MASSES REMAIN SUSPICIOUS OF AMERICAN CP
By Evelyn. Sell
The capitalist rulers of America must be held mainly respon-. sible for the current gulf.between radical groupings and the mass of American Negroes. The long centuries of Negro slavery and semislavery have created deep chasms between black and white in this country -- and it must be remembered that, due to historical reasons, radical groupings in the United States are largely white. The long years of witch-hunt activities and antisocialist propaganda have created additional barriers to unity between participants in the civil-rights movement and. members of the left-wing movement,
The Communist party, however, must bear its share of respon-sibility for black distrust of the left wing in this country. The. history of the American Communist party [CP] has some proud chapters involving fights against Jim Crow -- but it also has a full quota of betrayals of the civil-rights movement.
The formation of the CP in the United States heralded a new, healthier attitude toward the problems of America's black masses, The older pre-World War I socialist movement had never recognized the need for a special program on the Negro question. There was no special effort to attract Negroes as members and it was assumed that the solution of the Negroes! problems would be the same as the solution.of the problems of the working class as a whole: the socialist transformation of society. The radical movement had very little to offer Negroes as a uniquely oppressed segment of the working class. In fact, many socialists shared the generally anti~Negro prejudices common to most workers, Victor Berger, a prominent socialist leader, wrote in the Milwaukee Social Democratic Herald, "There can be no * doubt that the Negroes and mulattoes constitute a lower race,"
There were a few socialists, like William Walling, who helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP] but they were rare.
Everything new .and progressive on the Negro question came from Moscow after the 1917 Revolution. The Bolsheviks had a deep concern and a.program for oppressed nations and national minorities. They recognized the great revolutionary. potential in the situations of oppressed minorities and saw them as important allies.of the working class in the revolutionary struggle against capitalism. With the formation of the CP in the United States, the Russian Bolsheviks began to demand that their American comrades throw off the inherited prejudices and evasions on.the Negro question, that attention should be paid to the special neéds of the Negro minority and that the American Communists go to work among Negroes and champion their cause within the white community.
This kind of reorientation of the CP during the 1920's prepared the party leadership andranks for their spectacular involvement in the struggles of the Negro community during the 1930's. The party gave Negroes complete equality within its own organization and aggressively championed the cause of equality in the rest of American society. The CP ranks led demonstrations to gain fair consider- ‘ation for Negroes at relief offices during the Great Depression of the early 1930's. The party was active within the Negro ghetto, often pitching in, for example, to return furniture to apartments from which Negroes had been evicted.
In 1931 the CP organized a highly successful campaign to raise money and publicize the cause of nine young Negroes convicted of raping a white woman in Scottsboro, Alabama, The Scottsboro case focused national and international attention on America's racist "justice." In 1932 the CP nominated a Negro to run as U.S. Vice- President -- the first time a radical party had done such a thing.
Coupled with their agitation on civil rights was the union activity of the CP. The party called for an alliance between the Negro people and the labor movement which was then erupting into a new form of unionism, the industrial unionism of the CIO [Congress of Industrial Organizations]. It was due to the efforts of the CP during the rise of the CIO that Negroes gained a new status in the union movement.
These activities created a profound impression on white radical circles and within the Negro community. Working-class Negroes joined the party by the thousands and the 6P was, for a certain — time, a real force in the Negro community. BUT -- the Stalin-Hitler pact of 1939 and the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941 set off abrupt and far-reaching reversals in.CP activities within the civil-rights”™ movement. , So
A good example of such a reversal is the history of the CP relations with the March on Washington Movement of the early 1940's. In January of 1941 A. Philip Randolph (America's leading Negro trade unionist, ardent supporter of the government's war plans and a man who had fought against Communists in labor organizations) issued a call for "ten thousand black Americans" to march on the nationts capital in order "to shake up white America," The march was to demand equal job opportunities in the country's newly booming war industries and an end to segregation in the armed forces. The March on Washington Movement [MOWM] found supporters in Negro communities across the nation. Local committees were set up, outdoor rallies: were held, MOW buttons were sold by the thousands. Instead of the original ten thousand, it was expected that one hundred thousand Negroes would protest in Washington on July l.
Barely one week before the march was to take place, Roosevelt gave in to the immense pressure and issued Executive Order 8802 set-
ting up a federal Fair Employment Practices Commission. . Randolph called the march off. Shortly afterwards Pearl Harbor was bombed and America officially entered the war. However, the Negro struggle for equality in jobs and the armed forces continued. It was known as the Double V for Victory Campaign ~- victory against the Axis abroad and against Jim Crow at home. - Successful mass meetings organized by the MOWM were held in major cities during the summer of 1942. The MOWM declined from that point but local struggles continued to win additional job openings for Negroes in defense plants.
How did the CP respond to this movement? -When the call first went out the CP was silent about the March itself but Randolph was attacked in editorials entitled, "A. Philip Randolph Can't Sell This War to Oppressed Jim-Crowed Negro People."= Four months later the CP newspaper, the Daily Worker, explained that "these Negro leaders support the war, and in doing so are attempting to carry out the policies of the Wall Street labor-haters and Negro-baiters...We are confident that the Negro people will see in the job march a great opportunity to display their united opposition to the war program and to all of its discriminatory aspects."
May 16, 1941, Daily Worker: "You can't defend Negro rights without fighting against this war." oo
June 11, 1941, Daily Worker: “Negro March on Capitol Can Be a Blow Against War, Jim Crow.
June 22, 1941 -- Nazis invaded the Soviet Union.
October, 1941, The Communist magazine explained that the Nazi menace "left no choice to any people including the Negro people but to resist Hitler and destroy Nazism. The fight against Hitler and Hitlerism is the affair of every loyal and patriotic American."
August, 1942, The Communist, "The Negro people cannot be true to their own best interests without supporting the war."
The CP had now come full circle from their position on May 16, 1941! The reputation they had gained during the 1950's as the best fighters for the cause of Negro equality began to disintegrate. The Negroes pressed their Double V campaign. During 1942 mass picket lines and demonstrations were used in the struggle for equal job opportunities, At one arms plant in St. Louis, such tactics won 3,500 jobs for } Negroes. The CP attacked these Negroes for "disrupting the war effort."
‘ These and many more CP betrayals planted many bitter memories in the minds of Negroes, Conservative Negro leaders today use these bitter memories very effeetively in trying to curb rank-and-file militancy and in trying to isolate the new generation of- black fighters from their natural allies in the left-wing movement. For example,
Roy Wilkins, executive director of the NAACP, warned in his May 2, 1965, column entitled "How Communists Use the Negro Cause:" |
"Tn the Thirties the Communists were obsessed with the idea that the 'black proletariat! would arise and revolt if only it had their leadership, Accordingly, they slashed at the existing Negro leadership everywhere, and at 'reformism' including laws, courts and executive action.
"All corrective efforts were sneered at as devices to per-= petuate 'ttyranny!...I remember that when Hitler attacked Russia the Communist line changed overnight. One day they were telling Negroes not to fight in the ‘imperialist war,' that is, against Hitler, The next day they were screaming for Negroes to get. into the 'war against fascism,! that is, on Russia's side.
"The U.S.A. Communist Party in 1941 officially urged Negroes to cease their agitation against all Jim Crow, especially that in the armed forces, until the Soviet Union was saved. The Negro: cause was dumped between suns."
Wilkins! whole article is an argument directed toward today's Negro militants, cautioning them not to get mixed up with "the distortions, the abuse, the attacks, the deception and the lies of the Communist drive for Negroes..." After pointing out the CP crimes during World War II, Wilkins concludes, "If we are as smart as we were 30 years ago, we can move toward our goals, leaving the come~ rades to their name calling and their dialectical debates,"
Similar incidents were reported in a December 19, 1964, article by Horace Sheffield, an opportunist Negro trade-union leader in Detroit and a faithful supporter of Walter Reuther. Sheffield is one of the leaders of the Trade Union Leadership Council, affiliated with the Negro American Labor Council headed by A. Philip Randolph. Here is how Sheffield recalls the CP activities of the past:
"Once before, in the early days of the last war, we had a tremendous group organized. It was. made up of Negro and white trade unionists from most unions in the Detroit area. It was a natural that such a group would not only concern itself with the gross discrimination confronting Negroes in the unions and industry, but it would also react sharply to thé evils of the outrageous jim-crow system that was being imposed on Negroes in America's Armed Services.
"Tt was the pressing of this latter concern by militant Negro members of the group that incurred the bitter opposition of the tleftistst and finally resulted in the destruction of the organization. There was a period, however, when this political element supported what we then. called the 'Double=V program...victory. at home and vic- . tory abroad,'
"This was before Hitler's armies attacked and invaded the Soviet Union, I have pictures of our group parading down John R, at that..time with placards urging ‘End Jim-Crow In°The Army Now',.. 'Let God:Save The King, We're Not Coming Over There!...'You Cantt Save Demooracy With a Jim-Crow Army!...'Give Americans Bread, Not Bullets,! etc.
"However, as soon as the Soviet Union was attacked by Germany, the unity of our group evaporated overnight. It suddenly became a 'peoples! wart and those of us who insisted on fighting for democracy at home as well as abroad were characterized as 'black fascists,!
"Regardless of whether it was a matter of marshaling a protest against the discrimination Negroes faced in defense plants or the brutalizing of Negro soldiers in Mississippi and Alabama, we were hooted down because the tleftists' had taken over and the ideological order of the day then had become tthe opening of the Second Front, !
The Communist party abandonment of the Negro struggle during this period is a well-known fact to large sections of ‘the Negro community today. It is easy for government witch-hunters and apologists to claim that other radical groupings will similarly betray Negroes when it serves their interests, The radical movement in this country, therefore starts off with two strikes against it: first, the antirad~ ical drive of the government and its conservative supporters, and, second, the well=remembered crimes of the Communist party.
There are, however, powerful forces at work impelling the civil-rights militants toward the left-wing movement, Every struggle against second-class citizenship brings the Negro masses face to face with the basically rotten institutions of capitalist society: the police force, the courts, the body of law, the political leadership, the reactionary business interests, etc, The truth is forced out into the open through these clashes: the whole system is corrupt and must be replaced...eReplaced with what? The socialist answers are seriously considered by many Negroes today.
Socialists from many different groupings are active within the Freedom Now struggle, proving their sincerity and dedication in the daily battles. Many of these socialist fighters are new young recruits to radicalism and do not feel tarnished by the past mistakes of the old socialist movement or the Communist party. Among the most active ranks of the Freedom Now struggle is the Socialist Workers party which maintained a principled opposition to the imperialist war and fought for Negro equality all through World War II. This party has carried on, during war hysteria and cold-war witch-hunt, the proudest traditions of the Russian revolutionists of 1917.
An additional powerful force creating a healthier climate for the growth of socialist consciousness among America's black.masses
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is the international colonial revolution. In answer to a question put to him at a May 29, 1964, symposium sponsored by the New York Militant Labor Forum, Malcolm X said, "...all of the countries that are emerging today from under the shackles of colonialism are turn-— ing toward socialism, I don't. think it's an accident. “Most. of the countries that were colonial powers were capitalist countries and the last bulwark of capitalism today is America and it's impossible for a white person today to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism, You can't have capitalism without racism, And if you find a person without racism,..usually they're socialists or their political philosophy is socialism..."
The gulf between the civil-rights movement and the left-wing movement in America is being bridged. Because of their past policies and their current weaknesses, the Communist party will undoubtedly fail to reach the influence they enjoyed during the 1930's. The most advanced sections of the Negro people will join hands with those socialists who consistently fight for civil and human rights, who are sensitive to the demands of the black ghetto and who vigorously contest the rule of the capitalists in all fields: political, economic, ideological.
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