system in the South, although it tends to overemphasize the immediate effect of industrialization upon the plantation system. Notable also is the invocation of Section Two of the 14th Amendment which provides that representation of Southern states be reduced to correspond with limitations on Negro suffrage. American white imperialism oppresses in the most terrific way the ten million Negroes who constitute not less than one-tenth of the total population. White capitalist prejudices consider the Negroes a "lower race," the born servants of the lofty white masters. The racial caste system is a fundamental feature of the social, industrial and political organization of this country. The Communist Party declares that it considers itself not only the party of the working class generally but also the champion of the Negroes as an oppressed race, and especially the organizer of the Negro working-class elements. The Communist Party is the party of the liberation of the Negro race from all white oppression. There is a "new Negro" in process of development. The social composition of the Negro race is changing. Formerly the Negro was the cotton farmer in the South and domestic help in the North. The industrialization of the South, the concentration of a new Negro working-class population in the big cities of the East and North, and the entrance of the Negroes into the basic industries on a mass scale have changed the whole social composition of the Negro race. The appearance of a genuine Negro industrial proletariat creates an organizing force for the whole Negro race, furnishes a new working-class leadership to all Negro race movements, and strengthens immensely the fighting possibilities for the emancipation of the race. The Negro tenant farmer and sharecroppers of the South are still, despite all the pompous phrases about freeing the slaves, in the status of virtual slavery. They have not the slightest prospect of ever acquiring possession of the land on which they work. By means of an usurious credit system they are chained to the plantation owners as securely as chattel slaves. Peonage and contract labor are the fate of the Negro cotton farmer. The landowners, who are at the same time the merchants and government of the South, rule over the Negroes with a merciless dictatorship. There is the most dishonest and disgraceful "gentleman's agreement" between the two capitalist parties against the political rights of the Negroes. The famous Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the Constitution amount but to a scrap of paper. They were never carried out for a moment. The Supreme Court has upheld State laws which disfranchised the Negroes. Sheer force prevents the Negro from exercising his so-called political rights. The Federal Government has never made any attempt to reduce the representation of those Southern States which violate the Constitution, as Section Two of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution provides. The

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Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, has sunk so low that it has provided for measures to segregate the Negro delegates in its 1928 Kansas City nominating convention. Lynch law is the law over the Negroes. The terror of the Ku Klux Klan is the constitution for the Negroes. They are burned alive, whipped to death, hunted to death with dogs in the name of white civilization. There is a general segregation policy against the Negro race. Separate residential sections; Jim Crow cars; separate schools for Negro children; exclusion from "white" hotels, restaurants, theatres and railway waiting rooms; exclusion of Negroes from juries which try Negroes. Negro teachers cannot teach in most white schools. The white masters try to reduce the Negroes to illiteracy. According to the 1920 census, there were 4 per cent illiterates among the whites and 22.9 per cent among the Negroes. The Southern States spend hardly any money for the education of Negro children. In the cotton States the Negro farmers are compelled to life in miserable shacks under conditions destructive of life and health. In the cities the Negroes do the unskilled, the most disagreeable, most hazardous work, and are crowded into the worst sections of the city. The death rate of the Negroes is much higher than that of the whites. In 1925 it was 11.8 per thousand for the whites and 18.2 for the Negroes. The Southern plantation owners and their Government have tried to keep the Negro farmers and agricultural workers in the Southern cotton fields by force. But even their brutal terror has not been able to check the mighty migration from these cotton plantations to the industrial centers of the Northern and Eastern States. This migration is an "unarmed, Spartacan uprising" against slavery and oppression by a capitalist and feudal oligarchy. The Negro fled from the South, but what has he found in the North? He has found in the company town and industrial cities of the North and East a wage slavery virtually no better than the contract labor in the South. He has found crowded, unsanitary slums. He has exchanged the old segregation for a new segregation. He is doing the most dangerous, worst paid work in the steel, coal and packing industries. He has found the racial prejudices of a narrow, white labor aristocracy, which refuses to recognize the unskilled Negro worker as its equal. He has found the treachery of the bureaucracy of the A.F. of L. which refuses to organize the Negroes into trade unions. The lynchings of the South are replaced by the race riots of the East. The employing class deliberately arouses the racial hatred and prejudice of the white workers against the Negro workers with the sinister aim to split and divide the ranks of the working class, thereby maintaining the oppression and exploitation of white and Negro workers. What Marx said about the United States is still true: "Labor in a white skin cannot emanicipate itself as long as a dark skin is branded." The Negro worker must learn to utilize to the fullest extent the possibilities created by modern capitalism for organization and struggle against wage slavery in alliance with the workers of other races. The Communist Party considers it as its historic duty to unite all workers regardless of their color against the common enemy, against the master class. The Negro race must understand that capitalism means racial oppression and Communism means social and racial equality. Demands 1. Abolition of the whole system of race discrimination. Full racial, political, and social equality for the Negro race. 146

2. Abolition of all laws which result in segregation of Negroes. Abolition of all Jim Crow laws. The law shall forbid all discrimination against Negroes in selling or renting houses. 3. Abolition of all laws which disfranchise the Negroes. 4. Abolition of laws forbidding intermarriage of persons of different races. 5. Abolition of all laws and public administration measures which prohibit, or in practice prevent, Negro children or youth from attending general public schools or universities. 6. Full and equal admittance of Negroes in all railway station waiting rooms, restaurants, hotels, and theatres. 7. A federal law against lynching and the protection of the Negro masses in their right of self-defense. 8. Abolition of discriminatory practices in the courts against Negroes. No discrimination in jury service. 9. Abolition of the convict lease system and of the chain gang. 10. Abolition of all Jim Crow distinctions in army, navy, and civil service. 11. Immediate removal of all restrictions in all trade unions against the membership of Negro workers. 12. Equal opportunity for employment, wages, hours, and working conditions for Negro and white workers. Equal pay for equal work for Negro and white workers. Kirk H. Porter and Donald Bruce Johnson, editors, National Party Platforms, 1840-1956. Urbana, 1965, pp. 317-19. See also Daily Worker, May 26, 1928. WILLIAM Z. FOSTER'S ACCEPTANCE SPEECH AS COMMUNIST PARTY PRES IDE NT IAL CANDIDATE Comrades, one of the planks in our Party platform deals with the question of the oppression of the Negro race. This plank I want to emphasize here. The Workers (Communist) Party appears in the United States as the sole champion, organizer, and defender of the Negro race. Our fight is for full social, political, and industrial rights for Negroes. In all our work we must keep this phase of our Party program squarely before our eyes. In the past we have been all too inactive in this respect. But we must make this campaign the beginning of fresh efforts to unite the Negroes in behalf of their race and class interests, so that the world can recognize that the Workers (Communist) Party is really the defender and leader of the oppressed Negroes in this century. (Applause). At this time I shall not deal with the whole Negro question. There is only one angle that I want to touch upon now. Our election campaign will take us into the southern states. (Applause). We have a plank in our platform on the Negro question that will arouse the most violent opposition in every element in the South that is determined to hold the Negro race in subjection. Nevertheless, we will go into the ultra-reactionary South and we will speak for the Negro. We will defend our platform. (Applause). In the land of lynch law we will denounce lynching. (Applause). In the home of Jim crow, we will attack segregationism. (Applause). The entry of the workers (Communist) Party into the South, and the bold raising of the issue of the emancipation of the Negroes during the coming election campaign, will stand out as one of the historical events in the development of the class struggle in the United States. (Applause). Daily Worker, June 23, 1928.

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PLENUM MATERIAL

N.

OUR NEGRO WORK

The following is part of the material prepared for a forthcoming plenary session of the Central Committee. It was the practice at such meetings to invite comrades responsible for various phases of work, even if not members of the Central Committee. Nothing new is added here, except the instruction to the Political Committee to strengthen the work of the Negro Department, which had but recently been established. The Central Executive Committee calls attention to the growing importance of our work among the Negroes. The industrialization of the south, the concentration of a huge Negro population in the big cities, the entering of the Negroes into the basic industries on a mass scale have created a Negro industrial proletariat. The organization of the Negro workers who are overwhelmingly unorganized and who constitute a large section of the unorganized masses, is one of our major tasks in connection with the general problem of the organization of the unorganized workers. The organization of the Negroes into trade unions must be recognized by the Party as one of its foremost tasks. The C.E.C. [Central Executive Committees) endorses the policies of the Political Committee on Negro work pointing out that: a. The Negro question is a race question and the Communist Party must be the champion of the oppressed Negro race. b. The Communist Party must especially be the organizer of the working-class elements of the Negro race. c. The Communist Party must fight for the leadership of the working class in all Negro race movements. d. The work among the Negroes is not only a special task of the Negro comrades but it is the task of the entire Party. The Central Committee further instructs the Political Committee to take the necessary steps to strengthen the Negro Department of the Party. The Communist, July 1928. U.S. COMMUNIST PARTY DENOUNCES LYNCHINGS Three Negroes have recently been lynched in the most horrible and brutal manner in the state of Mississippi. A mob of over 5,000 battered down the jail at Brookhaven, and dragged out two Negroes who had been arrested because they had resisted two white men who had attacked them with a gun following a dispute. The mob tied these men to automobile trucks, dragged them around town, and strung them up to an electric light pole within 50 feet of the City Hall. While they were yet conscious, these ill-fated Blacks were lowered to the ground, mutilated, and their remains again strung up. Among the mob were business men, prominent city officials, physicians, lawyers, school heads and church leaders. At Summit, another Negro was given over by officers to a lynching mob which hanged its victim to a tree along the road. Only a few days before, at Houston, Texas, a young Negro was lynched as the democrats assembled for their national convention. He had exchanged shots with a detective who had been hounding him. He was taken from the hospital, where he lay wounded, by five men, one a policeman in uniform, and hanged from a bridge. While the body of this young Negro swung limp and lifeless, the democrats, assembled at Sam Houston Hall eight 148

miles away, showed their complete accord with the system of lynching and exploitation by their failure to write any plank in their platform or even to utter a single word against this horrible practice of lynching. Lynching, a Part of Capitalist Class Oppression These lynchings expose once more the system of savage repression and brutal terrorism by which the Negro masses of America are ground under the iron heel of their ruthless exploiters. Lynching is openly defended in congress, it is condoned in the courts, it is preached from the pulpits. It is purposely maintained by the wealthy rulers of America as a necessary part of the vicious system of oppression and exploitation which keeps the Negro masses as a slave class at the bottom of capitalist society, degraded and driven in the most merciless fashion, to produce wealth for their inhuman exploiters. It is the naked engine of terror which upholds the whole vile system of racial segregation and oppression, of Jim-Crowism, disfranchisement, peonage and slavery--the system which not only crushes the Negro masses but divides them also from the white workers and secures the degradation and exploitation of all the workers of America. Lynching is a special part of the "law and order" of capitalist society. It is the extra-legal counterpart of the legal machinery and state power by which the workers, Black and white, are enslaved, repressed and exploited by the financial masters of America. It is part of the whole capitalist system of exploitation, which utilizes the divisions between Black and white workers to pay the Negro worker the most miserable starvation wages and to force him to work under the most degrading conditions at the most arduous and disagreeable tasks. Capitalist Politicians Will Never Stop Lynching The political servants of the imperialist oppressors will never abolish lynching. The Cole Bleases and the Heflins, the Glasses and the Tillmans, openly support lynching. The Coolidges and the Hoovers and the Smiths either silently support lynching or speak hypocritical words, but never take action against the lynchers. Both republicans and democrats united to defeat the Dyer anti-lynching bill which in spite of its many defects would have provided some legal basis for proceeding against the lynchers. The Democratic Party of Lynching The democratic party is the party of the solid South, the party of the businessmen and the plantation owners who live upon the labor and subjection of the Black and white workers. Not a single Negro delegate was seated in the democratic convention, and a Jim-Crow cage was provided for Negro visitors . . The republican party is the party of big business, of the bankers and financial magnates who have only one use for the Negroes--to keep them in violent subjection, in order to wring wealth out of their toil. Hoover, the republican candidate for president, is the faithful servent of the imperialist oppressors. He has maintained segregation in his department, and condoned the peonage and abuse of thousands of Negroes during the Mississippi flood disaster. The republican party openly rebuffs the Negro by segregating their delegates at its national convention in Kansas. 149

The socialist party is treacherous. It openly declared upon taking office in Reading, Pennsylvania, that it would maintain capitalist law and order. Its empty gesture of the Berger antilynching billl means nothing. Besides this bill fails in the most essential, the right of self-defense for the Negro masses. The socialist leaders of the Pullman Porters have lined up with William Green, President of the A.F. of L . . In the South, the socialist party refuses to admit Negroes into its ranks and holds meetings at which the practices of Negro segregation are strictly enforced. Only the Working Class Can Abolish Lynching The brutal and atrocious treatment of the Negro masses, of which lynching, cold-blooded and horrible, is an expression, is a characteristic of United States imperialism which suppresses with bayonet and gun the peoples of Haiti, Latin America and the Philippines and crushes with murderous cruelty every attempt of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples to free themselves from the oppression and exploitation of their imperialist masters. Only the victorious party of the workers can abolish lynching. Only a workers' and farmers' government can overthrow the whole vile system of lynching and exploitation. It was the revolutionary Communist Party which abolished lynching and pogroms in Russia. It will be the revolutionary Workers · (Communist) Party of America that will abolish lynching in America in the same way. The Workers (Communist) Party stands forth as the champion of the oppressed Negro masses. Twenty-four Negro delegates sat in the National Nominating Convention of the Workers Party, participated on all important committees and helped to draft a program of action for the oppressed masses of America, Black and white. Only the Workers Party support the Negro masses in their struggle against the system of lynching and race oppression. Only this party unites Black and white workers in militant struggle against the system of imperialist oppression, of which lynching is an outgrowth. Only this party champions the Negro masses in their right of self-defense and only this party fights with them against mob violence and terrorism. . . . The Negro race must understand that capitalism means racial oppression, and communism means social equality. [The party demands, as given in the Election Platform above, are then listed.] Daily Worker, July 20, 1928. ON THE FOUNDING OF AN INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNION OJMMITTEE OF NEGRO WORKERS The following resolution was adopted in July 1928 by the Executive Bureau of the Red International of Labor Unions, also known as the Profintern. The RILU was organized in 1921 as the world body to which the Left and Communist-led unions affiliated, as distinct from the Socialist-led International Federation of Trade Unions (Amsterdam). The International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers, as called for in the resolution, was founded at a conference in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7, 1929. It was attended by some 20

1 Victor L. Berger, the Socialist congressman, proposed a bill that would make participation in lynching a felony. 150

delegates from the United States, Jamaica, Nigeria, Gambia, the Gold Cost (now Ghana), the Cameroons and South Africa. The chief organizer of the conference was James W. Ford, the American Negro Communist, who became head of the Committee, with headquarters in Hamburg, while George Padmore was made the editor of its monthly journal, The Negro worker. Later Otto Huiswood took Ford's place. Ford was a member of the Executive Committee of the RILU. The Pittsburgh Courier (November 10, 1928) printed a long article by its Paris correspondent, J. A. Rogers, reporting the appearance in France of L'Ouvrier Negre (The Negro Worker), published by International Secours Rouge (Red Aid International). The publication mentioned by Rogers was evidently the forerunner of the organ to be published by the Committee. It included an article by James w. Ford and one by A. Lozovsky, head of the RILU, and called upon the Negro workers of the world to unite. It attacked racism among white workers and was critical of the Amsterdam International as well as the Pan-American International Federation of Labor. The magazine was also critical of the TUEL in the United States for neglect of Negro workers. J. A. Rogers was to become a popular writer on Black history. James w. Ford was born in 1893 of a working-class family in Pratt City, Alabama, a mining town near Birmingham. His grandfather was lynched by a white mob in Georgia. Working at various odd industrial jobs, he was able to finish high school and go on for three years at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1917 he enlisted in the army and saw service in France during World War I. He worked in the Chicago post office, 1919-1927, and was elected delegate by his union to the Chicago AFL. He aided in the early efforts to organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in Chicago, and he joined the Trade Union Educational League, and then the Workers Party in 1926. He was a delegate to the IVth World Congress of the Red International of Labor Unions, and became a member of its Executive Committee. In Consideration, That racial chauvinism among the workers is still rather strong and even spreads its evil among individual revolutionary organizations, that despite the resolutions of RILU Congresses and the urgent directives of the Executive Bureau, the organizing of Negro workers is progressing very slowly, That the organizations associated with the RILU, particularly the League for Union Propaganda in the USA still have not begun the creation of independent Negro unions, That a further delay in this matter will leave millions of the most oppressed slaves of capital outside the field of activities of the RILU, that, as a result of economic, political and racial persecution, the Negro workers represent a tremendous potential revolutionary force in the struggle against the capitalism, that the Negro workers in the USA, Africa, the Antilles and Latin America can achieve equality with white workers only through an organized, decisive struggle against the total system of capitalist exploitation-The Executive Bureau resolves: 1. The creation of an international union committee of Negro workers in the RILU consisting of two representatives from the USA and one each from South Africa, Guadeloupe, Martinique 151

and Cuba. Later representatives of Negro workers from Haiti, East Africa, Portugese Africa, the Belgian Congo, Liberia, French Equitorial Africa and from the countries of Latin America where large groups of Negro workers live (e.g., Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, etc.) will be drawn upon. 2. To direct the Trade Union Committee to win over Negro workers for the trade unions, to found new organizations together with white workers and independent unions in areas where Negroes are not accepted in the existing unions, and most importantly to make contact with the Negro workers all over the world and to unite the broad masses of the Negro proletariat on the foundation of the class struggle. 3. To direct the International Trade Union Committee to publish a special press service and prepare an international conference of Negro workers for the end of 1929. (Moscow, July 31, 1928.) Du Rote Gewerkschafts-International, August 1928, No. 8 (91), p. 479. (Translated from the German.) Betrays Negroes Marcus Garvey stands revealed as one of those misleaders who for some paltry consideration is ready to aid in riveting the chain of oppression on the Negro masses. His endorsement of the democratic party, the party of the solid south, with its policy of violent repression of the Negro workers, is a base betrayal of the Negro race. This blatant clown has placed the stamp of approval on the business interests who thrive upon the exploitation and enslavement of the Negro masses. Through the bitter experience of every-day struggle the Negro will learn that both the democratic and republican parties are the agencies of the employing class, which exploits both Black and white workers and whose policy it is to keep the Negro at the bottom of capitalist society. The Negro workers must learn that both parties stand for the same thing--lynching, segregation and exploitation. The Negro workers must support the party which champions his cause, the party which fights against the system that abuses him, the party which unites all workers regardless of race and which is dedicated to the common struggle for the abolition of the capitalist system which divides and exploits both Black and white workers. This party is the Workers (Communist) Party. Daily Worker, August 22, 1928. IS THE NEGRO WITHOUT A PARTY? The Workers (Communist) Party ran a number of Black candidates in New York in the 1928 elections. Among them was Richard B. Moore, candidate for Congress in the 21st Congres- sional District, which includes Harlem. He ran a spirited campaign in the streets of the Black metropolis. "Hardly an open-air meeting was held in the Negro section without resulting applications for membership," reported the Daily Worker (August 23, 1928). Special efforts were made to rally party members from other parts of the city, white as well as Black, in support of such campaigns. The party designated "Negro Work Week" in New York and other cities (see, e.g. Daily Worker, September 17, 1928). Two other Black Communists were on the party ticket in New York--Lovett Fort-Whiteman for state comptroller and Edward Welsh for state assembly. Negroes were also nominated on other state tickets of the party. 152

The following is excerpted from an open letter from Richard B. Moore to Rev. Thomas s. Harten of the Holy Trinity Baptist Church, a Negro church. The reverend had published a statement in the Amsterdam News, August 8, 1928, asserting that both the Democratic and Republican parties were enemies of the Negro people and offering a donation of $200 to the campaign fund of any Negro candidate nominated for public office. You are quite right when you say: "Today it seems that the great principles of human rights are forgotten by the Grand Old Party, while a few of our Negro leaders play to the howling mob without making the proper demand for our citizenship rights. On the other hand the democratic party . . is just as much opposed today to the Negro receiving his citizenship rights as it was sixty years ago." We are indeed glad to find that you are taking a definite and militant stand in this present campaign. We bear in mind the militant struggle which you have waged in Brooklyn in many instances for the defense of the oppressed Negro race. And we are hoping that your entry into the political campaign will be characterized by the same uncompromising and militant spirit. Will the beneficiaries of a system do anything to abolish that system? Will the parties of the oppressors do anything to abolish oppression? Of course not~ You seem to be conscious of this when you say: "Today the Black man is without a party . . . . "To my mind, it will not pay the Negro to lose friendship over Mr. Smith nor Mr. Hoover, but our salvation lies in selecting some real men of our race not only in Harlem but throughout the country, and send them to congress, to the state legislature, and elect them judges." Yes, in respect to the republican and democratic parties, it is absolutely correct and indisputable to affirm that "today the Black man is without a party." But fortunately for the oppressed Negro race, there is a growing militant and powerful party of the oppressed Negro and other workers of America, the Workers (Communist) Party of America. The Workers Party stands forth today as the champion of the oppressed Negro race and of all other oppressed groups in the country. Unlike the republican and democratic parties, which segregated and excluded Negroes at their national conventions, the Workers (Communist) Party welcomed and seated 24 Negro delegates. These delegates participated on all important committees, many serving as chairmen of sessions, and helped to draft a program of action for the complete emancipation of the oppressed masses of America. This platform is a historic document. It is the first time in the political history of America that a party has taken such an unequivocal, uncompromising and militant stand upon the Negro question . . . . The Workers Party, in accordance with its stand for the complete emancipation of the Negro Race, nominated three Negro candidates on its state ticket--Lovett Fort-Whiteman for State Comptroller; Richard B. Moore for Congress from the 21st Congressional District, and Edward Welsh for Assembly from the 21st Assembly District. These candidates, standing as they do upon a platform which demands the abolition of the whole system of racial discrimination, will be compelled to wage a militant struggle in the legislative offices and will have the support of their party. 153

I am sure you will agree that it is not enough to have individuals who are sympathetically disposed toward the Negro race, or even Negro candidates in office, if they lack the clear understanding of the true situation and the spirit of militancy and struggle. It is also necessary--in fact, it is absolutely essential--to have a party back of these candidates which will compel them to toe the mark and will stand back of them with its support. A Negro who is bound hand and foot by the corrupt and oppressive democratic and republican machines, will be unable to fight militantly for the interest of his race. I am, therefore, led to hope confidently for your support. I feel that this Party and its candidates have the only real claim upon the offer of support which you so generously make. I therefore claim your support for the Workers Party and for its candidates . . . . Daily worker, August 29, 1928. THE WORKERS (COMMUNIST) PARTY IN THE SOUTH By Wm. Z. Foster This article by William Z. Foster indicates that the Communists were beginning to pay serious attention to work in the South. His own election tour brought Foster face to face with the Southern reality, and he was obviously shocked by the stark Jim Crow system. He was also impressed with the growth of a new working class. He noted the progress of the Republicans in their drive to split the solid, Democratic South, by appearing as lily white as their opponents. Foster called for a special program of work for the South and for the establishment of a Southern district of the party. He considered the policy on the Negro question to be the decisive issue in the South. He spoke out against separate branches for whites and Blacks: "Those workers who are not willing to join a common branch with the Negroes and participate with them in party activities are not yet ready for membership in the Workers (Communist) Party." The Workers (Communist) Party had made a beginning at mass work in the South. This is a fact of major importance in the development of the class struggle in the United States. For this reason, among others, the present election campaign marks an epoch in the history of our Party. The work in the south has been begun by the sending of several organizers into the field, by touring of election speakers, by the issuance of special literature, by the placing of the Party on the ballot in a number of southern states, etc. It was my part, in this work, to address election meetings in Louisville, Birmingham, New Orleans, Atlanta, Norfolk and Richmond. The meetings in Louisville, Birmingham and New Orleans were the first communist open mass meetings ever held in the respective states of Kentucky, Alabama and Louisiana. It is fitting that with the rapid industrialization of the south and with the developing struggle of the Negroes throughout the country, the Workers (Communist) Party, the party of the working class and the champion of the oppressed Negro race, should begin its operations in the south. These activities must be greatly increased in the future. Manifestly, the south presents many difficult problems of a major character. These must be thoroughly analyzed, a program outlined for them, and the Party organized to solve them. It is 154

highly important that the various organizers, speakers and active comrades, participating in the southern work, carefully compile and present their experiences to the party. The present article is a contribution in this sense . . . . The rapid industrialization of the south increasingly develops a rich field for general class activity by our Party. Wages are very low, hours long, and working conditions bad in all the southern industries, new and old. In the great Alabama coal and steel industries, wages run as low as 15 cents per hour for unskilled workers, with 25 cents per hour top rate, with the cost of living almost as high as in northern industrial centers. The 10 to 12 hour day prevails. Similar conditions exist in the textile, lumber, railroad and other industries throughout the sputh. The farm workers and tenant farmers, submerged in poverty, live in a semi-feudal state. The new proletariat in the south is being developed under conditions of hardship and poverty. It is one of the basic tasks of our Party to organize this increasingly important section of the working class and to lead it in the big struggle it is bound soon to carry on against the employers and the state. Trade unionism is weaker in the south than in any other section of the country. The great armies of workers in the coal, textile, steel, lumber and agricultural industries are completely unorganized. Only the skilled upper layers of railroad workers have unions. Even the building and printing trades workers have hardly more than a skeleton organization. Unions will be built in the southern industries and the workers' standards raised only by a militant fight against the existing terrorism, industrial and political. It is idle to expect the ultra-reactionary southern trade-union bureaucracy to lead such a fight, or that the old unions can be used as our chief organizational basis, although we must also work in these unions. To organize the unorganized masses and lead them in struggle is the task of the left wing, led by our Party and the T.U.E.L., and its organizational program must be founded upon the establishment of new industrial unions in the basic industries. The Party and the T.U.E.L. must at once orient themselves in this direction. The role of the left wing as the organizer and leader of the working class of the south, is further emphasized by the increasing importance of the Negro workers in southern industry, which stresses our need to organize them. Our party is the only force that can organize and lead the Negro masses in real struggle. The Republican and Democratic Parties are manifestly the enemies of the Negroes. The trade-union bureaucracy, accepting the whole Jim Crow system of the exploiters, persecutes and oppresses the Negroes by barring them from the unions, discriminating against them in industry, and supporting their political disfranchisement and social ostracism. In Atlanta, for example, a typical situation exists. Negroes are not even allowed to come into the Labor Temple. And how little the Negroes can look to the Socialist Party for leadership is exemplified by the fact that Norman Thomas in his election tour through the south, never even mentioned the Negro question. This is in line with the general S. P. program regarding the Negroes. Only our Party speaks and fights for the Negroes and the situation in the south develops increasingly favorably for it to establish a mass following among the Negroes. The Fight Among Jim-Crowism The situation in the south, in addition to offering continuing more favorable opportunities for our Party to come forward as the leader of the working class, also progressively 155

facilitates its activities as the organizer and defender of the Negro race. The bitter injustice of the Jim Crow caste system is forced upon one at every turn in the south. This outrageous thing, ranging from studied insults to the Negro race, rank discrimination in industry, political disfranchisement and social ostracism, to lynching and other forms of open terrorism, confronts one on all sides; special railroad cars for Negroes, "colored" restaurants, waiting-rooms, libraries, schools, living districts, elevators in office buildings, etc . . . . It is the historic task of our Party to lead the fight against the organized persecution of the Negroes. This is a revolutionary struggle. It must be carried on under the sologan of "full social, political and industrial equality for Negroes," and "the right of self-determination for the Negroes." This is necessary not only for the liberation struggle of the Negroes, but for the general revolutionary struggle of the whole working class . . . . Hoover and Smith in the South The industrialization of the south inevitably thrusts to the fore the chief party of big capital, the Republican Party. This party is driving to establish itself in the south by mobilizing behind it the "Prostestant," dry, "American" vote. Its main instrument is the Ku Klux Klan, which, if organizationally weak, has a powerful ideological following. The Klan goes forward with a tremendous "whispering" campaign against Smith to unite all the Protestant bigotry in the south against him. This is being engineered by the Republican leaders despite their public, hypocritical deprecation of such methods. The trade-union leaders, mostly Klansmen, are overwhelmingly with Hoover . . To check the advance of the Republican Party, the democrats violently denounce that organization as the party of the Negroes and raise the slogan of "Vote for the Democratic Party and white supremacy." The secretary of· the Democratic Party of Alabama recently declared that if the republicans break the solid south, federal troops will be used at the next election to enforce the Negroes' right to vote. Meanwhile every device of terror and duplicity is used to disfranchise the Negroes. Governor Long of Louisiana recently struck the democratic keynote in this respect when he said: "Any registrar who puts Negroes on his rolls without their coming up to the strictest requirements (which are impossible--W.Z.F.}, will be removed from office and I am the man who will put them out." Violent propaganda is made on all sides that the race question is not one that can be settled by ballots but by bullets and cold steel. But all this vigorous race prejudice propaganda fails to stop the Republican Party's progress. This is largely because that party is aggressively demonstrating that it also stands for "white supremacy." • • . The Workers (Communist} Party must be quick to turn to advantage this unmasking of the Republican Party. Even now, since the Civil war, the overwhelming mass of Negroes have mainly supported the Republican Party as their party. But large numbers of them will be disillusioned by that party's exposure as an open supporter of Jim Crowism. We must seek to educate the Negroes generally to the true role of the Republican Party, in the light of the present situation, and to unite them in and around the Workers (Communist) Party as the only party that represents the interests of and fights for the Negro race.

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Need of a Party Program for the South The Workers (Communist) Party must give active and immediate attention to the development of a special program of work in the south. The Party must establish a southern district; it must get organizers in the field; it must carry through an aggressive campaign to recruit the Party membership and to establish in all the southern centers branches of our party, the Y.W.C.L. [Young Workers' Communist League], and the auxiliary organizations. The weakness of the Party's activities generally in Negro work must be drastically overcome. Together with this organizational program must be developed a political program for work in the south. We must have concrete demands, for the Negroes, and for the workers as a whole based on the actual situation. We must outline definite campaigns to organize actions in the various industries. The decisive factor in all our work in the south is our policy on the Negro question. We must realize from the outset that it is the basic task of our Party to lead a militant struggle for and with the Negroes. All our activities there, all our successes and failures will turn around this central fact. In the south we must be vigilantly on our guard to combat all tendencies in our Party to "soft-pedal" the Negro question, and to compromise with Jim Crowism. This has not been done sufficiently. We must fight resolutely against white chauvinism, because it is exactly in the south, where the fire of race prejudice is the hottest and the revolutionary initiative of the Negro most repressed, that the danger of chauvinism is the greatest in our Party and in the ranks of the workers generally. We must liquidate all such tendencies as the ignoring of the Negro question in our public speeches, failure to draw Negroes into open propaganda meetings or proposals to form separate white and Negro branches, etc. Those workers who are not willing to join a common branch with the Negroes and participate with them in Party activities are not yet ready for membership in the Workers (Communist) Party. Especially must our Party combat and liquidate the idea of building our Party in the south primarily of whites on the theory that "if you get the white workers, you've got the Negroes." This erroneous theory is simply a crystallization of white chauvinism under a mask of left phrases. It denies the revolutionary role of the Negro. It leads to the acceptance of Jim Crowism and implies the abandonment of all struggle for and with the Negroes. It is the working theory of the socialists and the A.F. of L. fakers. It has nothing in common with a communist program. Our Party must reject and eradicate it completely. The central task of our Party in the south is to unite the Negroes directly and to lead them in the struggle. Only in this way can our Party fulfill its historic task. The coming Party convention must give special attention to the general question of our work in the south. Communist, November 1928. WE MUST UNITE FOR STRUGGLE The following extract is notable for the frank discussion of color caste among American Negroes--of mulatto and Black, of light and dark skins, often involved in antagonism between West Indian and American Blacks, as among American Blacks themselves . . . There is a need to "close ranks." What is meant here by close ranks is the abolition of the stupid color castes which afflict us within our own ranks and which vitally affect our 157

ability to wage an effective struggle. These color caste prejudices as they exist among us are remnants of slavery days when most of the "free persons" were mulattoes, the children of black slave women and their lecherous white masters. They have also a property ownership source as these same mulattoes were practically the only property owners among the race when it was emancipated from chattel slaves into wage slaves without compensation for the centuries of slave-labor. Color castes within the Negro race are endangering our unity and our ability to wage the struggle against oppression. They are encouraged by the British imperialists in the West Indies, because from long experience these imperialists know their value in dividing the Negro and weakening our resistance. Those who adopt them show a singular lack of logical reasoning since plainly they accept inferiority for themselves when they accept the dictum that one's superiority is based upon the lightness of one's skin. Logically, then, the lighter the skin the more "superior'' the person, which logically leads to acceptance of the nordic's impudent assumption of race superiority. Such an attitude cannot be tolerated among thinking Negroes. Down with color caste prejudice! Unite for the struggle. Negro Champion, October 27, 1928. RESIST RENT INCREASES Overcrowded, bitterly exploited Negro Harlem faces a severe rent crisis. With the failure of the New York State Legislature to extend beyond December 1 even the meager protection of the Emergency Rent Laws, the landlords have launched a rapacious crusade to squeeze the last penny out of the Negro tenants, the last bit of hope out of many a hard-pressed mother, the last breath of life out of hundreds of babies, wailing for milk placed out of reach by the increased demands of the rent hounds upon the miserable incomes of Negro families. The Negro workers are already exploited to the breaking point. Doubly exploited on the job--barred from many trades and most offices by the employing class (usually on the groundless pretext that white workers will not work side by side with them), paid lower wages for equal work, confined for the most part to the worst paid and roughest jobs, the colored workers have still had to meet the brutal exaction of the landlordemployer class for higher rent, for the right of shelter, often forced to pay twice the rental as white tenants for the same premises, less a substantial part of the service formerly supplied by the landlord and his agents. Colored landlords and real estate agents have been no exceptions in the matter. Rather have they led the onslaught on the living standards of the workers of the race. Colored landlords and agents are no exception in the new onslaught. Now, as in the past, they are playing the historic class role of allies and tools of the enemy in the exploitation of the working class of their race. High rents in the past have brought overcrowding and an undermining of the workers' health and morals. High rents have forced many colored workers to run speakeasies and other disreputable things in their homes. High rents are responsible for the immoral atmosphere of these homes. High rents and other capitalist methods of exploitation are responsible for the high death rate among Negro babies and adults. Since the expiration of the Emergency Rent Laws, rents have been raised in some cases thirty per cent; in some cases the landlord has simply demanded double the amount formerly paid. Negro workers and tenants, resist these rapacious demands! Organize into Tenants Leagues for your own protection! Join the Harlem Tenants League! Attend its meetings every Monday night 158

at the Public Library, West 135th Street. Take your grievances to the office at 169 West 133rd Street, second floor front. Above all refuse to be terrorized by dispossess. Take your dispossess to the Harlem Tenants League. Harlem landlords have a practice of issuing fake dispossesses to scare tenants into moving or paying up. Don't get scared by a dispossess. Even if it's genuine, the Harlem Tenants League can help you. Resist rent increases! Organize into the Harlem Tenants League for your protection! Negro Champion, December 29, 1928.

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VI.

SIXTH WORLD CONGRESS OF THE

COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL, 1928

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VIth CONGRESS OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL The VIth Congress, which met in Moscow between July 17 and September 1, 1928, played a crucial role with respect to the Negro question in the United States. The concept of the American Negro as an oppressed nation had been advanced by Lenin since at least 1915 and had even been incorporated in an official document at the !Ind World Congress in 1920. The idea was broached again at subsequent World Congresses. But the concept had been rejected by the American Communists. Now the question was placed on the agenda of the VIth Congress and serious preparations were made for its discussion. Early in the year, the Anglo-American Secretariat of the CI appointed a sub-committee to draft a resolution for the consideration of the Negro Commission to be established at the Congress. The Commission was to make recommendations to the Congress as a whole on two central points: on the American Negro and on South Africa. According to Harry Haywood, who as a student at the University of the Toilers of the East and later the Lenin School, participated in all phases of the discussion, the position' was debated at length both in the preparatory sub-committee and in the Negro Commission (Black Bolshevik, pp. 227-235, 245-268). The sub-committee, which was charged with drawing up a draft resolution, included for the United States four Blacks. Among them were Haywood and his brother Otto Hall, and Clarence Hathaway, then a student at the Lenin School in Moscow, as well as Nasanov of the Young Communist International who had visited the United States on behalf of that organization, and who was a strong advocate of the national approach. Participating in the sessions of this committee from time to time were Robert Minor, then representing the American party in the Comintern (CI), and James Ford and William F. Dunne, both of whom were at the Profintern (RILU). Haywood and Nasanov submitted a resolution incorporating the national self-determination view to the sub-committee, which in turn was passed along, together with opposing views, to the Negro Commission of the Congress. As discussion proceeded in the preparatory sub-committee and in the Negro Commission, during and after the Congress, articles representing different viewpoints were published in the Communist International magazine. Four of these discussion articles follow below, in the order of publication. The first is by Andre Shiek (Sik), an Hungarian Communist exile who taught at the University of the Toilers of the East and, because of his deep interest in the race question, was close to the Black students and had a great influence upon them. In the following excerpt Shiek insists upon drawing a sharp distinction between race movements and national movements, taking issue on this point with both the Theses on the National and Colonial Question of the !Ind Congress and the Theses on the Negro Question of the IVth Congress. He expounds the position must often opposed to the line of national self-determination--the American Negro as a "special social group," a racial minority moving toward full social equality and integration. 163

THE COMINTERN PROGRAM AND THE RACIAL PROBLEM By A. Shiek Hitherto the question of racial oppression and racial movements has unfortunately always been thrust into the background, has been ignored, unnoticed, mistakenly identified with the national-colonial question, and mechanically connected with it.

The so-called "racial problem," as it is treated by reactionary bourgeois sociologists, does not exist for us. The theory of "superior" and "inferior" races, of the role of the racial factor in history, and similar conceptions are all pure falsehood. Such things as "superior" and "inferior" races do not exist. Of course, there exist inherited, comparatively stable (although not by any means absolutely invariable) physical differences between peoples, which give anthropologists the right to divide the human species into various so-called racial categories according to the colour of their skin, the shape of the cranium and so on. But all these secondary bodily distinctions have no positive relation whatever to the intellectual, moral and cultural development of peoples. The role of physical racial differences as such is practically non-existent in the history of humanity. None the less, this radically false theory of "superior" and "inferior" races is not a simple invention of individual mistaken scientists or blinded politicians. It is the theoretical justification for the racial policy of the definitely exploiter classes. From the foregoing it is clear that in all three instances the racial policy of the exploiters has a concrete economic basis. In the first instance we are concerned with the oppression and exploitation of certain social groups in their quality as nations, in the other two instances with their oppression and exploitation on the verbal basis of their ostensible racial disparity in value, but actually in consequence of the historical development of force-relationships between them and the oppressing groups (the Negroes, former slaves; the Jew, a former nation scattered throughout the world). In not one of these cases does either the "race" which oppresses or the "race" which is oppressed correspond with the "race" of which anthropologists speak. They talk, say, of a "yellow race," but not of the "race of Chinese," or of a "Black race," but not of a "race of American Negroes," and so on. The race subjected to special oppression represents only a part of the anthropological race, another part of which perhaps is quite unoppressed on a racial basis, (the differing position of the Jews in various countries), or is oppressed in completely differing ways, (the racial oppression of the American Negroes and the national oppression of the African Negro peoples). The establishment of this fact is very important in order to get a clear idea of the radical error in the resolution of the Comintern Fourth Congress dealing with the Negro question, which says that "it is necessary to organize a world movement of Negroes," that the "American Negroes, especiaily the Negroes of the North," are the advance-guard of the emancipation movement of the "entire African race," that the Comintern must set up "an international organization of the Negro people." The same resolution says that it is the "duty of the Communists to apply" these theses on the colonial question "to the Negro problem." But at the same time it is clear that it is impermissible simply to identify racial oppression and exploitation with national-colonial oppression, that it is 164

impermissible to deal with the racial under a clause on the national question . For when we speak of the oppression of colonial or other subject nations, we have in mind not social groups, formed on the basis of general secondary physical pecularities, having no practical importance, but groups consolidated by the real bonds of common territory, economic system, language and culture, and striving towards an independent national existence. There is no question of these factors existing among the American Negroes, or say the Hungarian or Polish Jews. John Reed's words, uttered at the Second Congress, to the effect that "The Negroes make no demands whatever for national independence," are absolutely true not only for 1920 but for today. (Of course, Reed is referring to the American Negroes). All those movements which had as their aim an independent national existence for the Negroes, have been failures, as happened with the "Back to Africa" movement. The Negroes regard themselves as Americans and feel quite at home in the United States. This question is of great importance because the American Negroes, like the whole American nation of which they are members, are divided into classes. To the Negro worker and poor peasant all thought of national independence is foreign. Moreover the Negro bourgeois is not averse to having a monopoly in the super-exploitation of the millions of toilers of his own race. It is the colored bourgeoisie who invent all sorts of legends anent a "special Negro culture," the "brotherhood of the whole African race" and similar nonsense. (One cannot understand why these terms could have found their way into the Fourth Congress resolution). It is they who project the various "nationalist" movements of Negroes demanding self-determination. But Communists should not allow themselves to be caught in such snares. They should put forward demands on behalf of the oppressed American Negroes not as a nation, but as a race (and the same applies to the oppressed Jews in certain capitalist countries) and they should demand not the right to national self-determination (self-determination has no practical meaning here~) but complete political and social equality. But an enormous revolutionary role can be played (and always is played) by the anti-imperialist racial-emancipation movement of the workers and the petty bourgeois masses of a racial minority, directed by the proletariat. (The petty bourgeoisie, who waver between the revolutionary anti-imperialist proletariat and the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, cannot have an independent movement). Communists should support and organize such a racial movement by all means, but on no account should they support "any form of Negro movement," as the Fourth Congress resolution says, nor the "international racial movement against capitalism and imperialism" (in the same resolution). The latter movement cannot exist in nature, for as we have seen above, such a movement can be only bourgeois and reactionary. In the United States more than ten million Negroes represent an enormous reserve for the revolutionary proletariat of America, one that can be a mighty ally in its struggle against American capitalism. In order to transform this potential into an actual ally the C. P. should work out a corresponding revolutionary strategy and tactics in regard to the Negroes and their movement. The basic strategic task is to safeguard the hegemony of the proletariat in the emancipation movement of the race, consolidating the great masses of the oppressed racial minority around the Party in the form of a non-Party mass racial organization, under the leadership of Communists. To this end it is necessary to ensure the confidence of the Negro masses in the Party. And this cannot be achieved otherwise than by way of bringing certain activities to

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the forefront as part of the militant tasks of the Party. Such activities should be the re-education of the white workers and of the Communists themselves in the first place, in order to speed up the process of outliving racial prejudices, with at the same time a declaration of a ruthless ideological struggle against such prejudices within the Party and within other workers' organizations under Party influence and also the concentration of special attention on the racial question in the everyday struggle of the Party. The Communist International, August 15, 1928. ON THE QUESTION OF THE WORK OF THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY AMONG NEGROES (Discussion Article) by James Ford and William Wilson [William L. Patterson] William L. Patterson (writing here under the name of William Wilson) was a student at the University of the Toilers of the East when the VIth Congress took place. Born in 1891 in San Francisco, he graduated law school in 1919, and as a young lawyer in New York he joined the fight to save Sacco and Vanzetti in 1926. He was to become an outstanding Black Communist leader. In this article Ford and Patterson, without mentioning the alternative national approach, consider the American Negro an "oppressed racial minority," and argue vehementally against support for any nationalist movement. They hold that class division among the Negro people renders a united movement impossible. The main task, they write, is overcoming prejudice among the white workers to make a united working-class movement possible, although they argue effectively against the Socialist Party position that the Negro question is merely a class question. And despite their rejection of the nationality approach, they urge the creation of a mass race organization of Black workers and petty bourgeois masses, devoid of the narrowness and sectarianism of the American Negro Labor Congress, which they consider merely a duplicate of the party and "insignificant." Finally, they urge strongly a day-to-day struggle against white chauvinism in the Communist Party, with firm measures against it, including explusion from the party. The Communist Party and the Negro Race Movement The American Communist Party must initiate a revolutionary race policy. It must support with all its strength the freedom fight of the working people of the oppressed racial minority. That is demanded by the interests of the proletarian revolution in the struggle for the overthrow of imperialism, which in the United States has as one of its pillars the exploitation of the toiling Negroes. Their fight for full equal political and social rights is a struggle against imperialism. As long as the vanguard of the revolutionary proletariat--t~e Communist Party and not the opportunistic Negro bourgeoise--stands at the head of this militant movement it can and must become an important revolutionary factor. (The wavering petty bourgeoisie which stands between the revolutionary anti-imperialist proletariat and the reactionary bourgeoisie is unable to carry on an independent movement.) The position of the party with respect to every opportunist or chauvinist separatist race movement must be negative. The 166

•

party must carry on active propaganda among the Negro workers and poor farmers to explain the reactionary bourgeois character of such movements and show that they support the exploitive interests of the ruling classes, that instead of eliminating the inequalities between blacks and whites they prolong them. No Communist should be a member of such an organization. On the contrary, the Communist Party must do its best to free from the bourgeois leaders the misguided masses of workers and working petty bourgeois which belong to these organizations, induce them to leave and join the revolutionary race movement led by the Communist Party. But this does not mean that the Communist Party and the class and race organizations it leads should not support such organizations in 'the struggle for common demands of a class character on certain questions or not form a common front with them as long as it is a matter of realizing a progressive program that can lead to full social equality of the Negro. However, such cooperation should in no case be considered a departure of the party from its principled negative position with respect to such organizations. On questions of principle there can be no compromise, no concession. Entirely inadmissable would be any concession whatever in favor of separatist chauvinist movements. The Communist Party must frankly and openly oppose such movements, it must expose their reactionary bourgeois character and must energetically and definitively reject the separatist principle. The party must take special pains to counter the widely held view that the splintering of the Negro movement is brought about by the failings of the leaders, their inability, their careerism, etc. The Negro working masses must become aware that the splintering is neither accidental nor abitrary. The division of the oppressed Negro race into classes means a united race movement can never be attained, because the Negro bourgeoisie will never participate consistently in a struggle led by the proletariat for the full freedom of the Black working people from the yoke of exploitation. The unification of the entire Negro people under the leadership of the bourgeoisie would mean the abandonment of a real revolutionary struggle against the racist policy of the white bourgeoisie. Communist Party Recruiting Among Negroes The victory of the revolution in the United States is unthinkable as long as the Communist Party does not have the support of the majority of the various advanced sectors of both the Negro and the white proletariat of city and countryside. Moreover, it is impossible to have the support of the majority of the various strata of the Black proletariat and semi-proletariat as long as the vanguard of the Black workers are not in the party. The difficulties of party propaganda in the given "objective situation" are not to be denied (for example, the backwardness and lack of education of the Negro workers, the antagonism between Black and white workers, the mistrust of the former and the prejudice of the latter). The prospects for recruitment among Negroes are better because of the boundless oppression and exploitation of the Negro worker. For the party the organization of the Negro for the revolutionary struggle is easier and can be more successful than the organization of the white worker who suffers much less under the yoke of capital than the super-exploited Negro worker. If the Black working masses are backward and uneducated this does not mean that the party must give up their recruitment. On the contrary, it must exert special efforts to develop the Negro ideologically and obtain

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his adherence to the party, or else the party will inevitably be reduced to a sect of revolutionary intellectuals. The competitive struggle between the white and the Black workers must not be viewed as an objective economic factor that is indispensible to the capitalist system. This competition is nothing else than the result of the ideological influence of the bourgeoisie on the proletariat. That will remain just as long as the white workers do not free themselves of race prejudice. The sooner the white American workers overcome their race prejudice and unite with the Blacks, the sooner will the American labor organizations give up their racist policies and admit the Negro to their ranks, and support and defend the Negro workers equally with the white. The competitive struggle will vanish, and the American bourgeoisie will no longer be able to maintain the system of double exploitation which it created. Obviously, the revolutionizing of the entire American working class is no small or rapid thing. The American Communist Party is still too weak to overcome the great difficulties along the way. Among the white workers the race prejudice against their Black class brothers implanted by the bourgeoisie is widespread, and the revolutionary duty of the Communist Party consists not in supporting this bias but in fighting it. If, in view of the extent of prejudice among the backward white workers, the task of drawing the mass of Black workers to the party were to be aban- doned, this would be the worst kind of kvostism [tailing after the masses] which is denounced by Bolshevism, and for which revolutionary principles would be sacrificed in favor of reaction. Instead of avoiding the problem because of "objective difficulties" the American Communists must do their utmost to overcome the objective difficulties and eradicate race prejudice at least in their own ranks and in the ranks of the workers' organizations they lead. By a correct revolutionary policy on the Negro question they could overcome the distrust among the Black working masses of the Communist Party and thereby also remove the obstacles which stand in the way of the Black workers joining the party. On the Need for a Mass Race Organization for Negro Workers The Communist Party must form a non-party Negro mass organization within which a Negro worker who has not yet overcome his hostility to whites and to whom the Communist Party still seems alien, has the opportunity to learn the teachings of Marx and Lenin and where he can convince himself the Communist Party is free of all race prejudice, that as one of the workers most exploited by capital, he shares with the exploited white workers the very aims and efforts of the Communists. The founding of such an organization is especially necessary because the overcoming of the distrust of white Communists among broad masses of Black workers can take place only outside the party--precisely because this is the main obstacle which prevents the Black worker from joining the party. The non-party Negro mass organization must be a race organization. It is not possible in one blow to make Communists out of unorganized, backward Black workers. It is necessary to bridge the gulf between the Communist Party and the Negro masses, to which end it is first necessary to build an organization whose aims and activity these masses accept and understand, despite their mistrust of whites. Such a role can be undertaken only by such an organization which the oppressed Negro, though not yet class conscious, feels to be his own and to which he is drawn. The Black proletarian as a rule is conscious of his race oppression, but he is not conscious of his class solidarity with the white workers. With some exceptions, the most advanced

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elements of the Black proletariat who have to some degree a class feeling think of themselves first as a Negro then as a worker. They would shun an organization that makes its appeal to him simply as a worker. It is necessary to affect his ideology, his race consciousness, and in this way bring him under our influence. A non-party Negro mass organization must unite not only the workers but also the broad masses, including the Black small bourgeoisie and in the first place the peasants. Objections have been raised to the forming of a mass Negro race organization which includes both the proletariat and the working petty bourgeoisie, and the attempt is made to hide this opportunist position with Left phrases. We will take up some of these objections: 1. Some say that all contradictions in class society are to be traced back to the class conflict, every social struggle is a class struggle. And the race question is a class question, an economic question. We must therefore organize the Black workers on economic class grounds, without reference to the "race problem" invented by the bourgeoisie. It is quite obvious that this is not Marxism, but a parody of Marxism. To be sure, exploitation and oppression basically have an economic and class character. But this does not mean that race oppression and class oppression are congruent. The Communist Party which fights against every kind of oppression and exploitation cannot be satisfied with the struggle against the exploitation of the Black worker as a worker or the Black poor farmer as a poor farmer, but it must also fight for their social and political equal rights. . . . The class demands alone are not enough to weld together the backward Negro masses who do not yet understand that the class demands of the workers, the working farmers and the petty bourgeoisie, are parallel. The above-mentioned position on the race question is not only un-Marxist and un-scientific but is a marked reactionary stand which is supported by the opportunist Socialist Party and the reformists. If the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is the only struggle that matters, then every struggle for the social equality of the oppressed race is superfluous and detrimental and can only hamper the main struggle. The Negro should wait for socialism, the liberated proletariat will free all the oppressed, among them the Negro people in America. 2. Those who subscribe to the above view contend that a new race organization is not needed since there already exists a class race organization of the Black workers, the National Negro Labor Congress. But the Labor Congress can in no way fill the role of an organization for revolutionizing the broad masses of the Negro proletariat, if merely on the ground that it includes only Negro workers but not the working petty bourgeoisie of city and village. Experience has shown that this organization is unfitted even for attracting the Black workers. There is no doubt any more today that the work of this organization must be judged entirely insignificant. The reasons for the mistakes of the Labor Congress have been discussed often. It is not important to prove what mistakes the party made in realizing the idea of a Labor Congress, but it is important to prove whether or not such an idea in itself was correct. Everyone must concede that it is not the shortcomings in the building and work of this organization but the idea itself, the principle of this organization, which led to its failure. The Labor Congress is a political organization of the vanguard of the Black workers. Its program is the same as that

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of the Communist Party. Its tasks differ from those of the Communist Party only in that it brings into political activity not the vanguard of the entire working class but only the vanguard of its Black sector. In this way, the Labor Con~ress appears as a Negro Communist Party separate from the American party, a principle basically rejected by Leninism. A revolutionary political organization of the working class can only be one political organization of the vanguard of the proletariat; division into national, race and other groups contradicts the interest of the revolution and splits the proletariat instead of uniting it. 3. It is also said that a race organization of all working Negroes is of no use since such petty bourgeois and workers that may get together would themselves strive to become bourgeois and in the ideological sense would have a harmful influence upon the proletarian elements. In general there is to be found among both petty bourgeois and workers many people who dream of becoming capitalists. If because of this effort to win over such people for the revolutionary struggle under the influence of the Communist Party were given up, this would mean to reject the revolution itself. Our task, however, is to free the small bourgeoisie and especially the working class from the influence of the bourgeoisie. If we do not take over the leadership of the working middle class and the proletariat associated with it (regardless of the extent of a proletarian ideology among them), the bourgeoisie will organize them under its banner. 4. There is still another great objection to the formation of a Black race organization: it would lead in the South to the separation of the Black land workers, and small and middle peasants from the whites. It is held that the Communist Party should organize the agricultural laborers as such in the struggle against the landowners and not the Black peasantry on a race basis, just as the workers as such should be organized against capitalism. To be sure, the party seeks to organize all workers against capitalism, the most advanced among them into the party, others into the trade unions, the farmers (regardless of the color of the skin) into cooperatives, and to win others for Communist-led organizations. Even so, as things are now (we mean the existing relations in the South between the whites and the Blacks) it would be utopian to speak of bringing a substantial number of Negroes into the Communist Party or even a few into the same organization with whites. If in the organization of Negroes we were to depart from the necessity in principle of a common organization, we would renounce any practical organizational work among Negroes. The Communist Party and Race Prejudice Revolutionary Communism does not tolerate any race prejudice whatever, recognizes no race privileges, no race division, no inequality or segregation of races. Before the coming of socialism a final uprooting of race prejudice among the workers is unthinkable. But anyone who considers utopian the defini~e eradication of race prejudice in the Communist Party and among its members before the coming of socialism, belongs to the petty bourgeois Socialists and not to the Communists. A Communist Party in which race prejudice still exists is a Communist Party only in name. Bolshevization of the party, however, demands a complete crusade against all prejudice. Without this the Communist Party cannot claim the right to its name, nor can it lead correctly the revolutionary proletariat. The complete overcoming of race prejudice is a prerequisite for success in winning the advanced sector of the Black workers for 170

the party and the attraction of the broad masses of the Negro workers and farmers to active participation in the revolutionary struggle led by the Communist Party for the defeat of American capitalism . . . The Communist must free himself of all race prejudice not only in political life but in his private life as well. The private life of a Communist cannot be separated from his revolutionary activity. He is as responsible before the party for his private life as for his political behavior. A true revolutionary cannot limit his activity to this or the other field. Just as it is impossible for a religious person to be a good Communist, neither can any Communist unable to overcome his race prejudice lay claim to that honorable name. We cannot force anyone to give up his race prejudice just as we cannot by force deprive him of his religious beliefs. But those people who cannot on their own give up religious beliefs or race prejudice are not fit to be Communists and no one can force us to tolerate them in the party. The overcoming of race prejudice is not only a matter of principle embodied in the Communist position on the race question and the duty of a party member with regard to the Negro: it means overcoming of race prejudice in practice. Not only the maltreatment of the Negro--in word or in deed, it is the same thing--but every toleration of discrimination against him is impermissible for a party member. The duty of the party consists not only in showing its members that race prejudice is intolerable, but in helping them completely to uproot this bourgeois heritage in practice, by means of work and struggle in common of white and Black workers, men and women, and at the same time by means of a comradely social intercourse in daily life. As long as an inner, comradely relation between white and Black Communists is not established, the American Communist Party cannot become a true Bolshevik party. The task of uprooting race prejudice must in the interests of the American Communist Party be placed on the practical order of the day. The work of educating the white workers, in the first place the Communists themselves, must be put in the foreground, and all race prejudice that remains in the party and other workers' organizations must be fought with might and main . . . . The Communist Party must take the utmost care to prevent in its organization the occurrence of any bourgeois, unequal or obnoxious acts against the Negro. To be sure, if a little developed member is involved, extreme measures should not be taken. If the act is not openly malicious, a reprimand would be enough for the first time, showing him how impermissible such acts are for a Communist, and ideological discussion at a party meeting, etc. But such treatment is absolutely not in place in the case of a responsible party functionary or an intellectual party member. An intellectual--whether he has a responsible post in the party or not--must immediately be expelled from the party for the slightest expression of race prejudice. If a party functionary's act is shown to be malicious, he must be expelled. If the party organization itself is responsible for an anti-Negro act (e.g., the exclusion of Negroes from a meeting), the responsible leader of the organization in question should be relieved of his work and--depending upon the seriousness of his offence--even expelled. Without carrying through such measures it is impossible to prevent the outbreak of race fanaticism in the party, and consequently also negate the main objective of bringing the Black workers to the party and interesting the broad masses of the Black working people in the struggle against American capitalism. A Communist Party which tolerates race prejudice in 171

its ranks, a Communist Party which does not understand that the most exploited and most oppressed masses must be drawn into the revolutionary movement and that their most advanced representatives must be won for its own ranks is not a Communist Party. An American Communist Party without Negroes is only a parady of a Bolshevik Party. Die Kommunistische Internationale, August 29, 1928, pp. 2132-2146. Translation from the German. THE NEGRO PROBLEM AND THE TASKS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES By Harry Haywood Harry Haywood did not speak at any session of the Congress but he did work closely with Nasanov of the Young Communist International in the preparatory subcommittee and in the Negro Commission of the Congress. The following article written in connection with the discussions is among the earliest published expositions of the position finally adopted by the Communist International. It is certainly the best reasoned and documented presentation until then of the view that the American Negro is an oppressed nation entitled to the right of self-determination. The VI Congress of the Communist International has established a special Negro subcommittee [Negro Commission] of the Colonial Commission which is charged with the task of considering the Negro problem in its international aspects. The question of our work among the Negroes in the United States played a role in the program of this subcommittee, explicitly the following problem: (1) Although it is the task of the colored workers of the United States to give leadership to the revolutionary struggles of the Negroes of the entire world against imperialism, (2) it is precisely on the basic question of the nature of the problem in the United States that differences of opinion have arisen. Lenin on the Negro Question in the United States It is interesting that Lenin in an accompanying note to his "Theses on the National and Colonial Question" which he presented to the !Ind Congress of the Comintern, said the following: "I would request all comrades, especially those who possess concrete information on any of these very complicated problems, to let me have their opinions, amendments, addenda and concrete remarks in the most concise form (no more than two or three pages), particularly on the following points:"! Among these very complicated problems about which Lenin sought further information, he included the Negro question in America. Moreover, Lenin had dealt with the Negro problem in America in his work "Capitalism and Agriculture in America" which he wrote in 1913 [1915] and in which he discussed fully the Negro question in relation to agriculture in the Southern

1 V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. 3, International Publishers, 1967, p. 422. 172

states.2 In the Theses of the II Congress on the national and colonial question Lenin places the Negroes in America as a "subject nation" alongside Ireland, and mentions their movement among the national revolutionary movements that Communist parties should support. The Nature of the Problem "The Negroes in the United States are not a colonial people, nor are they a nation, but they are a race." That is the opinion advanced by various comrades who have concerned themselves with the problem. In reality, this formulation is extremely superficial. When one is satisfied with the definition of th~ Negro problem not as national but a race problem, one fails to recognize the special characteristics of the Negro problem in America which gives rise to its national quality. To be sure, Negroes of the United States are, indeed, not a nation in the usual meaning of the word. But with this assertion the problem is by no means settled. A deeper analysis is necessary, as the Theses of the II Congress says: "The Communist Party • . . must base its policy on the national question, too, not on abstract and formal principles but, first, on a precise appraisal of the specific historic 11 situation, and, primarily on economic conditions . 3 If we follow this advice, we find that the Negroes were brought as slaves to America from various African regions with different languages and dialects and different cultures. Only through their common history of slavery and deprivation of civil rights were they brought together as apart from the white population. Their history and the oppression of all kinds under which they now live has made them distrustful, suspicious and full of hatred of whites and has given rise among them to a strong separatist tendency. The greater part of the Negro population (86.1 per cent out of 12 million) live in the Southern states, where they constitute more than a third of the total population. The great mass of Negroes, 66 per cent of the total, live in agrarian regions, and earn their livelihood from various agricultural occupations. More than a third of the Negro population in the South live in the so-called "Black Belt," or close by, where they are more than half the population. This "Black Belt," which naturally has no formal state designation and lacks defined boundaries, runs through five different states and includes 214 counties of which some have a colored population as high as 90 percent of the total. (All statistics are from the Census of 1920.) Furthermore, the bourgeois statistics undercount the Negro population in these regions. The great mass of Negroes is the victim of a system of exploitation of a semi-feudal character. Side by side with the highly developed form of capitalist exploitation, American imperialism makes use of those forms left over from slavery (sharecropping, debt peonage, etc.) to extract extra profits. Out of the relations at the time of slavery and those developed between white and Negro after the Emancipation of the slaves, a new situation of economic and social inequality has arisen which

2 See, Lenin in the United States: Selection from his Writings, International Publishers, 1970, pp. 115-205. 3 Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. 3, p. 423. 173

finds its expression in lynch law, etc. This system seeks its justification in the theory of the inherent inferiority of the Negro race. Many comrades consider the Negro question in America a question of a social group based upon different physiological traits, and that the Negroes are separated from the whites by merely "artificial'' race differentiation. But this view amounts to misunderstanding the historically founded relation between the two races and places the question in the manner of bourgeois liberals who mislead the masses by professing to fight against race prejudice while they carefully evade its economic and historical basis. Such a treatment of the problem has nothing to do with Leninism. The race question in America is not only that of a social group formed on the basis of physiological peculiarities, nor are the differences between the races "merely artificial." The Negro question in America arises from a combination of economic, social and political relations between Blacks and whites that went through a development of over 350 years and specifically on the basis of the offensive exploitation of the Black race by a powerful nation. By dint of this enslavement, the Negroes developed the characteristic traits of a national minority. It is therefore no wonder that all these comrades overlook the South, that they overlook the fact that the roots of the Negro question lie in the unresolved agrarian question of the South. They seek to present the Negro question merely as the question of the Negro in the industrial centers of the North. They overlook the connection between the agrarian problem of the South and the labor market of the North. It is a Marxist axiom that the labor market in all countries is influenced by the situation of the peasantry. That is in any case correct in the United States. The poor Negro farmer, from a situation of absolute inhuman exploitation and accustomed to a low living standard, migrates to the Northern cities and out of physical necessity depresses the market with his cheap labor. With the growing movement of Negroes to the North in great masses, antagonism between the races also grows. From this results the establishment of separate schools even in some Northern states, separate housing, etc. As long as remnants of slavery exist in Southern agriculture, so long can American capitalism count on the Negro to supply cheap labor. The Negroes in the North draw the lowest wages because of their exploited situation in Southern agriculture. Therefore we cannot find the roots of the Negro problem in the North. Their real economic roots lie in the agrarian question in the South. Precisely the colored land workers and tenants are the ones who suffer the greatest burden of exploitation by whites. It is the peasant question which forms the basis of the Negro nationality question. It is impossible to solve the Negro question without freeing the half-enslaved population of the South from the pre-capitalist forms of exploitation. This task, naturally, can be performed only by the proletarian revolution. Oppression and persecution in their various forms, and the fact that Negroes live in large masses in the agrarian regions of the South and in separate quarters in the cities of the North as well as in the South, create the necessary preconditions for the development of a national revolutionary movement of Negroes. From this viewpoint and from no other must we approach the question. To believe that the Negro peasantry constitute a "reserve army" for capitalist reaction, that only through proletarianization will they become a reserve army of the proletarian revolution means to minsunderstand the basic

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teachings of Marx and Lenin on the peasant question. Even in their immediate situation must the colored peasantry be seen as a strong revolutionary force which under the leadership of the proletariat will fight against imperialism. The Negro Petty-bourgeoisie and Intellectuals The Negro middle class, which arose in the epoch of monopoly capitalism and imperialism, could not develop to any extent into a strong bourgeoisie. It is in the main only a commercial petty bourgeoisie with small enterprises and with limited capital. As concerns the intellectuals they must depend for their existence on the broad masses of Negroes. Their field of action is limited to the Negro masses. The system of race separation protects the Negro businessman with his shrunken capital and small shop from the competition of the whites. In general whites do not buy from the Negro and do not seek the services of Negro intellectuals. On the other hand, Negroes can buy in most white establishments. For this reason the Negro petty bourgeoisie is interested in the maintenance of race prejudice since it assures it a monopoly in supplying the Negro masses. Therefore its constant appeal for support of the masses and the constant call for race loyalty and solidarity. Under the growing pressure of white competition which hampers its own development, the Negro petty bourgeoisie strives for the establishment of a kind of independent autonomy of the Negro to protect it from white competition. This ideal of the Negro petty bourgeoisie is not limited to the United States but seeks the development of economic relations abroad involving the Negroes of the entire world--the Pan-African Congress, the Garvey movement, etc. Furthermore, the Negro petty bourgeoisie is interested in raising the purchasing power of the Negro masses for that is the prerequisite for its own advance. Its interests appear as the defense of the economic interests of the masses, through which over time a certain faith in the middle class developed among the masses. Thus, also arises its almost complete dominance over the Negro masses. The feeling of togetherness among the Negroes of the United States, which had its source in oppression and segregation, is the best ground for the development of an ideology which harmonizes with the interests of the petty bourgeoisie. Race loyalty and race pride are preached by every means, in press and church. Thus the Negro intellectuals have to create an historic foundation in which they incorporate the old African culture and the whole list of historical persons. In the cultural field, the Negro intellectuals are pushing into the foreground Negro art, Negro music, Negro literature, the products of which are not entirely differentiated from the culture of the ruling race; but they do bear the stamp of the distinctive conditions under which the Negro lives. Before long, elements of a nationalistic ideology are at hand. Negro Nationalism in the United States Aspects of Negro nationalism in the United States first became apparent with the growth of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the Garvey movement. This movement, which was organized in 1916 by Marcus Garvey, a West Indian Negro, became the biggest radical organization which until then had been formed by Negroes in the United States. At its high point it counted 200,000 members in the United States, and it influenced many hundred thousands more. While its leaders came from the middle class and the intellectuals, most of its members were peasants and new industrial workers. At the center of its 175

program was the slogan: "Back to Africa," and the establishment of a state on the Dark Continent for all the Negroes of the world. Together with this there were a number of small business enterprises such as the Black Star Line, production cooperatives, the Ethiopian Engineer Society, etc. In the organizational structure of the movement, with Garvey as Provisional President of Africa, with his Royal Court, and his army and marine staffs the embrionic form of a state is clearly evident. At the same time they went on to create a history of the Negro and a "Black religion," and above all to idolize everything Black. A Negro national hymn was composed and poems to Africa, the motherland, were written. A strong separatist strain pervaded all the propaganda and activity of the movement. After 1920 demands were also raised on behalf of the economic and social needs of the Negro in the United States, and they built various business and cooperative enterprises which were to show all the Negroes in the world the way to economic and political independence. Following the change in the objective situation, the movement began to decline after 1923, the masses fell away. Together with that, emphasis was placed more and more on the slogan of Back to Africa, while the program for a determined struggle in the United States fell into the background. Garvey is not to be seen as the founder of a Negro nationalism, he was an early symbol of the sentiment of the masses. The Garvey movement crystallized in itself the powerful nationalist sentiment of the Negroes. Under the special critical and oppressive conditions in which the movement developed, a fundamental change occurred and a genuine nationalist movement arose. Under the leadership of the Negro petty bourgeoisie, however, the revolutionary energy of the masses was turned away from the struggle in the United States and dissipated in the reactionary course of Back to Africa. The following lessons can be drawn from this movement: (1) That separatist tendencies are present among the Negro masses which become stronger in periods of crisis; (2) Only the leadership of the Negro proletariat can give a revolutionary direction to such movements. The Negro Proletariat and the Tasks of the Communist Party During the last decade and especially since 1916 thousands of Negroes were drawn to the great industrial cities of the North and South. A Black industrial proletariat of about two million has arisen. Some comrades are inclined to overemphasize the significance of this migration and to base our policy upon the idea that the peasantry is being proletarianized instead of working among them where they are. These comrades have the perspective that the mass migration of Negroes will continue as up to now, that the Negro masses of the South will very soon lose their compactness, and that the mechanization of agriculture now proceeding in the South will lead to the overcoming of the semi-feudal remnants. Thereupon the entire Negro question is automatically solved by the logical process of capitalist development, even before the revolution!!! The reformist position of these comrades leads them to an underestimation of the peasantry, to reducing the Negro question to a question of the proletariat in the industrial centers, and above all to ignoring the racial or national significance of the Negro movement. No wonder that these comrades oppose the slogan of self-determination of the Negro. It is noteworthy that the Negro population has been concentrated at all times in the Southern states (91.9 per cent 176

of the total Negro population in 1870, 89 per cent in 1910, and 86.l percent in 1920) and that, as already pointed out, live in certain areas of great density. In spite of the migration, 80 per cent of the Negroes in 1920 still live in their native state. At its high moment in the future, industrialization of agriculture will reduce the density of the Negro population, but this is making rapid progress only in the New South (West of the Mississippi), while in the Old South (where the Negroes live in compact masses and where the "Black Belt" is located) it is proceeding at a very slow pace as a result of the structure of agriculture which, for example, hinders the use of the mechanical cotton picker. In addition, a meaningful rationalization process accompanied by a reduction of the work force and prevailing deeply rooted economic factors hinder the broad expansion of the industrial centers for the immediate future. Nevertheless, one must keep in mind that while maturing capitalism tends to uproot all precapitalist relations, imperialism or declining capitalism tends to perpetuate them in order to realize super-profits. The colored peasantry, which is subject to inhuman exploitation, provides American imperialism with a source of great extra profits. Only the proletarian revolution is able to fully uproot the remnants of slavery and to liberate the Negro masses in the agrarian regions of the South from the bonds of oppression. Only a social-democratic reformist can construct a policy on the assumption that all these conditions will vanish under the rule of capitalism. In view of the rapid migration of Negroes into industry and the creation of a strong proletariat, the policy of the party must base itself in the first place upon this new force. The advantageous position of this proletariat enables it to provide leadership for all national revolutionary movements. The colored working class has reached a stage of development which enables it, given good leadership and strong organization, to perform successfully two historic missions: 1. in class struggle against American imperialism as an important basic sector of the American working class and in full cooperation; 2. to take over the leadership of the oppressed Negro masses. To fulfill this mission it is the duty of the Negro proletariat to mobilize the broad masses of the Negro population and to organize the struggle of the Negro land workers and tenants against semi-feudal oppression in all its aspects. At the same time the Communist Party must come forward as the vanguard fighter for the rights of the oppressed Negro race and for full independence. While raising and fighting for full equal social and political rights for the Negro, in view of the above mentioned factors leading to a national revolutionary movement, the party must support without reserve the right of national self-determination up to separation and the erection of an independent Negro state. This struggle for equal rights and self-determination must be tied in with economic demands, especially those directed against the remnants of slavery and all forms of race and national oppression • . . . The Party and the White Chauvinism A radical change in the tactics of the Communist Party is necessary if it is to carry out its tasks with respect to the Black workers. The resolution of the Central Committee of April 30 on Negro work declares that "the Party in general has not understood sufficiently the importance of work among Negroes." It goes without saying that such a general declaration on the faults of the party in its Negro work is 177

welcome. However, a sharp self-criticism with regard to our party's Negro work is necessary. It must always keep in mind that an uncompromising struggle must be waged against white chauvinism through which the ideological influence of American imperialism is impressed upon the working people and dominates not only certain strate of workers in the United States but is to be found in multiple forms even in the party. The party must use all means at its disposal to fight white chauvinism. Party schools, the party press, every public meeting must be used to counteract the opposition, even the indifference, of white comrades to work among Negroes. This is educational work which must be carried on together with a campaign to mobilize white workers and poor farmers for struggle in support of the demands of the Negro workers. In connection with this the party should always remember the words of Comrade Lenin, who said: "In the international education of the workers of the oppressor countries, emphasis must necessarily be laid on their advocating freedom for the oppressed countries to secede and their fighting for it . . . It is our right and duty to treat every Social Democrat of an oppressor nation who fails to conduct such propaganda as a scoundrel and an imperialist."4 From this standpoint, the party must consider as one of its main tasks in its Negro work to organize the colored workers and farmers and draw these oppressed masses into the proletarian revolutionary class struggle, remembering the works of the Resolution of the IInd Congress that: "complete victory over capitalism cannot be won unless the proletariat and, following it, the mass of working people in all countries and nations of the world voluntarily strive for alliance and unit."5 Die Kommunistische Internationale, September 5, 1928, pp. 2253-2262. Translated from the German. AMERICAN NEGRO PROBLEMS By John Pepper John Pepper (Jospeh Pogany), an Hungarian Communist who participated in the short-lived Bela Kun revolutionary government in postwar Hungary, came to the United States in the early 1920s as a representative of the Communist International to the American party. He remained to become part of the top Communist Party leadership here, identifying himself with the Ruthenberg-Lovestone faction. The lengthy article condensed below was published in The Communist of October 1928 and was also published as a pamphlet under the same title (Workers Library Publishers, New York, 1928). Actually, the article was written in connection with the discussions in the Negro Commission of the VIth Congress and first appeared in Die Kommunistische Internationale, official organ of the CI, September 5, 1928, the same issue which

4 V.I. Lenin, "The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up," in National Liberation, Socialism and Imperialism: Selected Writings, International Publishers, New York, 1968, p. 157. 5 Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. 3, p. 427. 178

carried Harry Haywood's article (above). No mention is made of the circumstances under which the article was written and was first published, either in The Communist or the pamphlet, and none of the othe-r~ discussion articles were republished here. Thus, the question of the Negro people as a subject nation with the right of self-determination was raised for the first time in American party literature and assumed the authority of party policy, even before the CI resolution on that theme was known to the membership or the public, and without any discussion in the American party. The premature publication of Pepper's article without any explanation was obviously a factional m'ove intended to credit the Lovestone group with initiating the new position. A number of propositions in the Pepper article were rejected by the CI Negro Commission: his concept of the Black Belt of the South as a colony of the United States and his call for a Soviet Negro Republic in the South. Particularly in sections of the article not given here, lengthy parts are taken word for word from the party election platform of 1928 without acknowledgment. And Pepper still refers to the "racial caste system" as a fundamental feature of U.S. society. (As a CI worker, Pepper was recalled to Moscow in 1929 and expelled from the party for violating discipline by delaying his return and for financial irregularities.) The "Black belt" of the south, with its starving and pauperized Negro farmers, and Negro agricultural working masses; with its Jim-Crowism, its semi-feudal status and its political system still bearing the earmarks of the period of slavery, constitutes virtually a colony within the body of the United States of America. The super-profits extracted from this Negro "colony" are one of the most important sources of the growth of American imperialism; the oppression of the Negro race is one of the most important bases of the government apparatus of American capitalism. The prejudices created in the minds of large sections of the white workers against the Negroes are the most dangerous obstacles to the unity of the American working class. The Slogan of Self-Determination The Workers (Communist) Party of America puts forward correctly as its central slogan: Abolition of the whole system of race discrimination. Full racial, social and political equality for the Negro people. But it is necessary to supplement the struggle for the full racial, social and political equality of the Negroes with a struggle for their right of national self-determination. Self-determination means the right to establish their own state, to erect their own government, if they choose to do so. In the economic and social conditions and class relations of the Negro people there are increasing forces which serve as a basis for the development of a Negro nation (a compact mass of farmers on a contiguous territory, semi-feudal conditions, complete segregation, common traditions of slavery, the development of distinct classes and economic ties, etc., etc.) It is true, the Negro people in the United States have not their own language as distinct from the language of the oppressing white nation; but there is a certain amount of special Negro culture; there is still alive the common, deep-rooted tradition of the bitter centuries of slavery; there is developing a new Negro literature and press. 179

First of all, we must consider the compact Negro farming masses of the "Black belt" as the political basis for a national liberation movement of the Negroes and as the basis for the realization of the right of self-determination of a Negro state. Despite growing migration to the north, in 1920 there were still over 3,000,000 Negroes who constituted a majority of the population in 219 counties over a contiguous area in the "Black belt." There are many national movements of the Negro city petit-bourgeoisie and intelligentsia. The fact that the most important mass movement of this kind, the Garvey movement, was a sort of Negro Zionism and had such reactionary, extremely harmful slogans as leaving the United States and back to Africa, should not blind us to the revolutionary possibilities of the Negro national liberation movements of the future. The Workers (Communist) Party of America must come out openly and unreservedly for the right of national selfdetermination for the Negroes, but at the same time the Communist Party must state sharply that the realization of this self-determination cannot be secured under the present relations of power under capitalism. National self-determination for the Negro is a bourgeois-democratic demand but it can be realized only in the course of the proletarian revolution. The abolition of the half-feudal, half-slave remnants in the south will also be only "a by-product" (Lenin) of the general proletarian revolution. It would be a major mistake to believe that there can be any other revolution in imperialist America, in the country of the most powerful, most centralized and concentrated industry, than a proletarian revolution. --First published in Die Kommunistische Internationale, September 5, 1928. The above is excerpted from the English version in The Communist, October, 1928, pp. 628-937. VIth CONGRESS--OPPOSING VIEWS The Negro Commission of the Congress had 32 delegates from 18 countries, among them the United States, South Africa, Great Britain, France, Germany, India, and Palestine, with Otto Kuusinen (a Finnish Communist exile living in the Soviet Union) as chairman. The U.S. delegation included five blacks--Haywood, Otto Hall, Jim Farmer (Roy Mahoney), James Ford, and Harold Williams. Alexander Bittelman and Jay Lovestone, each representing the opposing factions in the party, were also on the Commission. Here the two central viewpoints were debated-- the American Negro as racial minority or as oppressed nation. Haywood was the only American black to support the latter position. The strongest opposition came from James Ford and Otto Hall. As Haywood recalls it, Foster, Bittelman and Dunne, as well as John Pepper, supported the new position, while Lovestone remained non-committal, and Sam Darcy of the Young Communist League was the only white to oppose it. At the Congress sessions, Ford and Hall (under the name of Jones) each spoke twice on the American Negro question, once on the discussion of Bukharin's opening report, and again in the discussion of Kuusinen's report, "The Revolutionary Movements in the Colonies." All four speeches are given below, in succession, and somewhat condensed. Taken together these four speeches present a devasting criticism of the American party for its neglect of Negro work and for white chauvinism in its 180

ranks. Ford held that more than in any other field Negro work was hampered by the factional struggle, by the racism of both factions. He revealed that no more than 50 Negroes were in the Workers (Communist) Party, though it claimed 12,000 dues-paying members as of February 1928 (The Communist International Between the Fifth and Sixth World Congress, London, July 1928, p. 351). He also reported that no action whatsoever-not even discussion--had taken place on the 19 communications from the Executive Committee of the CI to the American party on the Negro question that he had been able to locate in the files of its Secretariat. Hall charged there was more white chauvinism'in the American party than in any other Communist party. In opposing the national self-determination position Ford held that because of the class differentiation among the Negroes there cannot be "a common national ideology of the oppressed proletariat and the bourgeoisie." ''Any nationalist movement on the part of the Negroes," he said, "does nothing but play into the hands of the bourgeoisie by arresting the revolutionary class movement of the Negro masses and further widening a gulf between the white and similar oppressed groups." Hall held "there exists no national entity as such among the American Negro," that the Negro desires to be considered as part of the American nation, and that there are no tendencies toward a separate national minority. The struggle must develop around the slogan of full equality, he held. In his second speech Ford also noted the use of Blacks in World War I by the imperialist powers and their plans to employ them even more widely in the next war. He urged a policy of turning the guns of these troops against their oppressors. Comrade Ford (America) Comrades: The American Delegation in general is in full agreement with the general line laid down by Comrade Bukharin in his report. There are, however, two points which I should like to take up in connection with the report. First, to my mind, Comrade Bukharin's report did not sufficiently touch on the colonial question as it relates to Africa under British, French and yes, American imperialism; he did not sufficiently touch on the colonial question in reference to the West Indies and Haiti, etc. under British and American imperialism. Secondly, Comrade Bukharin's report did not give sufficient attention to the inner Party struggle that exists within the American Party and its effect upon the activity of the Party in trade union work; on the question of the organization of the unorganized, and the question of the Negro work. The inner Party struggle has hampered more than any other section of our work, the Negro work. At the present time we have over two million Negro industrial proletariat in the American basic industries of the North and East. We also have 1,500,000 agricultural Negro workers in America. Over one million Negro domestic workers. 66% of the Negro population of America is confined to the rural and farm districts of the South. Now, comrades, in view of this tremendous revolutionary force, this industrial proletariat, this force of agricultural and rural workers among the Negroes of America we have no more than 50 Negroes in our Party, out of 181

the 12 million Negroes in America. We have not organized a single union in America among the Negro workers. We have had recently in America, the formation by a Socialist, of a reactionary trade union among the Negroes.l This organization has been going on for two years and our Party has not one iota of influence in this organization because of a definite underestimation of Negro work in general. Negro comrades have been driven out of the trade union movement, without the Party raising a hand or doing anything to counteract this situation. Negro comrades who are continually bringing this question before the Party are persecuted and driven out of the Party and into the I.W.W. and other organizations. At the last Conference of the Miners in Pittsburgh on April lst2--one of the most active Negro comrades we have in the miners' field, because he violated discipline in bringing before the conference the question of Negro work, has been persecuted and even accused of being a spy of the reactionary forces of America, and these charges have not been substantiated by facts and evidence. Comrades, more than this, there has been evidence of white chauvinism even in the ranks of the Party. During the convening of important conferences or congresses such as we have here, or such as the R.I.L.U. Congress, our Party always makes an effort to intensify its activity in Negro work. During the month of April, to give a small example--there appeared in the columns of the "Daily Worker" the amazing spectacle of 1,100 lines of written material concerning Negro workers of America. By investigating the archives of the Comintern, we have discovered that during the last few years no less than 19 resolutions and documents upon the Negro question have been sent by the Comintern to the American Party, and not a single one of them has been carried into effect or brought before the Party. I say that the few Negro comrades we have in the Party have been making a fight for years to bring this question before our Party, and now we bring it before a Comintern Congress. There are still millions of Negro workers in Africa--in East Africa and the Gold Coast, etc. In the West Indies and Haiti there are rumblings of revolt against British and American imperialism. In general I think it is necessary for Comrade Bukharin to stress the need for activity in these territories, and where Negro workers generally live. I think the delegates of all the Parties concerned--the British, French and American-should meet at the Congress in a special Commission for the discussion of work among the Negro workers in these colonies. In conclusion, the inherent contradictions of capitalism are leading the imperialist countries further and further into colonial spheres and fields. The next great revolutionary wave will come from the Negro workers and the exploited workers and peasants of the colonies in which Negro workers live. Under the banner of the Comintern the Negro workers will be found fighting for the overthrow of capitalism and the downfall of imperialism through the world. International Press Correspondence, August 3, 1928, pp. 7772-7773.

1 The reference is to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, formed in 1925 with Socialist A. Philip Randolph as general organizer. 2 The reference is to the Save the Union Conference, led by the TUEL. (See below.) 182

Comrade Jones (Otto Hall)

(U.S.A.)

It is stated as an excuse that the drawing of a greater amount of Negro workers into the industries during and since the imperialist war has intensified the economic rivalry between Black and white workers. This is basically true but that does not justify the opinion of the upper stratum of the organized white trade unionists that the Negro is a potential strike breaker, which is reflected in the attitude of some elements of our Party, particularly in the T.U.E.L . . . . One of the main reasons that this atmosphere exists is that we have not carried on a consistent and energetic fight against chauvinism in the past and it is only recently that we see the beginnings of a'determined effort to deal with race prejudice. It would be untrue to say that the Party has made no efforts to organize Negroes, that we have done nothing at all. We have made efforts. That we have not been successful so far is due to mistakes and lack of a definite policy. The Negro Labour Congress marks an effort but it was not successful owing to insufficient preparation and poor direction, but it marks an attempt. There has been an effort to draw more Negroes into the general Party work and this effort must be intensified. Attempts have been made to organize the Negroes into the various unions, some work has been done among the Negroes in the Passaic strike and also among the Negro miners, but all this is not enough and we should intensify our efforts in this direction. In the recent election campaign and convention there were 25 Negro delegates out of 250 who actively participated in all the committees. Our election platform was very clear on the Negro question, but what we have to do is to carry out what we have written. Recently we have made attempts to penetrate the South. This is a very important thing and must be carried on to the best and fullest of our ability. There have been many mistakes in our work and this is due to the lack of close cooperation of the Party as a whole with the work of the Negro comrades. The point raised by Comrade Bukharin concerning the necessity of raising the technical level of the Party can be applied very effectively to our Party. We must carry on an ideological campaign among the membership of our Party as a whole, from the top to the bottom. Now a few words on the inner party situation. I know that right mistakes have been made by our Party leadership, but to say that the general policy of this leadership is a right-wing policy is, in my opinion, incorrect. Furthermore, to make a factional issue of these mistakes is not the way to correct them. The mistakes in regard to Negro work have been made by the Party as a whole and not by any particular group. I am in full agreement with the comrade who says that drastic measures should be taken against any attempts to revive factionalism in our Party. This comrade says that the Negro work in our Party has been made a factional football. I say that our Party as a whole has neglected this work. If the minority group has stood out sharply on a point wherein the Negro question was involved the records ought to show it. If they have not done this, then they are equally guilty. Now as to the comrade who was mentioned here as one who should have come over here with the delegation. I refer to comrade Moore. If it is true that this comrade has been guilty of any anti-Party activities he should be corrected. I say that we should bring this comrade here to Moscow because he is the official leader of the American Negro Labour Congress and I believe he can be saved for the Party. 183

Some comrades in our Party attempt to make an issue of the fact that they, more than the others, are willing to admit mistakes which they made in the past. An admission of mistakes is good for soul--in Moscow. But, we are not impressed with what is admitted here but what is carried out when these same comrades are back in the United States. We should recognize the potential revolutionary possibilities of the Negroes and that they can be utilized in the fight against American imperialism. Our duty is to organize this mass. Only then will we be able to shake the foundations of American imperialism. International Press Correspondence, August 8, 1928, pp. 811-812 Comrade Ford (Negro Comrade from the U.S.A.) in name of the Communist Fraction of the R.I.L.U. Comrades, permit me to speak first on the attitude of the Socialist Party, the II International, to Negro and colonial peoples in general; secondly, on some theoretical points in connection with the Negro question in America; and thirdly, on some practical steps towards carrying out our general programme. First, a protest was recently made by colonial guests at the Congress of the II International at Brussels, the essence of which characterizes the attitude of the II International to oppressed peoples in general, and also to the Negro peoples in particular. This protest reads as follows: "Having examined the decisions of the colonial commission of the Socialist Labour International, we have arrived at the conclusion that these decisions, in their present form, are inconsistent with the equality of nations and with the principle of self-determination and equality of peoples which should be applied to all oppressed nations and subject races without any distinction whatever." This protest brings out the basic principles of the II International with regard to the oppressed peoples, and particularly to Negro peoples which is characterized by the following quotation: "This point of view is held by such renegades as Kautsky, who maintains that the whole racial question amounts exclusively to the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and that there is no need for any struggle for the social equality of the oppressed races and that such a struggle is even harmful since it interferes with the fundamental struggle. Let the Negroes wait until the advent of socialism, then the emancipated proletariat will proceed to emancipate all the oppressed peoples including the Negro race in America." Let me now examine the attitude of the II International in regard to the Negroes in America. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a progressive Labour League made up of Negro workers recently called a conference to participate in the elections in Milwaukee. This conference, which included fraternal organizations, working class organizations, sent also an invitation to the Socialist Party of Milwaukee. The Socialist Party refused to participate in this conference upon the ground that the movement was essentially a race movement, and not a working class movement. In an article appearing in the "Ford," an organ of the Socialist Party of America, Mr. Bruce, in analyzing the Negro situation in America, states the following: "But it is true as the years pass, as more and more Negroes come to the North and become decent, self-respecting men and women, doing their work, exercising their citizenship like their 184

fellow Americans, the Negro problem will tend more and more to be solved.". [Second.] There is a considerable discussion going on in the Negro Commission regarding the slogan for a republic of the Negro peoples in America. The Congress must give this question very serious attention. In the United States we find no economic system separating the two races. The interests of the Negro and white workers are the same. The Negro peasant and the white peasant interests are the same. But the bourgeoisie has set up a racial barrier, playing upon the differences of colour, of skin and so forth, in order to super-exploit the coloured workers, which has its effect, to a great extent, upon the white workers. It seems that any nationalist movement on the part of the Negroes does nothing but play into the hands of the bourgeoisie by arresting the revolutionary class movement of the Negro masses and further widening the gulf between the white and similar oppressed groups. The revolutionary movement of the Negroes can take three forms: 1. the Negro movement may manifest itself as a reformist movement, of the opportunistic, conciliatory upper strata of the Negro bourgeoisie; 2. the chauvinistic racial movement of those elements of the Black bourgeoisie who are interested in the isolation of the Negro population in order to secure for themselves the unhindered exploitation of Negro labour; 3. the racial movement of the Negroes can be a movement of the Negro workers and urban poor of the North, who are considerably more exploited than the white workers and also of the Negro agricultural labourers and Negro peasants of the South who are exploited by capitalist landlords. They are struggling for equal conditions of labour with the white brothers of their class for full political and social equality between white and Negro workers. The class struggle is an attack upon imperialist super-profits. The racial movement is therefore a revolutionary anti-imperialist struggle, a struggle insolubly tied up with the revolutionary struggle of the poor peasantry and workers against capitalist exploitation. This question is related to the general question of the Negroes throughout the world. In South Africa we have the question of whether we can lead the peasant revolution. In Haiti there is national aspiration. This question of nationalism needs the full attention of the Comintern in order that we can lay down a thorough theoretical basis for our future work in regard to the oppressed peoples and the Negro peoples in general. Finally, we come to the third point and that is in reference to our practical programme in connection with our Negro work and our colonial work. I want to touch upon some aspects of the Negro question in regard to the approaching world war. In the last war 2,290,000 Negroes were registered for military service by the United States, of whom 458,000 were examined for military service in the United States army. Of this number 200,000 served in France. At the present time the United States, in her feverish preparation for war, is not overlooking the Negro as a combatant troop as well as non-combatant soldiers. Two regiments of state militia have been federalized into the regular army and are being constantly trained. The National Defense Act of 1920 provided for the organization of the Military Guards to train Negroes in peace times. This organization is similar to The Minute Men, provided for by the same Act, an anti-labour organization headed by General Dawes. Under the pressure of petty bourgeois intellectual Negroes, Negro students are being sent to West Point, the military academy of the United States army. 185

France controls a colonial population of 60 million colonials in Africa. 845,000 colonials served in France in the last war; 535,000 were soldiers and 311,000 were in labour contingents. The peace footing of the French army at the present time is 660,000, of whom 189,000 are colonial troops. In ten years time (estimated from 1924), France plans to have 400,000 trained colonial troops and 450,000 more.ready to be trained. England did not have as many colonial troops in the last war as France, but the troops of West Africa conqured German West Africa for England and held the Turks in check. At the present time England offers her greatest object lesson in the field of black labour. Anglo-American rivalry throws up the possibility of Black troops of these two nations being thrown against each other in the defense of "their" country. But more than this: it is not unlikely that in the event of the next war the scene of battle will shift to different parts of the world and even centre in Africa. There is another grouping: the imperialist world against the U.S.S.R. In this alignment the imperialists intend to use if possible, the Negro colonial troops as was done during the civil war in Russia in 1920, 21 and 22, in which France and England used Black troops against the Red Army. We must turn our faces to the colonies and prepare the colonial troops to turn their guns upon their oppressor, to fight for their liberation from imperialist exploitation and oppression. The various Parties, the French, British, American, Belgian, South African should now begin plans to turn the resentment of the Negro troops against their oppressors. Now in regard to our practical work, we must begin to organize trade unions among the Negro peoples of the world. There has been set up at the Prof intern an International Labour Bureau of Negro workers for the purpose of unifying the Negro workers and the white workers throughout the world. Where possible, to organize trade unions of white and colored workers and to organize coloured unions separately where this is not possible. The bureau will also issue bulletins, pamphlets and literature with the idea of centralizing and consolidating and bringing together the proletariat of the whole world, against the imperialist oppression and against a world war against the U.S.S.R. International Press Correspondence, October 25, 1928, pp. 1345-1349. (The last section of the speech dealing with Negro troops was published separately as an article, with some variations, in International Press Correspondence, August 31, 1928.) Comrade Jones (Otto Hall)

(U.S.A.)

Comrades, the draft theses on the colonial question are by far the most thorough theses in point of detail that we have had up to now on the question. We see from the discussion so far that there is a considerable amount of disagreement with some of the points in the theses, particularly on India and China. From the point of view of revolutionary activity at present China and India are the most important colonies to be considered. But we must not overlook the world significance of the Negro question, which in the past has not been given sufficient attention by the Comintern. At the Fourth and Fifth Congresses of the Comintern, there was some discussion on the necessity of the creation of a Western Colonial Bureau, dealing with the Negro question. It seems that as far as actual work is concerned, the Bureau has 186

done very little, and nobody knows what became of this Bureau afterwards. We also find in the archives much dusty material on this question that has never been read by anybody . . . . We organized here at the Congress, a small sub-committee of the Anglo-American Secretariat which dealt with the Negro question in America. This Commission has done a considerable amount of work, which of course is by no means complete, but the first steps were made for a real investigation of this question. In this commission there arose some sharp differences as to the character of the Negro movement in the United States. One point of view is that these Negroes are a racial minority but are developing some characteristics of a national minority and that in the future they will have to be considered as a national minority. The other point of view is that these Negroes are a racial minority and are not developing any characteristics of a national minority and that the basis that would develop these characteristics is rapidly disappearing, that there exists no national entity as such among the American Negroes. We have a sharp differentiation in classes among the American Negroes, particularly after the world war and this class differentiation tends to prevent a development of any national characteristics as such. We find the Negro bourgeoisie are becoming more and more an integral part of the whole of the American bourgeoisie an~ are completely separated as far as class interests are concerned from the majority of the Negro toilers. The historical development of the American Negro has tended to create in him the desire to be considered a part of the American nation. There are no tendencies to become a separate national minority within the American nation. I have material on this which will be submitted to the Colonial Commission, in support of our disagreement, together with the theses drawn up by the Negro Commission. This is a very important question and deserves careful study before any definite steps are taken in drawing up a programme for advancing slogans for our work among the American Negroes. Some comrades consider it necessary at this moment to launch the slogan of self-determination for the American Negroes; to advocate an independent Soviet Socialist Republic in America for Negroes. There is no objection on our part on the principle of a Soviet Republic for Negroes in America. The point we are concerned with here is how to organize these Negroes at present, on the basis of their everyday needs, for the revolution. The question before the Negroes today is not what will be done with them after the revolution, but what measures are we going to take to alleviate their present condition in America. We have to adopt a programme that will take care of their immediate needs, of course keeping in mind the necessity for organizing the revolution. A comrade remarked that it was necessary for us to establish a new line of work among the Negroes, to adopt a new programme. It is not so much the question of a new programme but of carrying out the programme that was adopted by the IV and v Congresses on this question. Up till now nothing has been done. The central slogan around which we can rally the Negro masses is the slogan of social equality. And the reason why we have not organized the Negroes in America and why we have such a small number of Negroes in our Party, is because we have not fought consistently for this principle. And this is due to the fact that we have white chauvinism in our Party. Therefore, before we should attempt to launch a slogan of self-determination for the American Negroes as a central slogan, we should give more study to this question. A Bureau should be set up in the comintern dealing specifically with the Negro problem to analyze

187

and study the objective situation in the various countries where there are Negroes and from this study formulate our programme. International Press Correspondence, October 30, 1928, pp. 1392-1393. Comrade Katayama (Japan) A number of other speakers touched on the American Negro question in the discussion of Kuusinen's report on the "Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies." Manuel Gomez, of the American delegation, for example, urged "joining the struggles of the Negro as an oppressed minority in the United States with the anti-imperialist struggles in Haiti, San Domingo, etc., including propaganda for self-determination of the Negro." (Protokoll des 6. Weltkongresses der Kommunistische Internationale, Hamburg, Vol. 3, p. 161). Greater attention was devoted to the problem of Sen Katayama of the Japanese delegation. He had spent many years in the United States as a worker, had attended Fisk University, had befriended Claude McKay in New York at the IVth Congress, and was close to the American Black students in Moscow. The relations between the mother country and its colonies are very unsatisfactory. Comrade Lenin very strongly emphasized the necessity for the mother country giving every assistance to the revolutionary movement in its colonial countries. I can point to the criminal neglect of the British Party with regard to Ireland and India in the past, and of the Dutch and American Parties with regard to the Philippines and Indonesia. The mother countries must correct this inactivity on their part, and give every assistance to the revolutionary movement in these colonial countries. As ably presented for the first time at the Congress, the Negro problems should be seriously considered and a policy decided upon for the immediate future. The Negro question was fully discussed at the II. Congress by Comrade Lenin and the American delegates, and certain principles were laid down for this work, as the II Congress considered the Negro question to be of great importance. Comrade Lenin considered the American Negroes as a subject nation, placing them in the same category as Ireland. At this II Congress, the American Party was instructed to investigate the possibility of calling a Negro Congress, first in America, and then a World Negro Congress. The criminal neglect of the Negroes on the part of the American Party, as already pointed out by the Negro representatives, is solely due to the fractional struggles in the American Party. The American Party has never utilized these revolutionary factors for the advancement of the revolutionary movement. This was particularly marked when the Anti-Lynch Bill was before the Congress, which gave immeasurable possibilities for gaining national sympathy for the Negro race. The American Party failed to utilize the occasion of the passing of this Bill for revolutionary propaganda in the country. This Bill passed the House, in spite of the solid opposition from the South, but the Senate shelved the question, where it is still lying. The Party should take up this Bill and utilize it for energetic propaganda against the white oppression and persecution of the Negroes. Comrades! I spent twenty-six years in America as a worker and was connected with the American movement. I have therefore a right to regard the American Party as mine. Unless the American comrades liquidate their factional struggles, the 188

American Party will not develop into a mass party. You cannot say that you are really exerting your influence to get the Negroes into the Party. Of course, you have to overcome the social prejudices and impediments to conduct Party work among the Negroes, but it is your duty to carry out the instructions of the Comintern. Increase the Negro membership in the Party, and let them solve their own problems by themselves under the guidance of the Party. International Press Correspondence, August 13, 1928, pp. 856-857. (Abridged.) THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL RESOLUTION ON THE NEGRO QUESTION IN THE U.S. The Resolution on the Negro Question in the United States, given below in full, was issued in its final form by the Political Secretariat of the Communist International and was dated October 26, 1928, almost two months after the end of the VIth World Congress. This would seem to indicate that the draft resolution submitted to the Congress by the Negro Commission went through considerable revision to take account of the discussion at the Congress. In any case, the Resolution provided the guiding policy which the Communist Party of the United States was expected to accept. There is available no published record or account of discussions in the American party on the resolution at the time it was transmitted. The discussions that took place occurred with the participation of delegates and leaders of the American party, white and Black, in the Communist International before and during the Congress as well as afterwards in the Secretariat. The Resolution was published in the United States first in the Daily Worker of February 12, 1929, and almost a year later in the Janury 1930 issue of The Communist, theoretical organ of the party, giving it full status as an official statement of policy. In fact, little evidence could be found that the substance of the Resolution was discussed in the party or in its journals throughout the year 1929. The apparent paucity of discussion, at least in print, and the long delay in publishing the Resolution in The Communist may be attributed to the sharpened factional struggle which reached a climax in 1929, as well as opposition to the new line among leading American Black Communists or reluctance to accept it fully, and to mere indifference to the question among others. The core of the Resolution is the concept of the American Negro as an oppressed nation or national minority entitled to the right of self-determination. Derived from that concept is the distinction between the oppressor nation and the oppressed people, the racism of the former and the distrust of the oppressor people by the latter, with the prime task of Communists to fight racism if Black distrust is to be overcome. Much of the rest summarized, in the light of the new position, what had previously been stated in party programs: the new Negro proletariat as important sector of the American working class as a whole and as leader of the Black liberation movement; the Communist Party as champion of Negro liberation and leader in 189

the struggle for equality; the potential leading role of the American Black proletariat in the global struggle of Negro peoples against imperialism; the fight against the color bar in the trade unions, together with a sharp attack upon the Trade Union Unity League for its "complete neglect" of work among Negroes, etc. Worth noting is the•emphasis upon work in the South, the need to build a Negro cadre, and the special lot of Negro women. Strongly stressed are the fight against white chauvinism in the American party itself and the need for "a courageous campaign of self-criticism" in this respect. The American Negro Labor Congress is seen as existing only "nominally," and its broadening is urged, although there is to be found here also a negative approach to the church and the "treacherous" Negro middle class. Of special importance is the distinction made between the struggle for equal rights and the propaganda for the slogan of self-determination--a crucial point later to be overlooked. While the Resolution as a whole signified a vital turning point in party policy that was to produce significant advances in its Negro work, it still left much to be clarified about the novel program of Black self-determination. The emphasis placed upon the American Negro question at the Sixth Congress was rather widely noted in the Negro press here. Thus, the Pittsburgh Courier, among the more conservative of the Black journals, remarked editorially (November 10, 1928) upon this fact and asserted that the American Negro was not going to embrace Communism for he realized that his "position is precarious enough without making it more so by joining a crew that espouses the overthrow of the government and the dictatorship of the proletariat." It then offered some advice: "Let the Communists waste no more time and money on winning over the Black American workers but rather concentrate on the white workers. When they have made the white workers internationally minded and devoid of race chauvinism, it will then be time for them to cherish some hope of success in propagandizing the Black Americans." It would not be long before the influx of Blacks into the Communist Party would lead to another tune. 1. The industrialization of the South, the concentration of a new Negro working class population in the big cities of the East and North and the entrance of the Negroes into the basic industries on a mass scale, create the possibility for the Negro workers, under the leadership of the Communist Party, to assume the hegemony of all Negro liberation movements, and to increase their importance and role in the revolutionary struggle of the American proletariat. The Negro working class has reached a stage of development which enables it, if properly organized and well led, to fulfill successfully its double historical mission: (a) To play a considerable role in the class struggle against American imperialism as an important part of the American working class; and (b) To lead the movement of the oppressed masses of the Negro population. 2. The bulk of the Negro population (86 percent) live in the southern states: of this number 74 percent live in the rural 190

districts and are dependent almost exclusively upon agriculture for a livelihood. Approximately one-half of these rural dwellers live in the so-called "Black Belt," in which area they constitute more than 50 percent of the entire population.l The great mass of the Negro agrarian population are subject to the most ruthless exploitation and persecution of a semi-slave character. In addition to the ordinary forms of capitalist exploitation, American imperialism utilizes every possible form of slave exploitation (peonage, share-cropping, landlord supervision of crops and marketing, etc.) for the purpose of extracting super-profits. On the basis of these slave remnants, there has grown up a super-structure of social and political inequality that expresses itself in lynching, segregation, Jim Crowism, etc. I

Necessary Condition for National Revolutionary Movement 3. The various forms of oppression of the Negro masses, who are concentrated mainly in the so-called "Black Belt," provide the necessary conditions for a national revolutionary movement among the Negroes. The Negro agricultural laborers and the tenant farmers feel the pressure of white persecution and exploitation. Thus, the agrarian problem lies at the root of the Negro national movement. The great majority of Negroes in the rural districts of the South are not "reserves of capitalist reaction,"2 but potential allies of the revolutionary proletariat. Their objective position facilitates their transformation into a revolutionary force, which, under the leadership of the proletariat, will be able to participate in the joint struggle with all other workers against capitalist exploitation. 4. It is the duty of the Negro workers to organize through the mobilization of the broad masses of the Negro population the struggle of the agricultural laborers and tenant farmers against all forms of semi-feudal oppression. On the other hand, it is the duty of the Communist Party of the U.S.A. to mobilize and rally the broad masses of the white workrs for active participation in this struggle. For that reason the Party must consider the beginning of systematic work in the south as one of its main tasks, having regard for the fact that the bringing together of the workers and toiling masses of all nationalities for a joint struggle against the land-owners and the bourgeoisie is one of the most important aims of the Communist International, as laid down in the resolutions on the national and colonial question of the Second and Sixth Congresses of the Comintern. For Complete Emancipation of Oppressed Negro Race 5. To accomplish this task, the Communist Party must come out as the champion of the right of the oppressed Negro race for full emancipation. While continuing and intensifying the struggle under the slogan of full social and political equality for the Negroes, which must remain the central slogan of our Party for work among the masses, the Party must come out openly and unreservedly for the right of Negroes to national self-

1 For a study of the location of Negro population, the Black Belt and its agrarian structure as they developed from 1860 to 1930 see, James s. Allen, The Negro Question in the United States, International Publishers, 1936. 2 This was a phrase used by Jay Lovestone to describe the role of the black peasantry. 191

determination in the southern states where the Negroes form a majority of the population. The struggle for equal rights and the propaganda for the slogan of self-determination must be linked up with the economic demands of the Negro masses, especially those directed against the slave remnants and all forms of national and racial oppression. Special stress must be laid upon organizing active resistance against lynching, Jim Crowism, segregation and all other forms of oppression of the Negro population. 6. All forms of work among the Negroes, as well as the struggle for the Negro cause among the whites, must be used, based upon the changes which have taken place in the relationship of classes among the Negro population. The existence of a Negro industrial proletariat of almost two million workers makes it imperative that the main emphasis should be placed on these new proletarian forces. The Negro workers must be organized under the leadership of the Communist Party, and thrown into joint struggle together with the white workers. The Party must learn to combine all demands of the Negroes with the economic and political struggle of the workers and the poor farmers. American Negro Question Part of World Problem 7. The Negro question in the United States must be treated in its relation to the Negro questions and struggles in other parts of the world. The Negro race everywhere is an oppressed race. Whether it is a minority (U.S.A., etc.), majority {South Africa) or inhabits a so-called independent state (Liberia, etc.), the Negroes are oppressed by imperialism. Thus, a common tie of interest is established for the revolutionary struggle of race and national liberation from imperialist domination of the Negroes in various parts of the world. A strong Negro revolutionary movement in the U.S.A. will be able to influence and direct the revolutionary·movement in all those parts of the world where the Negroes are oppressed by imperialism. 8. The proletarianization of the Negro masses makes the trade unions the principal form of mass organization. It is the primary task of the Party to play an active part and lead in the work of organizing the Negro workers and agricultural laborers in trade unions. Owing to the refusal of the majority of the white unions in the U.S.A., led by the reactionary leaders, to admit Negroes to membership, steps must be immediately taken to set up special unions for those Negro workers who are not allowed to join the white unions. At the same time, however, the struggles for the inclusion of Negro workers in the existing unions must be intensified and concentrated upon, special attention must be given to those unions in which the statutes and rules set up special limitations against the admission of Negro workers. The primary duty of the Communist Party in this connection is to wage a merciless struggle against the A.F. of L. bureaucracy, which prevents the Negro workers from joining the white workers' unions. The organization of special trade unions for the Negro masses must be carried out as part and parcel of the struggle against the restrictions imposed upon the Negro workers and for their admission to the white workers' unions. The creation of separate Negro unions should in no way weaken the struggle in the old unions for the admission of Negroes on equal terms. Every effort must be made to see that all new unions organized by the left wing and by the Communist Party should embrace the workers of all nationalities and of all races. The principle of one union for all workers in each industry, white and Black, should cease to be a mere slogan of propaganda, and must become a slogan of action. 192

Party Trade Union Work Among Negroes 9. While organizing the Negroes into unions and conducting an aggressive struggle against the anti-Negro trade union policy of the A.F. of L., the Party must pay more attention than it has hitherto done to the work in the Negro workers' organizations, such as the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Chicago Asphalt Workers Union, and so on. The existence of two million Negro workers and the further industrialization of the Negroes demand a radical change in the work of the Party among the Negroes. The creation of working class organizations and the extension of our influence in the existing working class Negro organizations, are of much greater importance than the work in bourgeois and petty-bourgeois organizations, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Pan-African Congress, etc. 10. The American Negro Labor Congress continues to exist only nominally. Every effort should be made to strengthen this organization as a medium through which we can extend the work of the Party among the Negro masses and mobilize the Negro workers under our leadership. After careful preparatory work, which must be started at once, another convention of the American Negro Labor Congress should be held. A concrete plan must also be presented to the Congress for an intensified struggle for the economic, social, political and national demands of the Negro masses. The program of the American Negro Labor Congress must deal specially with the agrarian demands of the Negro farmers and tenants in the South. 11. The importance of trade union work imposes special tasks upon the Trade Union Unity League. The T.U.U.L. has completely neglected the work among the Negro workers, notwithstanding the fact that these workers are objectively in a position to play a very great part in carrying through the program of organizing the unorganized. The closest contact must be established between the T.U.U.L. and th e Negro masses. The T.U.U.L. must become the ch~mpion in the struggle for the rights of the Negroes in the old unions, and in the organizing of new unions for Negroes and whites, as well as separate Negro unions. White Chauvinism Evidenced in the American Party 12. The C[entral] E[xecutive] C[committee] of the American Communist Party itself stated in its resolution of April 30, 1928, that "the Party as a whole has not sufficiently realized the significance of work among the Negroes." Such an attitude toward Party work among the Negroes is, however, not satisfactory. The time is ripe to begin within the Party a courageous campaign of self-criticism concerning the work among the Negroes. Penetrating self-criticism is the necessary preliminary condition for directing the Negro work along new lines. 13. The Party must bear in mind that white chauvinism, which is the expression of the ideological influence of American imperialism among the workers, not only prevails among different strata of the white workers in the U.S.A., but is even reflected in various forms in the Party itself. White chauvinism has manifested itself even in open antagonism of some comrades to the Negro comrades. In some instances where Communists were called upon to champion and to lead in the most vigorous manner the fight against white chauvinism, they, instead, yielded to it. In Gary, white members of the Workers Party protested against Negroes eating in the restaurant controlled by the Party. In Detroit, Party members, yielding to pressure, drove out Negro comrades from a social given in aid of the miners' strike. 193

While the Party has taken certain measures against these manifestations of white chauvinism, nevertheless those manifestations must be regarded as indications of race prejudice even in the ranks of the Party, which must be fought with the utmost energy. 14. An aggressive fight against all forms of white chauvinism must be accompanied by a widespread and thorough educational campaign in the spirit of internationalism within the Party, utilizing for this purpose to the fullest possible extent the Party schools, the Party press and the public platform, to stamp out all forms of antagonism, or even indifference among our white comrades toward the Negro work. This educational work should be conducted simultaneously with a campaign to draw the white workers and the poor farmers into the struggle for the support of the demands of the Negro workers. Tasks of Party in Relation to Negro Work 15. The Communist Party of the U.S.A., in its treatment of the Negro question must all the time bear in mind this twofold task: (a) To fight for the full rights of the oppressed Negroes and for their right to self-determination and against all forms of chauvinism, especially among the workers of .the oppressing nationality. (b) The propaganda and the day-to-day practice of international class solidarity must be considered as one of the basic tasks of the American Communist Party. The fight--by propaganda and by deeds--should be directed first and foremost against the chauvinism of the workers of the oppressing nationality as well as against bourgeois segregation tendencies of the oppressed nationality. The propaganda of international class solidarity is the necessary prerequisite for the unity of the working class in the struggle. "In the international education of the workers of the oppressor countries, emphasis must necessarily be laid on their advocating freedom for the oppressed countries to secede and their fighting for it. . . . It is our right and duty to treat every Social-Democrat of an oppressor nation who fails to conduct such propaganda as a scoundrel and an imperialist." (Lenin, selected articles on the national question.)3 16. The Party must seriously take up the task of training a cadre of Negro comrades as leaders, bringing them into the Party schools in the U.S.A. and abroad, and make every effort to draw Negro proletarians into active and leading work in the Party, not confining the activities of the Negro comrades exclusively to the work among Negroes. Simultaneously, white workers must specially be trained for work among the Negroes. 17. Efforts must be made to transform the "Negro Champion" into a weekly mass organ of the Negro proletariat and tenant farmers. Every encouragement and inducement must be given to the Negro comrades to utilize the Negro press generally. Negro Work Part of General Work of Party 18. The Party must link up the struggle on behalf of the Negroes with the general campaigns of the Party. The Negro problem must be part and parcel of all and every campaign

3 V. I. Lenin, "The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up," in National Liberation, Socialism and Imperialism: Selected Writings, International Publishers, New York, 1968, p. 157. 194

conducted by the Party. In the election campaigns, trade union work, the campaigns for the organization of the unorganized, anti-imperialist work, labor party campaign, International Labor Defense, etc., the Central Executive Committee must work out plans designed to draw the Negroes into active participation in all these campaigns, and at the same time to bring the white workers into the struggle on behalf of the Negroes' demands. It must be borne in mind that the Negro masses will not be won for the revolutionary struggles until such time as the most conscious section of the white workers show, by action, that they are fighting with the Negroes against all racial discrimination and persecution. Every member of the Party must bear in mind that "the age-old oppression of colonial and weak nationalities by the imperialist powers has not only filled the working masses of the oppressed countries with animosity towards the oppressor nations but has also aroused distrust in these nations in general, even in their proletariat." (See Draft Theses on Colonial and National Question of Second Congress.)4 19. The Negro women in industry and on the farms constitute a powerful potential force in the struggle for Negro emancipation. By reason of being unorganized to an even greater extent than male Negro workers, they are the most exploited section. The A.F. of L. bureaucracy naturally exercises toward them a double hostility, .by reason of both their color and sex. It therefore becomes an important task of the Party to bring the Negro women into the economic and political struggle. 20. Only by an active and strenuous fight on the part of the white workers against all forms of oppression directed against the Negroes, will the Party be able to draw into its ranks the most active and conscious Negro workers--men and women--and to increase its influence in those intermediary organizations which are necessary for the mobilization of the Negro masses in the struggle against segregation, lynching, Jim Crowism, etc. 21. In the present struggle in the mining industry, the Negro workers participate actively and in large numbers. The leading role the Party played in this struggle has helped greatly to increase its prestige. Nevertheless, the special efforts being made by the Party in the work among the Negro strikers cannot be considered as adequate. The Party did not send enough Negro organizers into the coal fields, and it did not sufficiently attempt, in the first stages of the fight, to develop the most able Negro strikers and to place them in leading positions. The Party must be especially criticized for its failure to put Negro workers on the Presidium of the Pittsburgh Miners' Conference,5 doing so only after such representation was demanded by the Negroes themselves. 22. In the work among the Negroes, special attention should be paid to the role played by the churches and preachers who are acting on behalf of American imperialism. The Party must conduct a continuous and carefully worked out campaign among the Negro masses, sharpened primarily against the preachers and the churchmen, who are the agents of the oppressors of the Negro race. Party Work Among Negro Proletariat and Peasantry 23. The Party must apply united front tactics for specific demands to the existing Negro petty bourgeois organizations. The

4 Inv. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. 3, p. 427. 195

purpose of these united front tactics should be the mobilizing of the Negro masses under the leadership of the Party, and to expose the treacherous petty bourgeois leadership of those organizations. 24. The Negro Miners Relief Committee and the Harlem Tenants League are examples of joint organizations of action which may serve as a means of drawing the Negro masses into struggle. In every case the utmost effort must be made to combine the struggle of the Negro workers with the struggle of the white workers, and to draw the white workers' organizations into such joint campaigns. 25. In order to reach the bulk of the Negro masses, special attention should be paid to the work among the Negroes in the South. For that purpose, the Party should establish a district organization in the most suitable locality in the South. Whilst continuing trade union work among the Negro workers and the agricultural laborers, special organizations of tenant farmers must be set up. Special efforts must also be made to secure the support of the share-croppers in the creation of such organizations. The Party must undertake the task of working out a definite program of immediate demands, directed against all slave remnants, which will serve as the rallying slogans for the formation of such peasant organizations. 26. Henceforth the Communist Party must consider the struggle on behalf of the Negro masses, the task of organizing the Negro workers and peasants and the drawing of these oppressed masses into the proletarian revolutionary struggle, as one of its major tasks, remembering, in the words of the Second Congress resolution, that "complete victory over capitalism cannot be won unless the proletariat and, following it, the mass of working people in all countries and nations of the world voluntarily strive for alligance and unity. 11 6 (Political Secretariat,7 Communist International, Moscow, U.S.S.R., October 26, 1928.) THESES AND RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED BY THE SIXTH WORLD CONGRESS The position on the Negro question as approved by the VIth Congress was included in the following summary of the resolutions of the Congress. It is of interest that the Negro question in the United States is placed here in the context of the world condition of Negro peoples, as in South America, South Africa, Negro states such as Liberia and Haiti, and the colonies of Central Africa.

5 The reference is to the Save the Union Conference, held in Pittsburgh, April 1, 1928. Some 250,000 bituminous miners had been locked out in the Pennsylvania and Ohio fields. The Save the Union Committees had been formed by the TUEL to fight the no-relief, no-support policy of the John L. Lewis administration in the United Mine Workers Union. Negro miners were conspicuous at the Pittsburgh Conference. The National Miners Union, affiliated to the TUEL, was formed later that year. 6 Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. 3, p. 427. 7 The Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Communist International became the Political Secretariat in January 1927.

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In connection with the colonial question, the VIth Congress drew the special attention of the Communist Parties to the Negro question. The position of the Negro varies in different countries, and accordingly requires concrete investigation and analysis. The territories, in which compact Negro masses are to be found, can be divided according to their general features into the following groups: 1. The United States and some South American countries, in which the compact Negro masses constitute a minority in relation to the white population. 2. The Union of South Africa, where the Negroes are the majority in relation to the white colonials. 3. The Negro States, which are actually colonies or semi-colonies of imperialism (Liberia, Haiti, San-Domingo). 4. The whole of Central Africa, divided into the colonies and mandated territories of various imperialist powers (Great Britain, France, Portugal, etc.). The tasks of the Communist Parties have to be defined in their dependence on the concrete situation. In the United States are to be found 12 million Negroes. The majority of them are tenants, paying in kind and living under semi-feudal and semi-slave conditions. The position of these Negro tenant farmers is exactly the same as that of agricultural labourers, being only formally distinguishable from the slavery that the constitution is supposed to have abolished. The white landowner, uniting in one person landlord, merchant and usurer, employs the lynching of Negroes, segretation and other methods of American bourgeois democracy reproducing the worst features of exploitation of the slavery period. Owing to the industrialization of the South, a Negro proletariat is coming into existence. At the same time, the emigration of Negroes to the North continues at an everincreasing rate, where the huge majority of Negroes become unskilled labourers. The growth of the Negro proletariat is the most important phenomenon of recent years. At the same time there is arising in the Negro quarters--the Negro petty bourgeosie, from which is derived a stratum of intellectuals and a thin stratum of bourgeoisie, the latter acting as the agent of imperialism. One of the most important tasks of the Communist Party consists in the struggle for a complete and real equality of the Negroes, for the abolition of all kinds of social and political inequalities. It is the duty of the Communist Party to carry on the most energetic struggle against any exhibition of white chauvinism, to organize active resistance to lynching, to strengthen its work among Negro proletarians, to draw into its ranks the most conscious elements of the Negro workers, to fight for the acceptance of Negro workers in all organizations of white workers, and especially in the trade unions (which does not exclude, if necessary, their organization into separate trade unions), to organize the masses of peasants and agricultural workers in the South, to carry on work among the petty bourgeois Negro masses, to enlighten them regarding the utopian, reactionary character of petty bourgeois tendencies such as Garveyism and to carry on a struggle against the influence of such tendencies in the working class and peasantry. In those regions of the South in which compact Negro masses are living, it is essential to put forward the slogan of the Right of Self-determination for Negroes. A radical transformation of the agrarian structure of the Southern States is one of the basic tasks of the revolution. Negro Communists must explain to Negro workers and peasants that only their close union with the white proletariat and joint struggle with them

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against the American bourgeoisie can lead to their liberation from barbarous exploitation, and that only the victorious proletarian revolution will completely and permanently solve the agrarian and national question of the Southern United States in the interest of the overwhelming majority of the Negro population of the country. In the Union of South Africa, the Negro masses, which constitute the majority of the population, are being expropriated from the land by the white colonists and by the State, are deprived of political rights and of the right of freedom of movement, are subjected to most brutal forms of racial and class oppression and suffer simultaneously from pre-capitalist and capitalist methods of exploitation and oppression. The Communist Party, which has already achieved definite successes among the Negro proletariat, has the duty of continuing still more energetically the struggle for complete equality of rights for the Negroes, and for confiscation of the land of the landlords. In drawing into its organization non-Negro workers, organizing them in trade unions, and in carrying on a struggle for the acceptance of Negroes by the trade unions of white workers, the Communist Party has the obligation to struggle by all methods against every racial prejudice in the ranks of the white workers and to eradicate entirely such prejudices from its own ranks. The Party ~ust determinedly and consistently put forward the slogan for the creation of an independent Native Republic, with simultaneous guarantees for the rights of the white minority, and struggle in deeds for its realization. In proportion as the development of capitalist relationships disintegrates the tribal structure, the Party must strengthen its work in the education in class consciousness of the exploited strata of the Negro population, and co-operate in their liberation from the influence of the exploiting tribal strata, which become more and more agents of imperialism. In the Central African.Colonies of imperialism, colonial exploitation takes on the very worst forms, uniting slave-owing, feudal and capitalist methods of exploitation. In the post-war period, capital from the imperialist metropolitan countries has flowed in an ever-growing stream to the African colonies, compelling the concentration of considerable masses of the expropriated and proletarianized population in plantations, mining and other enterprises. The Congress makes it a duty of Communist Parties in the metropolitan countries to put an end to the indifference which they have exhibited in regard to the mass movements in these colonies, and instead to afford energetic support both in the imperialist centres and in the colonies themselves to these movements, at the same time attentively studying the situation in these countries for the purpose of exposing the bloody exploits of imperialism and of the possibility of organizational connections with the developing proletarian elements there which are so mercilessly exploited by imperialism. International Press Correspondence, December 12, 1928. THE COMMUNISTS ARE FOR A BLACK REPUBLIC One of the few references to the self-determination thesis during the period of discussion preceding the Sixth Convention occurs in this Daily Worker editorial on South Africa and the American South. The whole capitalist press is up in the air. London exposures . . Johannesburg exposures . Riga exposures

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follow each other with dramatic swiftness. The charge is stupendous: "Moscow wants to create an independent Negro republic in South Africa." This charge is well-founded. We plead guilty. The Communists do want a native Negro republic in South Africa! The Sixth World Congress of the Communist International took up the Negro question in all its ramifications. The deliberation of the Congress analyzed the situation of the Negroes in the United States of America, in the South African Union, in the Negro States of Liberia, Haiti, Santo Domingo, and in the Negro colonies of Central Africa. The Communist International considers the problems of the oppressed Negro race as one of the most significant questions confronting the Communists. The World Congress, of course, did not confine itself to an analysis of the situation of the Negro masses, but gave clear-cut instructions to the South African Communists how to fight for the oppressed Negroes. The first instruction is for an uncompromising struggle for full equality for the Negroes. The second instruction given by the World Congress of the Communist International to our South African comrades is for a determined fight for the establishment of an independent Negro republic in South Africa .. The slogan of establishment of an independent Negro republic in South Africa may sound unbelievable to the horror-stricken white capitalists, but certainly it is something natural and self-evident for revolutionary Marxists who accept the fundamental teachings of Lenin about the relation between white Imperialism and colonial peoples. Tielman Roos, Minister of the Government of the Union of South Africa, came out with a vicious attack against the Communists, declaring that in the next election the issue will be nationalism vs. Communism. He said: "We shall fight to the utmost any attempt to develop natives along lines which will endanger the white standard of the Union." Mr. Tielman Roos is the embodiment of 100 percent Jingoism, and he is right when he declares that Communism endangers the white "standard" of the Union of South Africa. Communism means the liberation of the Negro masses of South africa, means the abolishment of a "white standard," means the end of the wide exploitation and oppression. But to make the end of the white capitalist and plantation rule complete, we can furnish the additional information that the Communist International put forward the slogan of an independent Negro republic not only for South Africa but for the Solid South of the United States of America as well. The Communist is for the slogan of national self-determination for the Negroes in the South, where the Negro toilers live in compact masses, exploited and oppressed by the white plantation-owners and capitalists. The Workers (Communist) Party of America in the election campaign just past came out openly and unreservedly for the right of national self-determination for the Negroes. National self-determination means the right to establish their own Negro State, if they choose to do so. The Communist Party declares that it respects the decision of the Negro masses about the form of realization of this self-determination. At the same time it is the duty of the Negro comrades to emphasize the solidarity of the Negro and white workers and to make clear to the Negro masses that only a victorious proletarian revolution can fully and definitely solve the national question in the Solid South in favor of the oppressed Negro masses.

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The Communist Party is the advocate of full racial, social and political equality for the Negro race, and pledges itself to fight for the right of self-determination for the Negroes in the South. But the Negro masses must understand that their racial and economic liberation can be achieved only in alliance with the working class--whites and Blacks alike--and as a product of the victorious proletarian revolution. ' Daily Worker, February 26, 1929. (Abridged.)

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VIJ.

PARTY WORK AMONG BLACKS, 1929

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OTTO HUISWOOD'S REPORT TO COMMUNIST PARTY CONVENTION In this report to the 6th Party Convention, Otto Huiswood, head of the newly organized Negro Department of the National Executive Committee, gives a sharply critical account of party work among Negroes. It is obvious from this report that as late as March 1921, the party was not yet successfully engaged in this area. Despite constant emphasis upon the importance of organizing Negro workers in unions and upon fighting the color bar, it is charged here that in practice little had been done, and the TUEL is criticized for neglect of this work. The American Negro Labor 1 Congress is described as "a minature duplicate of the party." Nevertheless, Huiswood reports "one or two units" of the party in the South with both Black and white membership, and does speak of "a decided improvement" generally in Negro work. The anti-church attitude is still present here. It is notable that no mention is made of the new national and self-determination line by the head of the Negro Department in his report to the first party convention following the adoption of the CI Resolution on the Negro Question. The Negro Committee for Miners Relief, was associated with the recently organized National Miners Union of the TUEL, which elected William Boyce, a Negro miner, as national vice-president, and carried on a campaign for organization of Negro miners. This report covers largely the period of five months, October, 1928-February, 1929, since the work of the Negro Department has been under my direction. When I took charge of the work there was no functioning Negro Department, though there was one comrade in charge. Very little connection had been established with the districts and no methods or plans devised to initiate activities throughout the Party to increase our Negro membership, and mobilize the entire Party behind the Negro work. Most of the districts paid very little attention to this important phase of Party activity and, since there was no coordination from the center and no specific instructions and advice to these various sections, no earnest attempt to work was made. Besides, most white comrades conceived of Negro work as the work of the Negro comrades. While in some districts, especially in Chicago, very good work had been done in the past and important organizational gains made, practically everything fell through and only the remnants of our former movement remained. Neglect of Work The insufficient attention paid to this work by the Party as a whole resulted in very little actual organizational achievement. Because of insufficient forces and the lack of a definite and concrete program covering all the fields of activities, our policy was often confusing. As an instance, at a certain period we concentrated largely on building of the American Negro Labor Congress (ANLC). In doing so, we forgot almost altogether to draw Negro workers into the Party, thereby failing to build the necessary cadres, which is the only active driving force capable of building any movement. Apart from this, our orientation was too much in the direction of the Negro intellectuals and petty bourgois elements. In a number of districts, particularly Chicago, we

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took into the movement some very unstable elements who joined with the idea that there was an opportunity for personal advancement, but when confronted with the real tasks of the Party, they became frightened at the risks and the work involved, and so they left the movement. Whatever progress we have made so far has been largely the result of a change in our policy in orientating ourselves to the proletarian elements. Not only that, but an attitude had developed to the effect that the Party's work among Negroes was to be confined mainly to the ANLC. First Program Last April (1928) our Party for the first time drew up a program on Negro work that came nearest to fitting the situation. Since then, with the aid and criticism of the Comintern, we have orientated ourselves more and more to work among the Negro masses and have begun to take this work seriously. The political campaign of 1928 presented a very favorable opportunity to carry the program of the Party to the Negro masses on a national scale. A very intensive campaign was carried on, particularly in the large cities, and for the first time, Negro workers, in many sections of the country, appeared as candidates on the Communist platform, the platform of class struggle. The importance of this campaign can only be properly evaluated when we take into consideration the fact that never before did a working class party appear openly and boldly as the champion of the Negro masses in its fight for full social equality and against lynching, segregation and all the various forms of abuses and exploitation suffered by the Negro masses. Never before did a working class party so effectively challenge the ruling class and its political parties and its oppression, exploitation and degradation of the Negro masses. Not only in the North, but also in the South--the hotbed of reaction and race prejudice~-was our propaganda effective. In the heart of the lynching bee, we denounced lynching. The many meetings we held, the thousands of leaflets distributed, the special election issue of The Champion, and the very effective publicity obtained through the Crusader News Service, brought our propaganda to thousands of Negro workers who are under the influence of the bourgeoisie, white and Black. And the response on the part of the Negro workers and the increase of our membership during this period, indicate the possibility of drawing in large numbers into the Party with systematic work. (The establishment of one or two units in the South with white and Negro members in the same unit, is in itself an achievement). Our main shortcoming in this respect is organizational. We did not retain all those who joined, nor did we follow up sufficiently all the contacts made. Unless definite organizational steps are taken to keep these newcomers in the Party and to bring back good elements which have drifted out, our work will have been of little value. Trade Union Work The trade union work among the Negro workers is the weakest aspect of our work. Not the slightest attempt has been made to launch a campaign for the organization of the hundreds of thousands of unorganized Black workers. Not only do I take into consideration here the question of building new unions among the Negro workers, but also the matter of a campaign against the discrimination practiced in most unions against the Negroes and an absolute refusal of many unions to admit colored workers. In this respect, the Trade Union Educational League (TUEL) has 204

entirely neglected its duty. Not even a plan for this most important activity has been worked out. The TUEL has retreated before the anti-Negro policy of the labor aristocracy of the A.F. of L. In spite of the pledges made by the delegation of the Fourth Congress of the RILU and the program adopted, they have signally failed to launch any campaign to force these unions to let down the color bar and admit Negro workers. Also no attempt was made to include Negro trade unionists in the trade union delegation to the Soviet Union. A small beginning is being made with the attempt to organize Negro workers and to place them on leading committees in the new unions (miners, needle trades, etc.). Now that a Negro Department has been established in the TUEL with some one [James W. Ford] in charge of the work who will work in close connection with the Negro Bureau of the Profintern, we may expect some improvement in the work in the near future. American Negro Labor Congress The American Negro Labor Congress only exists nominally today. Organized in 1925, it has had a very precarious existence. From its inception, the policy pursued was too narrow and had the effect of stifling its growth. Very little attempt was made to make a real broad mass movement of it. It became a little sectarian group and to a certain extent a miniature duplicate of the Party . . . . The Party did not pay sufficient attention to the administration of the Congress, discipline was little enforced, and the work of the comrades in charge was not checked, with the result that many grave blunders were committed without any attempt at rectification. In the last few months an attempt has been made to revive the Congress, and with some degree of success. Prior to this practically all the locals had disappeared. We were in a state of almost complete bankruptcy. Now we have functioning locals in New York with about 30 active members; Chester, Pa., 45 members; Pittsburgh, 15; Chicago, 70; Kansas City, 20, and we have organized Provisional Committees in a number of other cities such as Cleveland, Omaha, Denver, Seattle, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Oakland, Minneapolis, Detroit, Buffalo, New Haven, Oklahoma City . . . . We cannot be satisfied with the ANLC in its present form. It is still too much of a propaganda sect. Our main aim must be to build a mass movement based on the industrial workers, particularly the organized workers. We must turn more to the shops and factories and in this connection we must establish close relationship and cooperation with the TUEL. Our program as it is today is hardly suited to reach the masses and the new program which is being prepared will largely correct these shortcomings. Some of our comrades in New York as well as elsewhere have had a wrong policy toward the church. Their conception of the extent to which we could utilize the Negro church is based on an underestimation of the role of the church as an instrument of imperialism. They thought that they could really make a dent in religion by boring from within. The idea of reaching the masses through the church made them forget the basic task, the work in the factories, shops, mills, and other places of employment. our recent experiences with meetings in the churches ought to be adequate proof that we must intensify our agitation against the church, to break down the stranglehold it has on the Negro masses, and not go to the churches to win these masses.

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Negro Workers Relief Committee The Negro Workers Relief Committee, which supplanted the Negro Committee for Miners' Relief and was organized at the time of the Florida hurricane, has many good possibilities as a permanent relief organization. Branches are being formed in a number of districts and the committee has recently affiliated itself with the Workers International Relief. The committee has carried on a campaign for relief of the hurricane sufferers and has effectively exposed the role of the Red Cross, with its policy of race discrimination and as a tool in the hands of the capitalist class. Efforts will be made by the Party to help make this a broad mass movement. Harlem Tenants' League The Harlem Tenants' League, though still small and weak, can be built and can serve as an excellent means of drawing the Negro masses into the struggle. We must by all means make an effort to strengthen and broaden it. We should help to develop similar leagues in other large cities where Negroes are segregated and forced to pay exorbitant rents for the worst hovels. Negro Champion After cessation for over a year, the Negro Champion is again being published by the American Negro Labor Congress. But at present it appears too irregularly. All efforts must be made to help build the Negro Champion into a mass organ. This can only be done if it appears regularly as a weekly. The paper has considerably improved, but needs a manager, in addition to the editor, who is already overburdened with other Party work, and the support of the entire Party. We must realize that a powerful organ is a prime necessity for the building of a real mass movement. Without this, it is extremely difficult to reach the Negro masses, who are chloroformed by both the white capitalist press and the Negro press. Crusader News Service The Crusader News Service, which the Party supports, is of great value. About 200 Negro papers receive it and use its propaganda material. The service was of inestimable value during the election campaign. Most of the Southern Negro newspapers use hardly any other source for their news material. The news material can be improved, but the beginning is a very good one. Negro Commission The Party has recently established a Negro Commission, the purpose of which is to make a thorough survey of our Negro work, to study the problems from every angle, to draw up concrete plans and to make definite recommendations and proposals for our work. The Commission has divided itself into sub~committees, with one comrade responsible for the work of each committee, so as to more eff~ctively study the various problems, such as trade unionism, agriculture, race movements, class divisions within the Negro race, etc. The Commission has already begun its work. The findings of the Commission will be of inestimable value since we know so little of the actual facts regarding some of the problems we are confronted with in dealing with the life of the Negro race. 206

Negro Department A Negro Department of the Central Executive Committee has been established with one comrade in charge of the work. The task of this department is to supervise the work of the various auxiliary organizations, to direct the Party's Negro work, to initiate policies and to put into effect the Party's decisions on Negro work insofar as it comes within its scope. The Negro Department recently arranged a national tour for Comrade Otto Hall covering some of the most important industrial centers and cities with large Negro population. Most of the meetings were held directly under Party auspices. This was the first time that mass meetings were held among Negro workers on a national scale, directly under Party auspices. With few exceptions, the meetings were quite successful, with large numbers of Negro workers in attendance, and nearly 300 Negroes signed application blanks for membership in the Party. We established a number of Provisional Committees for the American Negro Labor Congress and made contacts for the distribution of the Negro Champion. Where the Party forces were mobilized, we had the most successful meetings, as, for instance, in Seattle and Buffalo. The results of this tour, more than anything else, are a proof of the fact that not only through auxiliaries, but also directly, can the Party appeal to the Negro workers and organize them immediately into the Party. The Districts Although most of the districts are still very slow in mobilizing the Party machinery for actual work among the Negro workers, there has been recently a decided improvement. The Party's work among the Negro masses is being taken much more seriously now and an effort is being made to do something concrete to win the Negro workers for the Party. The need for a determin~d effort to carry on a thorough ideological campaign through the districts to give the Party membership a better understanding of the Negro question is quite evident. The main obstacle, in the way of the membership in participating in larger numbers in this work, is their lack of understanding of the question and methods of approach. This can only be overcome if they are acquainted with the facts and when they are engaged in actual work. The recent District Negro Conference, held in New York, attended by delegates from units, active Negro comrades and white comrades active in Negro work, taking up many of the District problems, was an excellent beginning and indicates the growing realization of the importance of this phase of Party work . . . . At present ten districts have organized Negro departments, with one comrade responsible for the activity of the departments in each district, and in some districts, like New York, many units have Negro organizers working in close cooperation with the department. In this connection, the closest cooperation between the National Negro Department and that of the districts obtains. We have at present two District Negro Organizers, one in New York, and one in Chicago. The districts which have shown the greatest amount of activity and results recently are Kansas City, Detroit, Cleveland, Seattle, Chicago and New York. Altho we have had a decided improvement in the Negro work recently and our membership has increased, the Party cannot be satisfied with the work done, and the results so far obtained. one of our greatest shortcomings, and one that must be overcome 207

immediately, is the lack of a sufficient number of trained Negro comrades who can do the proper organizational and other tasks in the districts. The development of strong Negro cadres in all sections of the country is a prerequisite to the building of a real movement among the Negro workers. The entrance of Negroes in the basic industries of the North on a large scale, creating a real proletarian element, gives us a better basis for actual organizational activities. With the industrialization of the South, large numbers of Negroes have left the plantations for urban centers and are engaged in the various industries. While we must pay immediate attention to organizing the Negroes in the industrial centers of the South, we must bear in mind that the overwhelming majority of Negroes are still on the land. We must realize that the bulk of them are tenant farmers, share croppers, farm laborers and peons. We have entirely neglected to do any work among the Negro farmers, and yet here is a very important field for activity that must be tackled at once. The ruthless exploitation and persecution of the Negro masses in the South, the lynching, segregation and disfranchisement which they suffer, make possible the formation of an agrarian movement which might take on the characteristics of a race movement. In such developments it will be our task to see to it that the new proletarian elements in the urban centers and the semi-proletarians on the land are the driving force in these movements in order to give them a working class leadership. We have the following tasks facing our Party in its Negro work. 1. The Party must immediately launch a general organization drive for Negro membership. 2. We must immediately begin the training of cadres of Negro Communists. 3. A strong ideological campaign must be carried on throughout the Party against white chauvinism. 4. A campaign to organize the unorganized Negro workers in trade unions and a campaign to break down the color bar in the old unions must be launched. 5. Organization work in the South must be started immediately; a concrete program to organize the Negro farmers must be worked out. 6. The American Negro Labor Congress must be activized; preparations must be made to call another convention of the ANLC as soon as possible. 7. After careful preparation a race congress should be called. 8. The entire Party must be mobilized behind the Negro Champion. 9. Increased activities must start among Negro women, youth and children. 10. The Negro problem must be a part of all Party campaigns and of its auxiliary organizations. 11. The Negro masses must be mobilized against the war danger and against imperialist attacks upon the Soviet Union. The Negro press, among other means, must be utilized to the fullest possible extent for this purpose. Daily Worker, March 9 and 11, 1929.

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ORGANIZING IN VIRGINIA By Irving Keith The following article, by a white Communist seaman and organizer, is an unusually frank discussion of the problems facing the party in the South. The racism he found in the single party unit in Norfolk was more or less typical of the few party units existing elsewhere in the South. Noteworthy are the writer's proposals for organization of the Negro workers in the South together with white in the new industrial unions of the TUEL, for the creation of a Southern party district, and for the launching of a Southern party newspaper. Within the year, action was started in all three. The rapid industrialization of Virginia calls for an expansion of Communist activity and a concentration of Communist forces in the state. In the Tidewater district of Virginia, which embraces Norfolk and that part of the state immediately surrounding it, are quite a number of large manufacturing plants. In these plants working conditions are miserable, wages are very small and the average working day is ten hours. General Conditions As a direct result of the very low wage scale, living conditions are almost unbearable. For the Negro workers particularly, is this true. They are forced to live in rambling shanties which have no means for either lighting or heating. For the white workers conditions are slightly better, and since the general tendency is to compare their standard of living with that of the poorest class of workers, i.e., the masses of Negro workers, they do not consider themselves in as poor a condition as they really are. No attempt has been made to establish nuclei in any of these mills. It is of the utmost importance that our Party take up immediately the task of organizing nuclei in these factories and mills. Negro Question The Negro question in Virginia is acute. Discrimination, segregation and Jim-Crowism are everywhere prevalent. The Negro, although exploited even more than the white worker, is not outwardly revolutionary. The Negro masses now working in the mills are the same masses who a few years ago were engaged solely in agricultural pursuits. The attitude of the masses of white workers toward the Negro is, generally, that hatred which has been instilled in them by bourgeois propaganda and teaching. There are several groups of militant Negro workers in both Norfolk and Richmond. It is of the utmost importance that the members of these militant groups be drawn into the revolutionary struggle. The masses of Negro workers in Virginia are readers of the reactionary "Negro World" and the "Norfolk Journal and Guide." It is urgent that the "Negro Champion" conduct a campaign and secure as readers the masses of Negro workers in Virginia. It is also important that a special publication, dealing with the vital problems of the southern industrial workers, agrarian laborers and tenant farmers, be issued and distributed.

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Composition of Norfolk Unit There has been practically no work done in Norfolk. The Navy Yard, the Naval and Marine bases and the various factories and mills have not been touched. The problem of the organization of the masses of Negro workers has gone by almost unnoticed in Norfolk. The social composition of the Norfolk unit of the Party is extremely bad. There is not a real proletarian element in the unit. [It is] a Jewish speaking one. The worker whom the unit could claim as a member was non-Jewish and had to stop coming to meetings because he could not understand what was going on about him at the few meetings which he attended. The Party unit in Norfolk has adopted a white chauvinist attitude towards the race question, and has fought all moves toward the organization of Negro workers into nuclei and units. It follows the course of least resistance and makes no effort to give the Party's stand on the Negro question to the masses of workers. This can be attributed to the following reason: since taking leadership in a movement to organize the Negroes and advocating equality of the races would bring notoriety to most of the members of the unit, and since all of these are in business and notoriety is bad for business, they are fearful of the outcome of an open policy on the Negro question. The Party's invasion of Virginia in the last election campaign did not give rise to any organizational gains. In Norfolk there were three campaign meetings. Two of these were arranged by the National office of the Party, and the third by the district office at Philadelphia. The Norfolk section of the Party did very little towards the success of these meetings. The same, I believe, is true of Richmond. Proposals Our Party must undertake the complete reorganization of the Norfolk and Richmond units. It must inaugurate an extensive campaign to organize real proletarian elements into units and nuclei, and in line with the general situation in the South, of which Virginia is partly typical, it is my opinion that the Party must pay particular attention to the immediate organization of a Southern district with all the functioning departments, such as Women's Negro, Youth, and Pioneer. The Trade Union Educational League must establish itself in the South in order to draw the great masses of unorganized workers into the struggle on the industrial field. More attention must be paid to the organization of the Southern workers into the new industrial unions. Our party must analyze the conditions of the agrarian laborers and tenant farmers with a view towards laying out a problem around which we must rally these agrarian laborers and tenant farmers to the standard of our Party. EDITOR'S NOTE--The Norfolk unit has already been reorganized because of white chauvinism. The District Committee is now engaged in building a real Party unit from among the workers in the basic industries, concentrating among the· workers of the Navy yard. The condition described by Comrade Keith existed, and to an extent still exists, in other Party units in the South. The Party is now giving attention to these units in reorganizing them and orientating itself on the Negro proletarians and the workers in the basic industries generally. Daily Worker, May 6, 1929.

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ORGANIZE THE NEGRO WORKERS By Wm. Z. Foster This is the last of a series of four articles on the forthcoming Trade Union Educatioal League convention in Cleveland, which was postponed from the announced date of June 1 to August 31, 1929. At this convention the TUEL became the Trade Union Unity League, with emphasis upon the organization of independent industrial unions. Foster's contention that the convention "will have more significance to Negro workers than any other trade union gathering ever held in this country" was not an idle boast. Some 60 Negro delegates attended, and the organization of a number of industrial unions in key branches of the economy, though comparatively small, proved to be forerunners of the great organization drives in the mass production industries of the 1930's which resulted in the CIO, and involved masses of Black workers. The convention marked a significant advance in communist influence among Negro workers. One of the most important features of the Trade Union Educational League convention to be held in Cleveland on June 1st and 2nd will be the large delegation of Negro workers present. To organize the Negro proletarians, to draw them into the main stream of the new revolutionary industrial union movement, will be a major objective of the T.U.E.L. convention. Of all the shameful treason to the working class committed by the misleaders who stand at the head of the old trade unions, none has been more disastrous than their systematic betrayal of the Negro workers. It has long been the policy of the employers to draw a line between white and Black workers, to set one group against the other in order to better exploit them, to cultivate the worst forms of race prejudice among the whites. They have deliberately and systematically discriminated against the Negroes, giving them the worst work, the lowest wages, and subjecting them to the most brutal repression. A.F.L. Won't Organize Were the A.F. of L. leaders imbued with even a semblance of real working class spirit they would take it upon themselves as a first and basic task to defeat the plans of the employers, by organizing the Negroes and by mobilizing the whole labor movement behind their elementary demands. But they refuse utterly to do this. On the contrary, true to their role as agents of the bourgeoisie in the ranks of the workers, they fall in line with the program of the employers, and join hands with them to oppress the Negroes. They cultivate race chauvinism among the whites, they prohibit Negroes from joining the unions, they cooperate with the employers to keep the Negroes at the poorest paid jobs. All this constitutes one of the most shameful pages in American labor history. Class Brothers But the T.U.E.L. convention represents the revolutionary forces that will stop this historic treachery. The convention will be made up of a body of workers of both sexes and all nationalities, of Negroes who understand and dare to strike a blow in behalf of themselves and their class, and of whites eliminating all white chauvinism from their ranks, recognize the 211

Negro workers as class brothers, and who will fight with and for them all the way to the end for complete social emancipation. The T.U.E.L. convention will have more significance to Negro workers than any other trade union gathering ever held in this country. Negroes constantly take on more importance as a force in industry and as a potential factor in the trade union movement. During the past dozen years hundreds of thousands of them have poured into the mills and factories. For the most part they are going into the key and basic industries, coal, railroads, steel, meatpacking, etc., exactly those industries that play the most decisive role in the class struggle. In a recent number of the R.I.L.U. bulletin occurs the following statement quoting Carroll Binder regarding Negroes in the industries of Chicago in 1920: "Thirty per cent of the labor force in the Chicago packing industry is colored; the Corn Products Company, which employed only one Negro eight years ago, today employs 350, or twenty per cent of its working force. Beavers Products--95 per cent. The American Hide and Leather Co. was the first tannery to use Negro workers; now all the tanneries use large numbers of them. The foundries and laundries are heavy employers of Negroes. Eleven per cent of the employees of the Pullman Car shops are Negroes. Negro women compose forty per cent of the workers in the lamp shade industry. About twenty per cent of the 14,000 postal workers of Chicago are Negroes," etc., etc. The great importance to industry and the class struggle of this constantly increasing body of Negro workers cannot be too much stressed. It is the special task of the T.U.E.L. to organize them as part of its general work of organizing the unorganized. This can only be done in the face of studied opposition of the A.F. of L. leaders working hand in glove with the employers. Special Committees But in order that the necessary progress shall be registered by the T.U.E.L. convention in the organization of the Negro workers, real work must be done by the left forces between now and the convention. Special committees must be established in the various important industrial centers to prosecute this particular task. These committees, together with the general organizing forces of the T.U.E.L., must establish contacts with the Negroes in all the important industrial plants and draw them into all the shop committees, T.U.E.L. groups, and other organizations formed as a basis for the convention. In every delegation from every industry where Negroes are employed, there must be a heavy percentage of these workers included. There especially must be a large delegation of Negro workers from the coal and iron mines, the steel mills, fertilizer works, railroads, the cotton and tobacco plantations, and other industries of the South. The real mass character of the T.U.E.L. convention will be measured pretty much by the number of representative Negro workers present. Good Fighters The Negro workers are good fighters. This they have proved in innumerable strikes in the coal, steel, packing, building and other industries, despite systematic betrayal by white trade union leaders and the presence of an all, too prevalent race chauvinism among the masses of white workers. They are a

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tremendous source of potential revolutionary strength and vigor. They have a double oppression as workers and as Negroes, to fill them with fighting spirit and resentment against capitalism. It has been one of the most serious errors of the left wing to underestimate and to neglect the development of this great proletarian fighting force. Let the T.U.E.L. convention therefore be a great mobilization center for the Negro workers. There must be present Negroes from all the important plants and localities. Such a delegation, upon which the success of the convention depends, can and will be assembled. The T.U.E.L. convention will be a revolutionary signal and inspiration to the masses of Negro workers, exploited and oppressed in the mills, mines and factories of American imperialism. Daily Worker, May 16, 1929. RESULTS OF NATIONAL NEGRO WEEK By Cyril Briggs As part of Build The Party Drive, the National Committee designated the period of May 10-20 as National Negro Week. In a lengthy statement issued by Cyril Briggs, acting director of the National Negro Department (Daily Worker, April 25, 1929), various tasks and objectives were detailed. District local conferences were held in preparation for the occasion, attended by representatives of party units and union party fractions in the area. The following review of the results of National Negro Week expresses dissatisfaction with the level of party work among Negroes. It is notable that Cyril Briggs urged white Communists to speak at meetings in Black neighborhoods. The designation of a Negro Week, probably first attempted during the election campaign of 1928, became a regular annual event, usually during the week of Lincoln's birthday, and much later February was celebrated as Negro History Month as a national event. National Negro Week is over, but the Party's Negro work has just begun. First, let us consider the Party's purpose in having a national Negro week. The communications sent to the District Negro Committees by the National Negro Department before and during National Negro Week stressed that "the period of May 10 to May 20 shall be National Negro Week, and shall be used for the purpose of mobilizing the entire membership behind the Negro work of the Party, building the American Negro Labor Congress, the relief committee, the Negro Champion, organizing tenants' leagues, etc." Dramatizing Struggle It was also repeatedly pointed out that National Negro Week must be utilized for dramatizing the struggles of the Negroes and for dramatizing the support by the Communist Party of the struggle against white ruling class terrorism, against lynching, against Jim-Crowism, against segregation, against disfranchisement, and for full political, social and racial equality of the Negroes. District Negro committees were instructed to send mixed groups of white and Negro workers to theatres, restaurants and other public places known to be practicing discrimination against the Negroes, and that any refusal to sell tickets to, or 213

serve our Negro comrades, was to be utilized for a mass demonstration against these places and against the whole system of racial discrimination, with picketing of the offending places by groups of white and Negro workers. No Broad Agitational Base From the data at present on hand, it would appear that the campaign was practically barren of that broad agitational base sought by the National Office and for which directives were sent to each district. Only in Paterson (District 2) did National Negro Week achieve that agitational base. In other parts of District 2, notably in Harlem (Section 4 of District 2) several attempts were made to achieve this agitational base, but the first attempts proving unsuccessful in uncovering racial discrimination (the places tested having evidently changed their policies by reason of the growing pressure of the Negro population and the necessity of having to seek the Negro's trade, the matter was dropped). The Toussaint L'Ouverture Memorial Meetings, held in conjunction with the A.N.L.C., were generally badly organized and poorly attended. In District Two, with its more than 250,000 Negro population, only two memorial meetings were held, one in Brooklyn which was fairly well attended, the other in Harlem. This latter was an absolute farce, with only about 75 workers present. Very few of the white comrades were present, indicating that the decision of the Communist Internatonal to the contrary, there is still a marked underestimation of Negro work in the Party. The poor attendance of Negro workers can be traced to the failure of speakers to show up for the street meetings held previously to the memorial meeting. Wrong Conception The Negro comrades were particularly to blame in this respect. However, the white comrades must get over the idea that street meetings in Negro communities are absolutely impossible unless a Negro comrade is present to speak. If the white comrades will give the necessary attention to a study of the problems of the Negro mases they will not continue to consider themselves inadequately equipped to address a meeting of Negro workers. Fairly Successful Meets In Kansas City, in Boston, in Chicago, in Detroit, in Cleveland, there were fairly successful memorial meetings from an agitational viewpoint. The National Negro Department cooperated with the districts wherever requested in sending out national speakers to cover their affairs. Comrade Richard B. Moore was sent to address the memorial meetings in Boston, in Philadelphia, and also traveled to Buffalo to find that in spite of a request for a speaker no arrangements had actually been made for a memorial meeting. Comrade Moore also spoke at the Harlem memorial meeting. Comrade Otto Hall spoke at two memorial meetings in the South, where for the first time the Party and the A.N.L.C. are penetrating on a healthy basis, drawing in proletarian elements of both races and discarding the professional and petty business element which heretofore hindered the Party's growth in the South. In sharp contrast with the failures of the campaign and the poor attendance at the memorial meetings, was the methodical arrangement and splendid success of the Negro Champion Dinner in 214

District Two. Over five hundred persons were present at this dinner, where five hundred dollars in cash was raised for the Negro Champion, with over $1,500 pledged by various organizations and individuals. The dinner was a success both agitationally and financially. Department Failings Of course the National Negro Department had its failings, too. The department fell down in the matter of getting out the Negro Champion in time for distribution at and before the memorial meetings. The department should also have printed an ANLC leaflet and a Party leaflet for national distribution among the Negro masses during National Negro week, but here again the lack of funds was a decisive factor. They must, however, share the blame for the failure to get out these leaflets. Our Party must learn by these mistakes and in the task of pushing our work among the Negro masses we must seek to benefit by our past mistakes and experiences. National Negro Week is over, but our Negro work is just begun. We must mobilize every district, every section and every unit for full, active participation in the struggles of the Negro masses. We must ~ncreasingly intensify and dramatize the struggles of the Negro masses. Daily Worker, June 9, 1929. OUR NEGRO WORK By Cyril Briggs This is the sharpest and most outspoken critique of racism in the organization to appear in an official party organ. The author credits the VIth Congress resolution with bringing about a turn toward serious party work among Negroes, and especially with launching an aggressive fight against racism in the party which he considers the main obstacle to effective Negro work. Failure to promote Blacks to leading positions and to consult them on policy, Briggs holds, led to "leftist blunders which marked the birth of the American Negro Labor Congress" and such other blunders as repudiation of social equality for Negroes by a party convention in New York City. He notes the detrimental effect of the factional struggle in preventing effective criticism and action with respect to racism in the party, but he does see marked improvement since the VIth Congress, especially in the promotion of Negro cadre. There were now five Black members of the National Committee, two of whom were elected to the Political Committee, the highest party body, and equivalent action in the regional and local party committees. For reference to James W. Ford at VIth Congress see his speech, above. The Address to the American Party from the CI, May 1929, repudiated the Lovestone faction, which had appealed against an earlier Open Letter of the CI Executive Committee to the Sixth Convention of the American Party in March 1929, favoring the Foster group. The author uses the term "bridge organization" to denote groups such as the American Negro Labor Congress which are intended to reach outward from the party to the masses. The reference to the union in the needle industry is to 215

the Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union, an affiliate of the TUEL and then the TUUL. In attempting to evaluate the work of our Party among the Negro workers and farmers during the past ten years, it is necessary to begin with the frank admission that the task of winning the Negro masses to our program ~as seriously and sincerely taken up only since the Sixth World Congress. Most of our Negro work prior to the Congress was of a sporadic nature intended in the main as gestures for the benefit of the Comintern. In its resolution on the Negro Question in the United States, the Sixth Congress correctly pointed out that ttthe Negro masses will not be won for the revolutionary struggles until such time as the most conscious section of the white workers show, by action, that they are fighting with the Negroes against all racial discrimination and persecution.tt. This is just what we did not seriously essay in the years preceding the Sixth Congress. And it is significant that the Negro membership of the Party experienced its first real growth with the application of the Comintern line and exactly in proportion as when and where it was applied. Prior to the Sixth Congress, white chauvinism in the American Party (in both factions:), unmasked at that Congress by Comrade Ford, and mercilessly condemned by that supreme revolutionary body, made progress in Negro work well-nigh impossible. The Sixth Congress recognized this and in its Resolution on the Negro question laid down the line for a relentless struggle against white chauvinism in the American Party. White chauvinism manifests itself in a general underestimation of the importance of the role of the Negro masses in the revolutionary struggles; in open or concealed opposition to doing work among the Negroes, in thinly veneered antagonism to Negro comrades and sympathizers; in failure to carry on anything but the most sporadic and feeble activities among these masses; in failure to come out openly and continually as the champion of the Negro masses in their racial and economic struggles; in failure to prosecute the fight in the reactionary trade unions for the removal of the color bar; in failure to mobilize and rally the broad masses of the white workers for active participation in the struggles of the Negro masses; in failure to draw capable Negro comrades into responsible and leading positions in the Party, in the left wing unions, in the Party auxiliaries, and in trying to excuse the failure to push the Negro comrades to the front with the rotten slander that existing Negro cadres are totally incapable and undeveloped. White chauvinism has in the past not only prevented the Party from carrying on an aggressive and persistent campaign to win the Negro masses to the Communist program, but was responsible for many costly mistakes in our approach to these masses. The tendency in the past was to ignore the leading Negro comrades when formulating policies on Negro work. This manifestation of white chauvinism led not only to the leftist blunders which marked the birth of the A.N.L.C. and, on this and other occasions marred our approach to the Negro masses, but even to policies so utterly un-Communist as opposition to the spontaneous mass migration from the South of hundreds of thousands of Negroes on the rotten social democratic and A.F. of L. argument that the coming North of these workers would hurt the economic position of the northern white workers and result in the sharpening of racial antagonism with resultant race 216

riots. As punishment for their opposition to the gargantuan stupidity the older Negro comrades were refused further support (five or six dollars a week for postage) in getting out the weekly news service which was being sent out to some three hundred Negro newspapers, and were absolutely ignored in the formation of the new bridge organization. The bourgeois trick of utilizing the least militant of the oppressed race was reflected in the Party at this period. At about this same time the Party, at a convention in New York City, went out of its way to repudiate social equality for the Negro, an act which was given wide publicity in the capitalist press and, of course, quoted extensively by the Negro press, thus in one breath of astounding asininity, destroying much of the good work done by our news service, leaflets and speakers. Another example of the wrong policies engendered by the influence of white chauvinism in the Party is found in the circumstances which led up to Comrade Huiswood's defiance of the Party caucus at the Farmer-Labor convention in 1925 in taking the floor to answer an attack on the Negro masses by a Southern delegate. The Party instead of censuring the fraction for failure to answer this attack on the Negro masses and for further refusing Comrade Huiswood permission to answer, accepted the fraction's opportunist view that a defense of the Negro workers would have antagonized the Southern delegates. The Sixth World Congress completely exonerated Comrade Huiswood and censured the Party for its support of the fraction's attitude. A similar incident occurred at the Miners' Conference in Pittsburgh when one of the most active Negro comrades was disciplined for his insistence in bringing before the conference the tabooed question of Negro work . . . . In addition to being hampered and sabotaged by chauvinistic tendencies in the Party, the Negro work, like the trade union work, anti-imperialist work, etc., further suffered as a result of the unprincipled factional struggle which was eating at the very vitals of our Party and with which the Comintern very properly and effectively dealt in the Address. The impossibility of any real Bolshevik self-criticism during the bitter factional struggle permitted white chauvinism to stalk unchallenged in the highest committees of the Party and gained factional protection for those comrades exposed as white chauvinists. It is not my intention to give the impression that no work at all was done before the Sixth Congress. The Party led the Negro fig and date workers' strike in Chicago, the laundry strike in Carteret, N.J., the Colored Moving Picture Operators' strike in New York. In addition, we organized the Negro Miners' Relief Committee, captured the Tenants' League from the Socialists, held classes and forums in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc. But the work was sporadic and therefore bound to be ineffective. Since the Sixth Congress much has been done to correct the shortcomings of our Negro work. The instructions of the Communist International to push the Negro comrades to the front in Party work have been carried out on a large scale. At both the Party and the [Young Communist] League conventions Negro delegates were present in large numbers and took a leading part in the work of both conventions, serving on all leading committees, presiding over sessions, etc. Negro comrades were elected to the highest body in the Party, the Central Committee, and to the National Executive Committee of the League. Negro comrades were also elected to the Party's Polbureau, and to the National Bureau of the League. Negro Comrades have been added to District Committees, Section Committees, etc. An ideological campaign against white chauvinism was carried on in the Party 217

press and in all units of the Party during National Negro Week in May of this year. In addition to this all too brief ideological campaign sharp organizational measures have been taken against several comrades who were exposed as white chauvinists. In Seattle, Wash., several comrades who objected to the presence of Negro workers at Party dances were expelled. In addition, the Central Committee expel+ed a number of comrades who, when the vote was taken in the unit to which the offending comrades belonged, voted against expulsion. In Norfolk, Va., most of the white members of a Party unit were expelled for refusal to admit the Negro comrades to their meetings. And in making the Norfolk expulsions the Party showed its Negro face by sending Comrade Hall to Virginia as C.E.C. representative to act in the matter. In the T.U.E.L. a basis for trade union work among the Negro proletariat has been laid, and some work in this direction begun. A Negro department has been organized with Comrade Hall at its head. In addition, Comrade Hall was sent on tour for the Trade Union Unity Convention with the aim of mobilizing the Negro workers for that convention. White the Party and T.U.E.L. have begun to orientate toward the Comintern and R.I.L.U. line on mobilizing the Negro workers for the class struggle, the left wing unions under our leadership have done very little to win the confidence of these workers--the Gastonia fraction being an honorable exception, with all its mistakes and wobblings, to this general indictment. Especially criminal is the apathy of the needle trades comrades and their general attitude toward the Negro workers--an attitude which has made it impossible for their union to retain the Negro workers which it only organizes in times of strikes. While this union has scores of functionaries, with departments for Greek, Italian, Jewish, etc., workers, it has not a single Negro functionary and no department concerned even remotely with the organization of Negro workers. This, in spite of the fact that there are several thousand Negro workers in the needle trades in New York City alone. In the miners' union the same underestimation is present. In spite of the existence of excellent, militant material plus the fact that the number of Negro miners is very large, in some fields outnumbering the white miners, the union has not yet appointed a single Negro field organizer. That there is still urgent need for sharpening the struggle against white chauvinism, both ideologically and organizationally, is demonstrated by the present unhealthy situation in District 8 [Chicago] where as a result of much blundering and lack of political direction, a distinctly anti-Party attitude developed some months ago among the Negro comrades [when] Kruse, then D.O. [District organizer] decided that the district could not pay wages to a Negro functionary. For the failure to energetically fight and unmask these tendencies of white chauvinism in the Party the Negro comrades are themselves largely to blame. Often, however, it happens that the Negro comrades involved are new members of the Party and are not aware of the decisive stand taken by the Communist International and its American section against white chauvinism and merely come to the conclusion that the Communist Party, instead of being a Party of internationalism and working-class solidarity, is "just like the republican, democratic and socialist parties" in the reaction of its members to the race question. White chauvinism must be rooted out of our Party. The petty bourgeois elements who are the ones most responsible for this manifestation within our ranks of the influence of the imperialist ideology must be dealt with sharply wher~ver it can be shown that they are sabotaging the Party's Negro work or 218

exhibiting other indications of white chauvinism. The Negro comrades should play a leading role in the task of exposing the white chauvinists and cleansing our Party of these undesirable elements. The Communist, September 1929 (Abridged) THE OCTOBER PLENUM By Otto Huiswood This review of the October Plenary meeting of the Central Executive Committee is of particular significance because it reveals the harm done by factionalism to the party's Negro work, and indicates the turn now being made toward serious and systematic consideration of various aspects of that work by a leading party body. Among the most important points made is the realization that the entire party must be engaged and not only the Negro members in all questions pertaining to the Negro, especially in the struggle against racism in the party as well as in the labor movement. The proposal that the American party take the initiative in organization of the workers in the West Indies is of interest. The reference to the "right danger" relates to the emphasis upon the need to fight the opportunism of the Right variety as the main inner danger facing the party--a position adopted at the VIth Congress and directed in the United States against Lovestone and his followers. The paralysis of the Party during the many years of a vicious and unprincipled factional strife is best exemplified in the almost total neglect of activities among Negro workers, in the very small number of Negroes in the Party and in the general underestimation of Negro work by the Party members. Heretofore the Negro question was the "political football" at Party Plenums and Conventions, each fraction charging the other with underestimation, neglect, incorrect political approach and willful sabotage of Negro work. Factional blindness and factional corruption aided materially in the Party shortcomings and neglect of work among the Negro masses. It was a deterent to a careful analysis of the Negro question, the formulation of a correct program and the execution of decisions. Even decisions of the Comintern and the Red International of Labor Unions were sidetracked on one excuse or another. A remarkable difference in this respect was the last Central Executive Committee Plenum. Recognizing the importance of the role of the Negro workers in the class struggle, the Negro question received its due share of attention in the Plenum discussion. For the first time a special report on Negro work was made and discussed at a Party Plenum, and a thesis on Negro work presented and adopted. But consideration of the Party's Negro work was not confined or limited to the special report. It was an integral part of the entire Plenum reports and discussions, the political report, the report on trade union work, the report on the Tenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, all dealt concretely with the various phases of the condition of the Negro masses, and the role of the Party as the leader of the Negro workers against capitalist oppression and exploitation. As an indication of the serious effort concretely to understand and properly to evaluate the various phases of the Negro question, and to base our program and action on a sound 219

perspective, was the attempt at a thoroughgoing analysis of the conditions facing the Negro in the South. This was the first effort to carefully examine the effects of industrialization of the South on the Negro. The extent of Negro migration from the farms to the southern cities, the induction of Negroes into the basic industries of the South, the effects of rationalization on the Negro workers, the extent to which Negro women have been drawn into the industries of the South and the miserably low wages paid both Negro men and women for the heaviest and dirtiest tasks, were given considerable attention. Likewise an effort was made to study the problem confronting the millions of Negro tenant farmers, share croppers and farm laborers who are under the complete domination of the white landlords and are virtually slaves on the land. On the basis of the analysis of this situation, a concrete program for work in the South was drawn up. One of the main points discussed at the Plenum and one that received particular attention was white chauvinism. The serious menace of race prejudice, which is an expression of the ideological influence of the bourgeoisie among the white workers, and which has penetrated the ranks of the Communist Party, was readily realized. The many cases which have cropped up recently indicate the beginning of real work of the Party among the Negro masses. For in the measure that the Par~y actively engages in Negro work will we find the latent prejudice of white comrades coming to the fore, expressing itself in open hostility, sabotage, or general indifference to Negro work. That the Plenum realized the danger of white chauvinism and the disastrous effect it will have upon recruiting Negro workers into our Party was evident by the considerable discussion of this subject on the part of all the reporters and from the floor. That the Party must immediately launch thorough and persistent ideological campaigns against white chauvinism as a part of its struggle against the right danger, and take drastic organizational measures against comrades guilty of such, as has been done in some cases, was the expressed attitude of the Plenum. A new field for Party activities--the West Indies--was also discussed. While some steps have already been undertaken in this direction, work among the masses of the West Indies must seriously be considered and practical steps taken toward organizing these low-paid and terribly exploited workers, the bulk of whom are Negroes. Oppressed, brutally exploited, paid a miserable pittance for their toil, these colonials will be an important link in the revolutionary chain of Latin America and the West Indies. And it is the duty of our Party to take the initiative in organizing these workers and leading them in the struggle against world imperialism. The Plenum was confronted with the task of making the entire Party conscious of the tremendous importance of Negro work. The mobilization of the entire Party behind the Party's program on Negro work, instead of confining this phase of Party activity to Negro comrades only, was determined by the Plenum as a prerequisite to reaching the Negro masses with our propaganda and drawing them into the Party. The Party is faced with a number of immediate and concrete tasks in developing the Negro work. The development and training of a strong Party cadre of Negroes in the districts is essential for the prosecution of the work. Negro comrades must be drawn into all the leading committees of the Party so that they may participate fully in the life and activities of the Party. A persistent ideological campaign must be carried on throughout the Party against white chauvinism. Energetic steps must be taken to organize the unorganized Negro industrial and 220

farm workers. All auxiliary committees must immediately begin organizational work among the Negro masses. Daily Worker, November 1, 1929. WINNING THE NEGRO MASSES IN DETROIT By Robert Woods This item indicates the preliminary work being done by Communists in organizing white and Negro workers together in the auto industry, which paved the way for the great unionization drive of the 1930s and the influx of Black workers into the union. Detroit and surrounding automobile centers, like many, many Northern industrial cities have witnessed during the past few years a tremendous influx of Negroes, migrating from the South, their number in Detroit at present estimated to be around 100,000. A very large percentage is working in the automobile factories, where, as everywhere else, they are given the most menial and lowest paid jobs. Jim Crowism in restaurants, theatres, etc., is common practice. They are living under the most rotten housing conditions. On several occasions those Negro workers have shown their readiness to carry on a militant fight against the intense economic and racial discrimination . . . . The District Plenum, following the October National Plenum of the Party, correctly characterized the neglect of our work among the masses of Negro workers as part of the right danger, recognizing that the Communist Party cannot win the support of the majority of the working class without winning the support of the most exploited section of this working class. In our campaign to organize the automobile workers, in our unemployment campaign, and in all our struggles, the slogan of full social, political and economic equality for Negro and white workers must be prominently put forward. Retreat in face of opposition of white workers cannot be tolerated and when the well-known question "What would you do if a Negro wanted to marry your sister?" is asked, we must not only state that we would not resent it, but that we welcome such inter-racial marriages, as a step towards breaking down the capitalist instilled antagonisms between the different sections of the working class. Only by fearlessly defending our principles will we win the confidence of the proletariat. The Party is preparing for an intensive recruiting drive. The success of this drive must be measured by the number of Negro workers that we will recruit into the Party. Our activity among the Negro workers will be a barometer as to what extent we can call ourselves a Bolshevist Party. Our fight against the right danger must be measured by the extent to which we fight white chauvinism. Party membership and white chauvinist ideas are incompatible. White chauvinism in our Party means a capitalist agency that works within our ranks. Out with it. And forward to a Leninist Bolshevik Party~ Daily Worker, November 2, 1929. NEGRO MINERS IN ILLINOIS STRIKE By James Ford (National Organizer, Negro Department, TUUL) James w. Ford became head of the Negro Department which was established at the founding convention of the Trade Union Unity League in August. The note of 221

militant Negro-white unity struck here was a portend of the great battles to come during the Depression Decade. The stock market crash of October 1929 mirrored the economic crisis which had already begun in production. The southern Illinois miners' strike must be spread. Every available force in the mine fields must be thrown into the fray against the police, gunmen and thugs and the state militia forces of the capitalist coal barons in order to win the struggle for better wages and working conditions, for a shorter working week and against the speed-up and rationalization; for the building of a militant miners' union that stands for the complete equality of Negro workers, that is against racial discrimination, that turns the fighting capacities of the Negro workers into one solid phalanx against the capitalist oppressors. Illinois has long been the scene of bloody class battles of the coal miners. It is upon the clear-cut issue of class struggle and class solidarity that the Negro miners must face the present situation in Illinois. American capitalists face the severest crisis in the history of the country. The stock market crash has set all industry trembling, class battles are raging in all sections of the country. . The full interest of the working class struggle demands that the white workers stand shoulder to shoulder with the Negro workers, that those who hold any vestige of race hatred throw it overboard, that they break down all barriers that keep Black and white workers apart, that they put one solid front to the bosses, struggling not only for equal conditions and equal wages but for still better conditions and still higher wages. The labor fakers, in line with President Green of the A.F.L., agree with the program announced by Hoover of class peace between the workers and the bosses, for peace in industry. They ask the workers not to strike for higher wages, nor to struggle against wage reductions. They go further with regards to Negro workers, they fail to promise them [anything], they discriminate against them, they deny them equal conditions and opportunities. In the state legislature of Illinois are several Negro legislators who have been placed there by the votes of poor Negro workers. Now these workers find themselves deceived. These Negro legislators are agents of the capitalists. They have not raised one finger to prevent the use of state troops against the Black and white miners. The National Miners Union, the leader in the Illinois strike, is committed to the principle of equality and equal conditions for Negro workers, of struggle against racial discrimination. The Trade Union Unity League of which the National Miners' Union is a section, fights assiduously and relentlessly against lynching, jim-crowism, discrimination and race prejudice. It stands for the complete and full racial, social, economic and political equality of the Negro race, for class solidarity of all workers, against the capitalist bosses, their agents, and against the whole capitalist system. The T.U.U.L. recognizes in the Communist Party the only political Party of the working class. The Communist Party is always in the forefront. Daily Worker, December 14, 1929.

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TRADE UNION UNITY LEAGUE This section is excerpted from the Trade Union Unity League program adopted at its August convention. Its predecessor, the TUEL, had been sharply criticized for its neglect of the Negro workers. But the August convention was well attended by Negro delegates, and for the first time a Negro Department was established. The program given here was to prove effective in the new phase of union organization. The inclusion of the self-determination slogan, which was rarely mentioned in party documents, is notable. The use of the term "social facist" to designate certain labor leaders already indicates the "leftism" which was to characterize the party in the early 1930s. For the Rights of Negroes The TUUL conducts an aggressive struggle in defense of the Negro workers. These are the most oppressed, exploited and persecuted section of the entire working class. The advancement of the workers generally is inseparably bound up with the advancement of the Negroes. Every blow struck at the Negroes by the bosses is a blow at the whole working class. The TOOL has as one of its most fundamental program demands the fight for full racial, political and social equality and the right of national self-determination for Negroes. It makes relentless war against lynching, Jim-Crowism, and discrimination of all kinds against Negroes. It roots out the race prejudice of chauvinism of white workers against Negroes. The TUUL demands the fullest participation and leadership of Negro workers in all the organizations and movements of the working class. It exposes the systematic betrayal of the Negroes by the fascist and social-fascist labor leaders. The TUUL organizes Negroes into the new industrial unions with the white workers on the basis of the fullest equality. In the old unions, it combats all discriminatory practices aimed against Negroes. It demands the admission of Negroes into these unions and, where this admittance cannot be accomplished, and where there are no revolutionary unions, it organizes separate unions for Negroes. The TUUL Negro Department connects up the fight of the Negro workers in this country with the ~orldwide struggle of the Negro race through the International Negro Labor Bureau of the RILU. The TUUL endorses and supports the general work of the American Negro Labor Congress. --The Trade Union Unity League: Its Program, Structure, Methods and History, pamphlet, New York, n.d., but probably end of 1929.

223

INDEX Abd-el-Krim, 136 Africa, African Blood Brotherhood discussion of, 16-18; workers' Party calls for driving imperialists out of, 77-78 African Blood Brotherhood, aims, 39-40; and All-Race Congress, 53-54, 60; and American Negro Labor Congress, 112; analyzed by Workers (Communist) Party, 102; appeals to trade unions, 39-40; attacks Garvy movement, 16; calls for organization of Negro Labor Power, 22-23; composition, 16; contributions, ix; formation, viii, 16-17; influence on Communist Party, 17; members join Communist Party, ix; at National All-Race Conference, 38; officers, 39; program, 16-18; rejects program of Garvey movement, ix; and Tulsa riot, 18 "Aims and Objects of Movement for Solution of Negro Program Outlined," 139 Allen, Norval, 113 A11 is on, E . T. , 9 , 15 All-Race (Sanhedrin) Congress, composition of delegates, 53; criticism of, 59-60, 62-63; dominated by bourgeois Blacks, 70; evaluated, 63-64; greeted by Daily Worker, 54; participating organizations, 56; Workers' Party on, 57-59 American Federation of Labor, and Black workers, 6, 73, 134; bureaucracy accused of refusing to organize Blacks, 146; Trade Union Educational proposals to, 141-142; urged to cooperate with American Negro Labor Congress, 117 American Negro Labor Congress, answers attack by William Green, 116-117; attacked as "tool of Moscow," 113; attacked by William Green, 116; demands removal of all restrictions against Black workers, 117; editorial comments on 124-125; William Green warns Black workers against, 116; hails Soviet Union, 123; ignored by capitalist press, 113; proceedings of founding convention, 112-116; call for, 109-112; condemns Ku Klux Klan, 119-120; contributions, x, 127-129; demands end of segregation in housing, 121-122; demands full social equality for Negro people, 118-119; demands white supremacists be barred from juries, 120; denounces imperialism, 122-124; endorsed, 223; evaluation of 169-170, 183, 190; exists only nominally, 193; hails liberation movement in Africa and Asia, 122-123; importance of, 127-129; resolutions adopted by, 117-124; sectarianism in, 166; status of in 1929, 205; weaknesses, x, 127, 203-204, 205, 215, 216 Amsterdam News, 16, 45, 153 Amter, Israel, 69 Anarcho-syndicalism, 45 Anti-Communism, 27, 40-41, 116 Anti-Imperialist League, 28 Anti-Lynching Bill, 24, 188 Anti-Negro riots, 4-5, 7, , 9-11, 26-28, 29, 34, 37, 39, 42, 47-48, 86, 146 Asphalt Workers Union, 111 Babson, Roger, 33-34 "Back to Africa," ix, 8, 88, 165, 176 Bagnall, Richard W., 36 Baltimore Afro-American, 53, 72, 111, 116, 124 Berger, Victor L., 150 Billings, Warren K., 25, 45 "Birth of a Nation," 89 Bit~elman, Alexander, 180 "Black Belt," 173, 177, 179-180, 191 Black press, comment on American Negro Labor Congress, 124-125 225

Blacks, color caste among criticized, 158; discrimination against in North, 48; pictured as strikebreakers, 34; relations to Republican Party, 72-73; serve in armed forces, 3-4, 6, 47, 120, 185; terrible conditions of in South, 145-146; views of Lenin on, xiii, 172-173, 178; why reluctant to join Communists, 70 Black soldiers, in Spanish-American War,. 6; in World War I, 6-7, 47, 185 Black Star Line, 76, 176 Black women, 195 Black women workers, 43-44 Black workers, and strikebreaking, 39-40, 91-92, 117, 183; discrimination against, 41-42; leaders of AFL refuse to organize, 211; organization called for, 142, 211-213; organization of in Detroit, 221; trade unions exclude, 31, 34, 70-71, 98-99; Workers' Party calls upon trade unions to admit, 81-82; Workers (Communist) Party fights for, 94, 97-99 Black youth, 120-121 Bolshevik Revolution, v111, 77. See also Russian Revolution Bolsheviks, 96, 125-126 Boston Guardian, 35 Boyce, William, 203 Briggs, Cyril, advances principle of self-determination, ,17; bio. sketch, 16; contribution, ix; criticizes Du Bois, 18; discusses National Negro Week, 213-215; discusses racism in Workers (Communist) Party, 215-219; forms African Blood Brotherhood, 17; heads African Blood Brotherhood, 17, 39-40; joins Communist Party, 17; speaks at National Race Congress, 36; writes program of African Blood Brotherhood, 39-40 British Communist Party, 12 British Labor Party, 15 British West Indies, 91 Brookwood Labor College, 143 Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 142-143, 182, 193 Browder, Earl, 70, 90 Brown, c.s., 61 Brown, Bishop William Montgomery, 112-113; 115-116 Bryant, William, 111 Bukharin, Nikolai I., 180, 181, 183 Burrell, Ben E., 39 Burrell, Theo., 39 Cahan, Abraham, 40 Campbell, D.N.E., 38 Campbell, Grace P., 17, 39 Capital, vii Capitalism and Agriculture in the United States of America, xii Capitalist class, accused of promoting racism, 41-42 Chicago, Blacks in industries, 212 Chicago Asphalt Workers Union, 193 Chicago Defender, 53, 112, 125, 126 Chicago Federation of Labor, 71 Chicago Negro Women's Household League, 112 Chicago riot, 4, 28, 37 Chicago Tribune, 124 Child labor, 120-121 China, 77-78, 101, 109, 122 Chinese, 164 Chinese Exclusion Act, xiii Civil War, causes of, 20-21; emancipation of slaves in, vii, 6; interpretation of, 29 Cleveland Gazette, 124 226

"Close Ranks," 18 Coles, R.J., 72 Color Caste, 157-158 Comintern. See Communist International Communist, T~ 3, 178, 179, 189 Communist International, 127 Communist International, advocates self-determination for Negroes in U.S., 191-192; calls for fight against all forms of white chauvinism, 193-194; calls for unity of workers of all races, 18; charges white chauvinism in U.S. communist Party, 193-194; condemns trade unions for excluding Black workers, 30; contributions to Negro Question in U.S., xi; debate in Negro Commission, 180-189; says Communist Party U.S. must pay special attention to work among Negroes in South, 196; says Communist Party U.S. must eliminate racial prejudice from its ranks, 198; says Negro work must be major activity of Communist Party U.S., 194-195; seeks to end fraternal divisions in Communist Party U.S., 219; stresses importance of work in NAACP, 193; suggests establishment of Parity Commission, 97; theses on Negro Question, 28-32; urges Communist Party U.S. to wage struggle against AFL bureaucracy, 192; World Congress (Second), xiv, 163, 172, 178, 188; World Congress (Fourth), 28-30, 164, 165; World Congress (Fifth), 69-71; World Congress (Sixth), xiv, 189-196, 196-198, 216 Communist Labor Party, 3, 5 Communist Party, United States, African Blood Brotherhood joins, ix; approach to Garvey movement, ix; number of Black members, xi; difficulties in recruiting Blacks, 167-168; effect on of resolution of Sixth World Congress, xiv; factional struggle in, xi, 180; formation, viii, 8; initial position on Negro Question, 3; and Claude McKay, ix-x; need to eliminate race prejudice in, 170-172; urged to wage struggle against AFL bureaucracy, 192; urged to combat white chauvinism, 177-178; work among Negroes, 166-172; years of transition, vii; See also Workers' Party, Workers (Communist) Party Communist Review, 18 Conference for Progressive Political Action, 71-74 Congo, 30, 79, 109 Congress of Industrial Organizations, 211 Coolidge, Calvin, 70, 74, 79, 133, 134, 137, 140 Company houses, 58, 121-122 Cox, Ernest, 14 0 Crisis, The, 12, 13, 14, 125 crusader, The, 17, 18, 35, 41 crusader News Service, 17, 204, 206 Cuba, 54 Dabney, Thomas c., 143-144 Daily Worker, 53-54, 61, 112, 152, 189 Darcy, Sam, 180 Darrow, Clarence, 112 Davis, Aaron, 112 Davis, Rosina, 112 Defense League of Italian Peasants, 113 Dell, Floyd, 12 Democratic Party, in election of 1928, 155-156 Detroit, organization of Black workers in, 221 Discrimination, in Army and Navy, 101, 120 District Negro Conference, 207-208 Domingo, W.A., 38, 39 Doty, Edward, ix, 17, 109, 111 Douglass, Frederick, 72 227

"Draft Thesis on the National and Colonial Question," 5 Dual unionism, 59 Du Bois, w.E.B., exchange with Claude McKay, 11-14; founds Niagara movement, 35; on Russian Revolution, 13; position in World War I, 18 Dunne, William F., at Red International of Labor Unions, 163; bio. sketch, 89-90; critical analy&is of Marcus Garvey, 104-105; defends Black workers, 90-95; discusses Party resolution on Negro Question, 103-105; evaluates NAACP, 133-136; pays serious attention to Negro Question, 90-91, 180; understands importance of work among Blacks, ix Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, 57, 149 Eastman, Max., 4, 12 East St. Louis riot, 4, 28 Edwards, Jack, 112 Egypt, 30, 54, 122, 136, 140 Elaine riot, 4 Election of 1928, 204 Emancipator, The, 35 Emergency Rent Laws, 158, 159 Engels, Frederick, vii Ethiopian Students' Alliance of New York, 115 Exclusion Acts, xiii Factional struggle, in Workers (Communist) Party, 183-184 Farmer, Jim, 180 Farmer-Labor Party, 55, 71, 74, 89 Faucet, Jessie, 53, 57 Federated Press, 143 Fifteenth Amendment, 6, 55, 119, 145 Firestone, Harvey, 140 Firestone Rubber Company, 122, 140 Fisk University, 151, 188 Ford, James w., at Red International of Labor Unions, 163; bio. sketch, 151; criticizes Socialist Party of America, 184; heads Negro Department, 205, 221-222; on American Negro Labor Congress, 127; on Negro Commission, 180; on white chauvinism in Workers (Communist) Party, 132; opposes self-determination for Negroes, 181, 185-186; organizer of International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers, 151; presents resolution at NAACP, 133, 135; role at Sixth World Congress; Communist International, 166-172, 215, 216; view on Negro work in Workers (Communist) Party, 181-182 Foster, William z., acceptance speech as presidential candidate, 147; arrested, 144; campaigns in South, 154-157; candidate for president of U.S., 89; hails entrance of Workers (Communist) Party in South, 147; organizes Trade Union Educational League, 90; tours South, xv, 154; urges organization of Black workers, 211-213; votes for in 1928 presidential election, 145 Foster-Bittelman group, 97, 215 Fort-Whiteman, Lovett, and American Negro Labor Congress, 109, 112, 113; at Sixth Congress, Communist International, 69; bio sketch, 41; contribution, ix; discusses Communist influence among Blacks, 86-89; on racial·question in Soviet Union, 95-97; role at All-Race Congress, 56, 60, 63; visits Soviet Union, 95; Workers (Communist) Party candidate for State comptroller, 152, 153 Fourteenth Amendment, 55, 119, 145 Fourteen Points, 18 France, 180, 185, 186 Frank, Waldo, 11 Freeman, Joseph, 12 228

/

French Revolution, 12 Friends of Negro Freedom, 35-36, 38 Fulp, C.W., 113-114 Gaelic Renassance, 57 Gambia, 151 Garvey, Marcus, accused of opportunism, 138-139; and All-Race Assembly, 53; analysis of by Harry Haywood, 175-176; analysis of by William F. Dunne, 104-105; analysis of by Robert Minor, 136-151; analysis of by Workers' Party, 76-83; bio. sketch, 76; calls on Negroes not to fight Ku Klux Klan, 81, 85; criticized by Workers (Communist) Party, 101; denounced by Daily Worker, 152; imprisoned by U.S. government, 1 137, 139-140; program, ix Garvey movement, attacked by African Blood Brotherhood, 18; Communist Party approach to, ix; great influence among Blacks, 87; on self-determination, xii Germany, 180 Gibson, Lydia, 45 Gitlow, Benjamin, 144 Gold Coast, 18, 151 Gold, Michael, 12 Gomez, Manuel, 188 Gompers, Samuel, 33, 98 Great Britain, 180 Great Depression, beginning, 221-222 Great Migration, of Blacks to North, 4, 7, 21, 33-34, 39, 48, 69, 92-93 Great Southern Lumber Company, 92 Green, William, 113, 114, 116, 222 Greene, Everett, 111 Griffin, Elizabeth, 111 Haiti, 54, 78, 101, 134, 185, 197 Hall, Otto, and American Negro Labor Congress, 109, 112; at Sixth Congress, Communist International, 163, 180; criticizes white chauvinism in Communist Party, U.S., 181; evaluates American Negro Labor Congress, 183; joins Communist Party, 17; opposes self-determination for U.S. Negroes, 187; speaks at National Negro Week meetings, 214 Hamburg, 150 Harding, Warren G., 77, 79 Harlem, 152, 158-159 Harlem Renaissance, 12 Harlem Shadows, 12 Harlem Tenants League, 158-159, 196, 206 Harris, Abram L., 125 Harris, Frank, 11 Harten, Rev. Thomas S., 153 Hathaway, Clarence, 163 Hawse, Percy, 140 Haywood, Harry, analyses Marcus Garvey, 175-176; attends Lenin School, 163; joins Communist Party, 17; on Negro Commission, 180; presents view American Negro is oppressed nation, entitled to self-determination, 172-178 Henry, Charles, 111 Hill, T. Arnold, 56, 63 Holy Trinity Baptist Church, 153 Hood, Solomon Porter, 140 Hoover, Herbert, 118, 149, 153, 156, 222 Hope, John, 53 Howard University, 35, 46, 53 Huiswood, Otto, and All-Race Assembly, 53; and American Negro Labor Congress, 109, 112, 113-114; anti-church attitude, 203, 205; at National Race Congress, 35-37; contribution, 22 9

ix; criticizes Kelly Miller, 62; Heads Negro Department, National Executive Committee, 203; joins Communist Party, 17; on factional struggle in Workers (Communist) Party, 219; report to Party Convention, 1929, 203-208; weaknesses in American Negro Labor Congress, 205; praises work on Negro Question by Workers (Communist) Party, 204; head International Trade Union Committea of Negro Workers, 151; role at All-Race Congress, 60, 62; tasks facing Workers (Communist) Party on Negro ~uestion, 208 Hungarians, 163 Hungary, 178 Hunter, Louis, 112 "If We Must Die," 12 Illinois, miners strike in, 221-222 Imperialism, oppresses Blacks everywhere, 182, 192 India, 42, 54, 77, 122, 180 Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), 6, 9, 182 International Association of Machinists, 117 International Bureau of Negro Workers, 186 International Negro Labor Bureau, 223 International of the Revolutionarf Youth, 6 International Trade Union of Negro Workers, 150, 151 International Uplift League, 36, 38 Ireland, xiii, 42 Irish, 57 Jamaica, 11, 35, 151 Japanese Exclusion Act, xiii Jennings, Chilton, 4 Jewish Daily Forward, 40 Jews, 10, 48, 53, 88, 95-96, 101, 115, 164, 165, 210 Jim-Crow Army, 29, 101 Jim Crow cars, 118, 146 Jim Crow i s m, 18 , 2 9 , 8 2 , 8 4 , .8 6 - 8 7 , 9 7 , l 0 0-10 l , 11 0 , 14 7 , 155-156, 157, 179, 213

Jim Crow laws, 119, 13 6 Jim Crow system, 6 Jim Crow unionism, 59 Johnson, Andrew, vii Johnson, James Weldon, 4, 35, 36, 38, 48, 72-73 Johnston, William H., 75 Jones, Gilbert H., 53 Jones, William H., 39 Jones, William N., 124 Kansas State College, 11 Karimja, Sahir, 112 Katayama, Sen, 188-189 Kautsky, Karl, 184 Keith, Irving, 209-210 Kommunistische International, Die, 178 Ku Klux Klan, 9, 21, 27, 54, 55, 56, 60, 64, 74-76, 81, 84-85, 100, 114, 119-120, 146

Kuusinen, Otto, 180, 188 Labor Herald, The, 33, 70-71 Labor Party, 14, 99-100 Labor unions, color line in, 59 LaFollette, Robert M., 71-72, 74, 75 League of Nations, 80, 138 Lenin, V.I., advances concept of American Negro as an oppressed nation, xiii, 163, 180, 194; at Second Congress, Communist International, xiv; criticizes Chinese and Japanese 230

Exclusion Acts, x111; discusses Negro Question in U.S., 172-173; Du Bois on, 13-14; influences theoretical interpretation of Negro Question, xii-xiii; on Ireland, xiii; preliminary Draft thesis on National and Colonial Question, 105; presents "Draft Thesis on the National and Colonial Question," xiii; tries to influence John Reed, xiv Lenin School, 163 Lewis, John L., 196 Liberator, The, 4, 12, 45 Liberia, 96, 122, 134, 140, 192, 196 Liberty Hall, 141 Lincoln, Abraham, v11 Literary Digest, The, 124 Litt 1 e, Fr an k, 9 o· Locke, Alain Leroy, 53 Longshoreman's Protective and Benevolent Union, 112 Long Way From Home, A, 12 L'Ouverture, Touissaint, 214 Lovestone, Jay, xiv, 180, 191 Lovestone faction, 179, 215 Lynch, E.A., 112 Lynchings, 4, 26, 29, 34, 37, 42, 48, 57, 60, 92, 97, 100, 110, 113, 146, 148-150, 204, 213, 223 McKay, Claude, bio sketch, 11; defends Russian Revolution, 12-13; exchange with W.E.B. Du Bois, 12-14; views on Communist Party, ix-x Marx, Karl, Du Bois, on, 14-15; ideas among Blacks, 70; on significance of Civil War, vii; on slavery, vii-viii; on Black and white labor, 146; views on Reconstruction, vii-viii Marxism, 169 Marxists on Negro Question after Civil War, vii Masses, The, 4, 12, 45 Memphis Commercial Appeal, 124 Messenger, The, 7, 12, 16, 40, 142 Mexico, 101 Miller, Kelly, 35, 36, 38, 46, 53, 56, 61-63 Minneapolis Journal, 124 Minor, Robert, accuses Garvey of yielding to ruling class, 138-139; addresses rally, 89; analysis of American Negro Labor Congress, 126-129; analysis of decline of Universal Negro Improvement Association, 136-141; analyzes UNIA convention, 137-138; attacks Garvey stand on Ku Klux Klan, 140-141; bio. sketch, 44-45; criticizes Lafollette movement, 74-75; describes conditions of Blacks in U.S., 45-49; evaluates All-Race Congress, 63-65; grasps importance of Negro Question, 45-46; on NAACP convention, 71-73 Mooney, Tom, 45 Morehouse College, 53 Morgan State College, 72 Moore, Richard B., and American Negro Labor Congress, 113, 115; at National Race Congress, 35; candidate for Congress, 152, 153; educational director, African Blood Brotherhood, 36, 39; joins Communist Party, 17; leader of American Negro Labor Congress, 183; Open Letter of, 152-153; speaks at National Negro Week meetings, 214; Workers (Communist) Party candidate for Congress, 152, 153 Moore, W.H., 57 Morocco, 122, 136, 140 Mulattoes, 158 National Agricultural Workers, South Africa, 112 National All-Race Conference, 35, 36, 38

231

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 12, 14, 25, 36, 38, 46, 48, 56, 71-75, 102, 112, 133-136, 193 National Defense Act, 185 National Equal Rights League, 35, 36, 38 Nationality Question, xiii-xiv National Labor Party, 71 National Miners Union, 203, 222 National Negro Department, 213, 215 National Negro week, 213-215 National Race Congress, 36, 38, 56 National Urban League, 63 Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union, 216 Neighborhood Protective Association, 112 Negro Agricultural Workers, 112 Negro bourgeoisie, 164, 167-169, 187 Negro Champion, 194, 204, 206, 209 Negro Commission, 31 Negro Committee for Miners Relief, 203, 206 Negro and the Communist Party, The, xi Negro Department, 203, 207, 223 Negro in the Democratic Front, The, 127 Negro Labor Power, 21-22 Negro Miners Relief Committee, 196 Negro nationalism, 175-176 Negro, as oppressed nation, entitled to right of self-determination, 189-195 Negroes, concentrated in South, 176-177; demand self-determination, 179-180; live mainly in South, 191; migration to North continuing, 197; oppressed by imperialism, 192 Negro petty bourgeoisie, 174, 175, 197 Negro Press Committee, 57 Negro Question, after Civil War, vii-viii "Negro work week," 152 Negro Worker, The, 151 Negro Workers Relief Committee, 206 Negro World, The, 76 Negro Zionism, 180 Neill, James L., 36 New York Call, 40, 45 New York Evening Post, 33 New York Times, 13, 41, 53, 124 New York World, 45 Niagara movement, 35 Nigeria, 151 Nkrumah, Kwame, 18 Norfolk, 209-210 Omaha riot, 5 Oneal, James, 40 "Open Letter to the American Federation of Labor, the Railway Brotherhoods, and Other Groups of Organized Labor," 73-75 Oppenheim, James, 11 Opportunity, 124 Organized labor, position on Negro Question, .8-9, 27 Owens, Chandler, 16 Owens, Gordon, w., 53, 89 Owens, John, 109, 112 Padmore, George, 151 Palestine, 180 Palmer Raids, vii, 8 Pan-African Army, 18 Pan-African Congress, 193 232

Pan-African International Federation of Labor, 151 Parity Commission, 97-103, 104-105 Parker, George Walls, 112, 114-115 Patterson, William L., and Sixth Congress, Communist International, 166-172; at American Negro Labor Congress, 127 Pearl, Jeannette D., 35-36, 43-44 Pearson's Magazine, 11 Peonage, 28-29, 37, 47, 145, 191 Pepper, John, advocates self-determination, 178-180; expelled from Communist Party, 179 Philadelphia Bulletin, 124 Philadelphia Record, 124 Philippines, 54, ~01 Phillips, H.V., 53, 109, 111, 112 Phillips, N.V., 17 Pickens, William, 72, 75 Pittsburgh American, 111 Pittsburgh Conference, 195, 196 Pittsburgh Courier, The, 53, 57, 151, 190 Pogany, Joseph. See Pepper, John Polish miners, 11-4~ Powell, John, 140 Profintern. See Red International of Labor Unions Progressive Farmers and Householders Union of America, 4 Pogroms, 96, 115 Pullman Company, 142, 212 Pullman Porters, 112, 134, 135, 142-143 Racial antagonism, as product of capitalist system, 110 Racism, sexual question as false issue in, 91 Race prejudice, need to eliminate in Communist Party, 170-172 Radek, Kark, 31 Randolph, A. Philip, 7, 16, 142-143, 182 Randolph, Richette G., 36 Record, Wilson, xi Red Cross, 206 Red International of Labor Unions, 150-152; 205, 212, 223 "Red Summer" of 1919, 4, 7-8 Reed, John, advises Communists not to stand aloof from Negro movement, 5-8; at Second Congress, Communist International, 32, 165; delegate of Communist Labor Party, xiv; founder of Communist Labor Party, 5; opposes nationality interpretation of Negro Question, xiv; speech at Communist International, 5-8; opposes view of Negro as oppressed nation, 5-6 Religion, as force in Negro emancipation, 82-83 Rents, highness denounced, 158-159 Republican Party, 72-73, 84, 146, 155, 156 Rogers, J.A., 151 Roos, Tielman, 199 Russian Revolution, x, xi, 12, 29, 54 Rust, John, 144 Ruthenberg, Charles E., 83, 84 Ruthenberg-Pepper-Lovestone group, 97 Sacco and Vanzetti case, 166 Sanhedrin. See All-Race Congress Save the Unior;-conference, 182, 195, 196 Scarville, William, 111 Schuyler, Georges., 35, 36, 38 Security League, 27 Segregation, in education, 58; in housing, 121-122 Self-determination, definition, 178-180, 199-200; opposition to, 164-166; in South, xiv-xv, 69

233

Seven Arts, 11 Sexual question, as false issue in racism, 91 Sharecropping, 4, 46-47, 99, 145, 191 Shaw, A.N., 36 Sherrill, William L., 137-141 Shiek, Andre, 163, 164-166 Sik, Andre. See Shiek, Andre Slave revolts~9, 46 Smith, Alfred, E., 153-156 Social Equlity, 84, 187 Social-fascists, 223 Socialist Party of America, criticized, 150; discriminates against Negroes, 6; position on Negro, viii, 3, 14; racism in, xi, 6, 184; views Negro Question as solely a class question, 166 Socialist News, 9 South, as field for Communist activity among Blacks, 86-87; bulk of Negroes live in, 191; Communist International on importance of work in, 176-177, 188-189, 196; conditions of Blacks in, 5-6, 46-47, 118-119, 145-146; entrance of Workers (Communist) Party in, 147; importance of work in, 154-155; industrialization, 155; root of Negro problem lies in, 174 South Africa, 19, 28, 30, 109, 113, 163, 180, 185, 197, 198, 199 Soviet Union, 18, 54, 60-61, 95-97, 115, 123, 143-144, 186, 205 Spanish-American War, xiii, 6 Stokes, Rose Pastor, 30-32 Strikebreaking, 39-40, 91-92, 183 Strikes, 217, 221-222 Sweet, Ossian H., 112, 114 Taylor, N.S., 112 Tenant farmers, 46, 99, 145 Tenants Union, 58 Ten Days That Shook the World, 5 Thalheimer, H., 69 Thomas, Norman, 155 "Theses on the Agrarian Question," xiii "Theses on the National and Colonial Question,'' xiii Theses on Negro Question, 28-32 Timber Workers Union, 92 Toiler, The, 9, 11, 15 Torrence, A. Andrew, 112 Trade Union Educational League, xi, 33, 40, 70, 71, 90, 124, 151, 155, 182, 183, 196, 204-205, 211, 212, 223 Trade unions, exclude Black workers, 27, 28, 31, 34, 98-99 Trans-Sahara Railway, 28 Tropp, M.E., 128 Trotter, William Monroe, 35, 38 Tulsa riot, 8-11, 16, 18, 29, 48 Turner, Nat, 82 Tuskegee Institute, 11, 41, 53, 57 United Communist Party of America, 3 United Front, 30, 32 United Mine Workers of America, 34, 113, 196 · United Negro Front, 43 Unity Convention, 8 Universal Negro Improvement Association, ix, 15-16, 18, 35, 71, 76-80, 101-102, 104, 136-141 University of the Toilers of the East, 163, 166 Van, Robert L., 57 Vigilantes, 27 234

Virginia, 209-210 Virginia Pilot, 124 Waiters and Cooks Association, 112 Washington, Booker T., 6, 35, 113 Washington riot, 7, 37 Wells, H.G., 13 Welsh, Edward, 152, 153 West African Seamen's Union, 112 Wheeler, Burton K., 71 White Chauvinism, x-xi, 166, 177-178, 180-182, 193-194, 209-210, 215-219 Whiteman, Olivia, 83 White mobs, 4 White workers, Du Bois accuses of being racists, 13-14; racism among, 86, 90-91; must free themselves of race prejudice, 168; sacrifice lives for Black organizer, 92 Wilberforce College, 53 Williams, A. Wilberforce, 55 Williams, Harold, 180 Wilson, William. See Patterson, William L. Wilson, Woodrow, 1~134 Women's Bureau, 43-44 Woods, Robert, 221 Work, Monroe, N., 53-57 Work, among Negroes discussed, 166-172 Workers (Communist) Party, accuses AFL bureaucraccy of refusing to organize Blacks, 146; accuses Republic Party of betraying Blacks, 146; advocates right of national self-determination for Negro, 200; changes in after Sixth Congress, 217-218; criticized for neglect of Negro work, 180-181; criticized for not fighting for passage of Anti-Lynching Bill, 188; demands, 100, 146-147; denounces lynching, 148-150; denounces Socialist Party, 150; entrance into South hailed, 147; factional struggle in, 97, 219; formation, 8; must champion cause of Black workers, 98-99; National Negro Department, 213, 215; national platform, 144-147; Negro membership, 181-182; nominates Foster for president, 144; only party to fight for rights of Blacks, 94; opposition in to nationality view of Negro Question, xiv; on "Our Negro Work," 148; pledges to abolish lynching, 150; racism in discussed, xi, 215-219; resolution of Parity Commission, 97-103; strikes led by, 217; tasks facing, 208; white chauvinism in, x-xi, 209-210, 215-219, 220; work among Blacks improves, 204 Workers International Relief, 206 Workers Monthly, 90 Workers Party of America, and All-Race Assembly, 53-55, 57-61; calls for campaign to open unions to Blacks, 82; calls for driving imperialists out of Africa, 78; criticizes Universal Negro Improvement Association, 84-86; denounces color line in trade unions, 59-61; denounces Ku Klux Klan, 81; denounces segregation, 57-58; election platform, 136; formation, 8; and Garvey movement, 76-83; hails Communist International, 80; letter to convention, 76-83; platform, 27; position on Negro Question, 8; program, 28, 49; resolutions at All-Race Assembly, 57-59 Young Communist International, 163 Young Workers' Communist League, 157, 180, 217 Zionists, 88, 101

235