BLIØI

BOLSBBVII
AutobiographJ of an
Afro-Ameriean Communist

Barry Baywood

Liberator Press
Chicago, lllinois
 Copyright 1978 by Harry Haywood
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
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ISBN: 0-930720-52-0 (clothbound)
0-930720-53-9 (paperbound)
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77-077464
Manufactured in the United States of America
Liberator Press, Chicago, Illinois
 To My Family,
Gwen, Haywood, Jr., and Becky
 Acknowledgments

There have been many friends and comrades who have, directly
or indirectly, helped me with the writing of this hook. Unfor­
tunately, they are too numerous to all be named here.
There are a number of young people who have helped with the
cditorial, research and typing tasks and helped the project along
through political discussions. Special thanks to Ernie Allen,
who gave yeoman help with the early chapters. Others whose
assistance was indispensable include Jody and Susan Chandler,
Paula Cohen, Stu Dowty and Janet Goldwasser, Paul Elitzik, Pat
Fry, Gary Goff, Sherman Miller, John Schwartz, Lyn Wells and
Carl Davidson. Others who gave me assistance are Renee Blakkan
and Nathalie Garcia.
Over the past years, I have had discussions with several veteran
comrades and friends who have helped immeasurably in jogging
my memory and filling in the gaps where my own experience was
lacking. I extend my warmest appreciation to Jesse Gray, Josh
Lawrence, Arthur and Maude (White) Katz, John Killens, Ruth
Hamlin, Frances Loman, Al Murphy, Joan Sandler, Delia Page
and Jack and Ruth Shulman.
A political autobiography is necessarily shaped by experiences
over the years and by comrades who helped and influenced me in
lhe long battle for self-determination and against revisionism. My
carliest political debts are to the first core of Black cadres
in the CPUSA: Cyril Briggs, Edward Doty, Richard B. Moore
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

and to my brother Otto Hall, all former members of the African

Blood Brotherhood.
To Harrison George, outstanding son of the working class,
charter member of the CPUSA, former editor of the Daily Worker
and the Peoples' World, who gave his all to the Communist
movement and died alone, victimized for his "premature" anti­
revisionism.
A special tribute to my comrades in the battles against
revisionism within the CPUSA and after: Al Lannon, veteran
director af the Waterfront Section and member of the Central
Committee of the CPUSA; Charles Loman, executive secretary af
the Brooklyn Party Organization; Isidore Beagun, executive
secretary af the Bronx Party Organization; Allen and Pearl
Lawes, Al and Ruth Hamlin, Olga and Victor Agosto. And to my
wife, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, my closest collaborator from 1953
through 1964 in the writing af manuscripts as well as in the
political battles, who has since established her own reputation as
historian and essayist.
A tribute to Ed Strong, former communist youth leader and
director of the Southern Negro Youth Congress, whose premature
death in the mid-fifties cut short his uncompromising stand within
the Central Committee for the right of self-determination for the
Black nation.
To the editors af Soulbook Magazine, who published my
writings in 1965-66 and invited me to Oakland, California, in the
spring of 1966 during the formative stages of the Black Panther
mavement.
To Vincent Harding, who provided me with funds to return to
the U.S. from Mexrco in 1970 and gave me technical and material
assistance to begin this autobiography.
Thanks to John Henrik Clarke and Francisco and Elizabeth
Cattlett de Mora for their enthusiasm and moral support.
To Robert Warner, Director of the Michigan Historical
Collections, for his help and his sensitivity to the need to collect
and preserve historically relevant materials from the Black
mavement in the United States.
 Contents

Prologue 1
A CHILD OF SLAVES 5
2 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 36
3 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 81
4 AN ORGANIZATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES 121
5 A STUDENT IN MOSCOW 148
6 TROTSKY'S DAY IN COURT 176
7 THE LENIN SCHOOL 198
8 SELF-DETERMINATION:
THE FIGHT FOR A CORRECT LINE 218
9 SIXTH CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN:
A BLOW AGAINST THE RIGHT 245
10 LOVESTONE UNMASKED 281
11 MY LAST YEAR IN THE SO VIET UNION 316
 CONTENTS

12 RETURN TO THE HOMEFRONT:

WHITE CHAUVINISM UNDER FIRE 342
13 CLASS WARFARE IN THE MINES 364
14 REUNION IN MOSCOW 379
15 SHARECROPPERS WITH GUNS:
ORGANIZING THE BLACK BELT 391
16 PREPARING FOR BATTLE:
EIGHTH CONVENTION OF THE CPUSA 416
17 CHICAGO:
AGAINST WAR AND FASCISM 441
18 THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR:
A CALL TO ARMS 467
19 WORLD WAR II AND
THE MERCHANT MARINES 490
20 BROWDEæS TREACHERY 529
21 A PARTY WEAKENED FROM WITHIN 570
22 REVISIONISM TAKES COMMAND 605
Epilogue 628
Notes 645
Index 679
 BLICI
BOLSIBVII
 Prologue

On July 28, 1919, I literally stepped into a battle that was to last
the rest of my Iife. Exactly three months after mustering out of the
Army, I found myself in the midst of one of the bloodiest race riots
in U.S. history. It was certainly a most dramatic return to the
realities of American democracy.
It came to me then that I had been fighting the wrong war. The
Germans weren't the enemy-the enemy was right here at home.
These ideas had been developing ever since I land ed home in April,
and a lot of other Black veterans were having the same thoughts.
I had a job as a waiter on the Michigan Central Railroad at the
time. In July, I was working the Wolverine, the crack Michigan
Central train between Chicago and New York. We would serve
lunch and dinner on the run out of Chicago to St. Thomas,
Canada, where the dining car was cut off the trairi. The next
morning our cars would be attached to the Chicago-bound train
and we woul<J serve breakfast and lunch into Chicago.
On July 27, the Wolverine left on a regular run to St. Thomas.
Passing through Detroit, we heard news that a race riot had
broken out in Chicago. The situation had been tense for some
time. Several members of the crew, all of them Black, had bought
revolvers and ammunition the previous week when on a special to
Battle Creek, Michigan. Thus, when we returned to Chicago at
about 2:00 P.M. the next day (July 28), we were apprehensive about
what awaited us.
2 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

The whole dining car crew, six waiters and four cooks, got off at
the Twelfth Street Station in Chicago. Usually we would stay on
the car while it backed out to the yards, but the station seemed a
better route now. We were all tense as we passed through the
station on the way to the elevated which would take us to the
Southside and home. Suddenly a white trainman accosted us.
"Hey, you guys going out to the Southside?"
"Yeah, so what?" I said, immediately on the alert, thinking he
might start something.
"If I were you I wouldn't go by the avenue." He meant
Michigan Avenue which was right in front of the station.
"Why?"
"There's a hig race riot going on out there, and already this
morning a couple of colored soldiers were killed coming in
unsuspectingly. If I were you l'd keep off the street, and go right
out those tracks by the lake."
We took the trainman's advice, thanked him, and turned toward
the tracks. It would be much slower walking home, but if he were
right, it would be safer. As we turned down the tracks toward the
Southside of the city, towards the Black ghetto, I thought of what I
had just been through in Europe and what now lay before me in
America.
On one side of us lay the summer warmness of Lake Michigan.
On the other was Chicago, a buge and still growing industrial
center of the nation, bursting at its seams; brawling, sprawling
Chicago, "bog butcher for the nation" as Carl Sandburg had called
it.
As we walked, I remembered the war. On returning from
Europe, I had felt good to be alive. I was glad to be back with my
family-Mom, Pop and my sister. At twenty-one, my life lay
before me. What should I do? The only trade I had learned was
waiting tables. I hadn't even finished the eighth grade. Perhaps I
should go back to France, live there and become a French citizen?
After all, I hadn't seen any Jim Crow there.
Had race prejudice in the U.S. lessened? I knew better. Con­
ditions in the States had not changed, but we Blacks had. We were
determined not to take it anymore. But what was I walking into?
 PROLOGUE 3

Southside Chicago, the Black ghetto, was like a besieged city.

Whole sections of it were in ruins. Buildings burned and the air was
heavy with smoke, reminiscent of the holocaust from which I had
rccently returned.
Our small band, huddled like a bunch of raw recruits under
machine gun fire, turned up Twenty-sixth Street and then into the
hcart of the ghetto. At Thirty-fifth and Indiana, we split up to go
our various ways; I headed for home at Forty-second Place and
Bowen. None of us returned to work until the riot was over, more
I han a week later.
The battle at home was just as real as the battle in France had
hccn. As I recall, there was full-scale street fighting between Black
und white. Blacks were snatched from streetcars and beaten or
killed; pitched battles were fought in ghetto streets; hoodlums •
rnamed the neighborhood, shooting at random. Blacks fought
hack.
As I saw it at the time, Chicago was two cities. The onc was the
<'hamber of Commerce's city of the "American Miracle," the
( 'hicago of the 1893 World Columbian Exposition. It was the new
industrial city which had grown in fifty years from a frontier town
lo hecome the second !argest city in the country.
The other, the Black community, had been part of Chicago
ni most from the time the city was founded. Jean Baptiste Pointe
I >uSable, a Black trapper from French Canada, was the first
scttler. Later came fugitive slaves, and after the Civil War-more
Blacks, fleeing from post-Reconstruction terror, taking jobs as
domestics and personal servants.
The large increase was in the late 1880s through World Warl, as
industry in the city expanded and as Blacks streamed north
following the promise of jobs, housing and an end to Jim Crow
lynching. The Illinois Central tracks ran straight through the deep
South from Chicago to New Orleans, and the Panama Limited
made the run every day.
Those that took the train north didn't find a promised land.
l'hcy found jobs and housing, all right, but they had to compete
wit h the thousands of recent immigrants from Europe who were
nlso drawn to the jobs in the packing houses, stockyards and steel
4 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

mills.
The promise of an end to Jim Crow was nowhere fulfilled. In
those days, the beaches on Lake Michigan were segregated. Most
were reserved for whites only. The Twenty-sixth Street Beach,
close to the Black community, was open to Blacks-but only as
long as they stayed on their own side.
The riot had started at this beach, which was thenjammed with
a late July crowd. Eugene Williams, a seventeen-year-old Black
youth, was killed while swimming off the white side of the beach..
The Black community was immediately alive with accounts of
what had happened-that he had been murdered while swimming,
that a group of whites had thrown rocks at him and killed him, and
that the policeman on duty at the beach had refused to make any
arrests.
This incident was the spark that ignited the flames of racial
animosity which had been smoldering for months. Fighting
between Blacks and whites broke out on the Twenty-sixth Street
beach after Williams's death.lt soon spread beyond the beach and
lasted over six days. Befare it was over, thirty-eight people-Black
and white-were dead, 537 injured and over 1,000 homeless.
The memory of this mass rebellion is still very sharp in my mind.
It was the great turning point in my life, and I have dedicated
myself to the struggle against capitalism ever since. In the
following pages of my autobiography, I have attempted to trace
the development of that struggle in the hopes that today's youth
can learn from both our successes and failures.lt is for the youth
and the bright future of a socialist USA that this hook has been
written.
 Chapter 1

A Child of Slaves

I was bom in South Omaha, Nebraska, on February 4, 1898-

1 hc youngest of the three children of Harriet and Haywood Hall.
()tto, my older brother, was bom in Mayl891; and Eppa, my sister,
i11 December 1896.
The 1890s had been a decade of far-reaching structural change
111 the economic and political life of the United States. These were
l'ntcful years in which the pattern of twentieth century subjugation
uf Blacks was set. A young U.S. imperialism was ready in 1898 to
Nhoulder its share of the "white man's burden" and take its
"munifest destiny" beyond the Pacific Coast and the Gulf of
Mexico. In the war against Spain, it embarked on its first
"ci vilizing" mission against the colored peoples of the Philippines
und the "mixed breeds" of Cuba and Puerto Rico. In the course of
thc decade and a half following the Spanish-American War, the
lwo-faced banner of racism and imperialist ·"benevolence" was
\'Urried to the majority of the Caribbean countries and the whole of
l.ntin America.
"The echo of this industrial imperialism in America," said
W. I i. B. DuBois, "was the expulsion of Black men from American
dcmocracy, their subjection to caste control and wage slavery." 1 In
IM77, the Hayes-Tilden agreement had successfully aborted the
ongoing democratic revolution of Reconstruction in the South.
Hlncks were sold down the river, as northern capitalists, with the
1mistance of some former slaveholders, gained full economic and
6 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

political control in the South. Henceforward, it was assured that

the future development of the region would be carried out in
complete harmony with the interests of Wall Street. The following
years saw the defeat of the Southern based agrarian populist
movement, with its promise of Black and white unity against the
power of monopoly capital. The counter-revolution against
Reconstruction was in full swing.
Beginning in 1890, the Southern state legislatures enacted a
series of disenfranchisement laws. Within the next sixteen years,
these laws were destined to completely abrogate the right of Blacks
to vote. This same period saw the revival of the notorious Black
Codes, the resurgence of the hooded terror of the Ku Klux Klan
and the defeat for reelection in 1905 of the last Black congressman
surviving the Reconstruction period. Jim Crow laws enforcing
segregation in public facilities were enacted by Southern states and
municipal govemments. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Jim
Crow in the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision in 1896, declaring that
legislation is powerless to eradicate "racial instincts" and establish­
ing the principle of "separate but equal." This decision was only
reversed in 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court held that separate
facilities were inherently unequal.
At the time when I was bom, the Black experience was mainly a
Southern one. The overwhelming majority of Black people still
resided in the South. Most of the Black inhabitants of South
Omaha were refugees from the twenty-year terror of the post­
Reconstruction period. Omaha itself, despite its midwestern
location, did not escape the terror completely, as indicated by the
lynching of a Black man, Joe Coe, by a mob in 1891. Many people
had relatives and families in the South. Some had trekked up to
Kansas in 1879 under the leadership of Henry Adams of Louisiana
and Moses "Pap" Singleton of Tennessee, and many had then
continued further north to Omaha and Chicago.
My parents were bom slaves in 1860. They were three years old
at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation. My Father was
bom on a plantation in Martin County, Tennessee, north of
Memphis. The plantation was owned by Colonel Haywood Hall,
whom my Father remembered as a kind and benevolent man.
 A CHILD OF SLAVES 7

When the slaves were emancipated in 1863, my Grandfather, with

the consent of Mr. Hall, took both the given name and surname of
his former master.
I never knew Grandfather Hall, as he died before I was bom.
According to my Father and uncles, he was-as they said in those
days-"much of a man." He was active in local Reconstruction
politics and probably belonged to the Black militia. Although
Tennessee did not have a Reconstruction government, there were
many whites who supported the democratic aims that were
pursued during the Reconstruction period.
But Tennessee was also the home of the Ku Klux Klan, where it
was first organized after the Civil War. In the terror that followed
the Hayes-Tilden agreement, these "night riders" had marked my
Grandfather out as a "bad nigger" for lynching. At first they were
deterred because of the paternalism of Colonel Hall. Many of
Hall's former slaves still lived on his plantation after the war
ended, and the colonel had let it be known that he would kill the
first "son-of-a-bitch" that trespassed on his property and tried to
terrorize his "nigrahs."
But the anger of the night riders, strengthened by corn liquor,
finally overcame their fear of Colonel Hall. My Father, who was
about fifteen at the time, described what happened. One night the
Klansmen rode onto the plantation and headed straight for
Grandfather's cabin. They broke open the door and one poked his
head into the darkened cabin. "Hey, Hall's nigger-where are
you?''
My Grandfather was standing inside and fired his shotgun point
blank at the hooded head. The Klansman, half his head blown off,
toppled onto the floor of the cabin, and his companions mounted
their horses and fled. Grandmother, then pregnant, fell against the
iron bed.
Grandfather got the family out of the cabin and they ran to the
"big house" for protection. It was obvious they couldn't stay in
Tennessee, so the Colonel hitched up a wagon and personally drove
them to safety, outside of Martin County. Some of Grandfather's
family were already living in Des Moines, Iowa, so the Hall family
left by train for Des Moines the following morning. The shock of
8 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

this experience was so great that Grandmother gave birth

prematurely to their third child-my Uncle George who lived to be
ninety-five. Grandmother, however, became a chronic invalid and
died a few years after thc flight from Tennessee.
Father was only in his teens when the family left for Des Moines,
so he spent most of his youth there. In the late 1880s, he left and
moved to South Omaha where there was more of a chance to get
work. He got a job at Cudahy's Packing Company, where he
worked for more than twenty years-first as a beef-lugger (loading
sides of beef on ref rigerated freight cars), and then as a janitor in
the main office building. Not long after his arrival, he met and
married Mother-Harriet Thorpe-who had come up from
Kansas City, Missouri, at about the same time.
Father was powerfully built-of medium height, but with
tremendous breadth (he had a forty-six-inch chest and weighed
over 200 pounds). He was an extremely intelligent man. With little
or no formal schooling, he had taught himself to read and write
and was a prodigious reader. Unfortunately, despite his great
strength, he was not much of a fighter, or so it seemed to me. In
later years, some of the old slave psychology and fear remained.
He was an ardent admirer of Booker T. Washington who, in his
Atlanta compromise speech of 1895, had called on Blacks to
submit to the racist status quo.
Uncle George was the opposite. He would brook no insult and
had been known to clean out a whole barroom when offended. The
middle brother, Watt, was also a fighter and was especially
dangerous if he had a knife or had been drinking. I remember both
of them complaining of my Father's timidity.
My Mother's family also had great fighting spirit. Her father,
Jerry Thorpe, was bom on a plantation near Bowling Green,
Kentucky. He was illiterate, but very smart and very strong. Even
as an old man, his appearance made us believe the stories that were
told of his strength as a young man. When he was feeling fine and
happy, his exuberance would get the hest of him and he'd grab the
}argest man around, hoist him on his shoulders, and run around
the yard with him.
Grandfather Thorpe was half Creek lndian and had an Indian
 A CHILD OF SLAVES 9

profile with a humped nose and high cheekbones. His hair was
short and curly and he had a light brown complexion. He had a
straggly white beard that he tried to cultivate into a Van Dyke. He
said his father was a Creek lndian and his mother a Black
plantation slave. No one knew his exact age, but we made a guess
hased on a story he often told us.
He was about six or seven years old when, he said, "The stars
ren."
"When was that, Grandpa?"
"Oh, one night the stars fell, I remember it very clear ly. The skies
were all lit up by falling stars. People were scared almost out of
t heir wits. The old master and mistress and all the slaves were
running out on the road, falling down on their knees to pray and
ask forgiveness. We thought the Judgement Day had surely come.
Glory Hallelujah! It was the last fire! The next day, the ground was
nit covered with ashes!"
At first we thought all of that was just his imagination,
something he had fantasized as a child and then remembered as a
real event. But when my older brother Otto was in high school, he
got interested in astronomy and came across a reference to a
meteor shower of 1833. We figured out that was what Grandfather
Thorpe had been talking about, so we concluded that he was bom
nround 1825 or 1826.
Grandfather Thorpe was filled with stories, many aboutslavery.
"Chillen, I've got scars I'll carry to my grave." He would show us
I he welts on his back from slave beatings (my Grandmother also
had them). Most of his beatings came from his first master in
Kentucky. But he was later sold to a man in Missouri, whom he said
I reated him much better. This may have been due in part to his
value as a slave-he was skilled both as a carpenter and
l�a binetmaker.
Grandfather had many stories to tel1 about the Civil War. He
was in Missouri at the time, living in an area that was first taken by
n group known as Quantrell's raiders (a guerrilla-like band of
irregulars who fought for the South) and then by the Union forces.
When the Union soldiers first came into the plantations, they
would call in slaves from the fields and make them sit down in the
10 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

great drawing room of the house. They would then force the
master and mistress and their family to cook and serve for the
slaves. Grandfather told us that the soldiers would never eat any of
the food that was served, because they were afraid of getting
poisoned.
The master on the plantation was generally decent when it
became clear that the Union forces were going to control the area
for awhile. At that time, Grandfather and my Grandmother Ann
lived on adjacent plantations somewhere near Moberly, Mis­
souri. Grandfather was allowed to visit Ann on weekends. Often
on Sundays when he went to make a visit, he was challenged by
Union guards. They would roughly demand to know his mission.
My Grandfather and Grandmother got married, with the agree­
ment of their two masters, and eventually had a family of five
daughters and two sons. Grandfather Thorpe was given a plot of
land in return for his services as a carpenter, but the family soon
moved into Moberly. As the children reached working age, the
family began to break up, but the girls always remained very close.
They came back to visit frequently and never broke family ties as
the boys had.
My Mother, Harriet, was bom when Grandmother was a slave
on the plantation of Squire Sweeney in Howard County, Missouri.
After the family moved into Moberly, Mother worked for a white
family in town. She later went to St. Joseph, Missouri, to work for
another white family. One day, while she was at work in St.
Joseph, she heard a shot and then screams from down the street.
She ran out to see what had happened. There was a great
commotion and a crowd of people was gathering in front of the
house next door.
The family living there went by the name of Howard-a man,
wife and two children. Both the man and his wife were church
members; they appeared to be a most respectable couple. Mrs.
Howard had been very active in church affairs and socials. Her
husband was frequently absent because, she said, he was a
traveling salesman and his work took him out of town for long
periods of time.
What the neighbors were not aware of was that "Mr. Howard"
 A CHILD OF SLAVES Il

wns none other than the legendary Jesse James.Re was shot in the
hnck while hanging a picture in his house. The man who killed him
wns Robert Ford-a member of Jesse's own gang who had turned
trnitor for a bribe offered by the Bums Detective Agency.
When my Mother did the laundry, I remember she would aften
Ning the "Ballad of Jesse James"-a sang which became popular
nftcr his death.
Jesse James was a man-he kil/ed many a man,
The man that robbed that Denver train.
It was a dirty little coward
Who shot Mr. Howard,
And they laid Jesse James in his grave.
Oh the people held their breath
When they heard of Jesse's death,
And they wondered how he came to die.
He was shot on the sly
By little Robert Ford,
And they laid poor Jesse in his grave.
In 1893, my Mother went to Chicago to visithersister and see
thc Exposition. She said she saw Frank James, Jesse's brother.
I le was out of prison then, a very dignified old man with a long
white beard. He had been hired to ride around as an attraction at
one of the exhibitions.
Mother kept moving u-p to the north by stages. After the job in
St. Joseph, she found work in St. Louis. She arrived to find the city
in a tense situation-the whole town was on the verge of a race riot.
· I 'he immediate cause was the murder of an Irish cop named Brady.
The Black community was elated, for Brady was a "nigger-hating
cop" who carved notches on his pistol to show the number of
Blacks he had killed. Brady finally met his end at the hands of a
"bad" Black man who ran a gambling house in Brady's district.
The gambling, of course, was illegal. But as was aften the case,
t he cops were paid off with a "cut" from the takings of the house.
As the story was told to me, Brady and the gambler met on the
NI reet one day and got into an argument. Brady accused the
�ambler of not giving him his proper "cut." This was denied
12 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

vehemently. Brady then threatened to close the place down. The

Black man told him, "Don't you come into my place when the
game's going on!" He then turned and walked off. The scene was
witnessed by several Blacks, and the news of how the gambler had
defied Brady spread immediately throughout the Black district.
This was bad stuff for Brady. It might lead to "niggers gettin'
notions," as the cops put it. A few days passed, and Brady made his
move. He went to the gambling house when the game was on and
was shot dead.
Some anonymous Black bard wrote a song about it all:
Brady, why didn't you run,
You know you done wrong.
You came in the room when the game was going on!
Brady went below /ooking mighty curious.
Devil said, "Where you from?"
"l'm from East St. Louis."
"East St. Louie, come this way
/'ve been expecting you every day!"
The song was immediately popular in the Black community and
became a symbol of rebellious feelings. Mother said that when she
arrived in St. Louis, Blacks were singing this song all over town.
The police realized the <langer in such "notions" and began to
arrest anyone they caught singing it. Forty years later, I was
pleasantly surprised to hear Carl Sandburg sing the same song as
part of his repertoire of folk ballads of the midwest. I had not
heard it since Mother had sung it to us.
Mother later moved to Kansas City, Missouri, and then to
South Omaha. Her marriage there to my Father was her second.
As a very young girl in Moberly, she had married John Harvey,
but he was, to use her words, "a no-good yellah nigger, who
expected me to support him." They had one child, Gertrude,
before he deserted her.
Gertie came to Omaha some time after my Mother, and married
my Father's youngest brother, George. I have a feeling that
Mother promoted this match; the two hard-working, sober Hall
brothers must have been quite a catch!
 A CHILD OF SLAVES 13

As I remember Mother in my childhood years, she was a small,

hrnwn-skinned woman, rather on the plumpish side, with large
1111tf hcautiful soft brown eyes. She had the humped, Indian nose of
thr Thorpe family.
My first memory of her is hearing her sing as she did housework.
Sht· had a melodious contralto voice and what seemed to me to be
nn cndless and varied repertoire. Much of what I know about this
,,rriod, I learned from her songs. These included lullabies ("Go to
Slccp You Little Pickaninny, Mamma's Gonna Swat You if You
l>on't") and many spirituals and jubilee songs. There were also
l1111umerable folk ballads, and the popular songs of her day like
"I >own at the Ball" and "Where Did Y ou Get That Hat?'' Then
I hr.rc was the old song the slaves sang about their masters fleeing
1hr Union Army-"The Year of Jubilo."
Oh darkies, have you seen the Massah with
the mustache on his face?
He was gwine down de road dis mornin' like
he's gwine to leave dis place.
Oh, de Massah run, ha ha!
And the darkies sing, ho hof
It must be now the Kingdom comin' and de
year of Jubilo!
Mother never went to school a day in her life, but she had a
phcnomenal memory and was a virtual repository of Black
folklore. My brother Otto taught her to read and write when she
wns forty years old. She told stories of life on the plantations, of
I hc "hollers" they used. When a slave wanted to talk to a friend on
11 ncighboring plantation, she would throw back her head and half
11i11g, half yell: "Oh, Bes-sie, I wa-ant to see you." Often you could
hcur one of the "hollers" a mile away.
When Mother was a girl, camp meetings were a hig part of her
lift·. She had songs she remembered from the meetings, like "I
I >on't Feel Weary, No Ways Tired," and she would imitate the
1ncachers with all of their promises of fire and brimstone. La ter,
whcn we lived in South Omaha, she was very active in the African
Mct hodist Episcopal Church. As a means of raising funds, she
14 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

used to organize church theatricals. Otto would help her read the
plays; she would then direct them and usually play the leading role
herself. She was a natural mimic. I heard her go through entire
plays from beginning to end, imitating the voices (even the male
ones) and the actions of the performers.
In addition to caring for Otto, Eppa and myself, Mother got
jobs catering parties for rich white families in North Omaha. She
would bring us back all sorts of goodies and leftovers from these
parties. Sometimes she would get together with her friends among
the other domestics, and they would have a great time panning
their employers and exchanging news of the white folks' scandal­
ous doings.
Mother had the great fighting spirit of her family. She was a
strong-minded woman with great ambition for her children,
especially for us boys. Eppa, who was a plain Black girl, was
sensitive but physically tough, courageous, and a regular tomboy.
Worried about her future, Mother insisted that she learn the piano
and arranged for her to take lessons at twenty-five cents each.
Though she learned to play minor classics such as "Poet and
Peasant," arias from such operas as Aida and Il Trovatore,
accompanied the choir and so on, Eppa never liked music very
much and was not consoled by it the way Mother was.
As a wife, Mother had a way of making Father feel the part of
the man in the house. She flattered his ego and always addressed
him as "Mr. Hall" in front of guests and us children.

LIFE IN SOUTH OMAHA

You ask what town I love the best.

South Omaha, South Omaha!
The Jairest town of all the rest,
South Omaha, South Omaha!
Where yonder's Papillion's limp stream
To where Missouri's waters gleam.
Oh, Jairest town, oh town of mine,
South Omaha, South Omaha!
 A CHILD OF SLAVES 15

In the early part of the century, the days of my youth, South

Omaha was an independent city. In 1915, it was annexed to
hccome part of the larger city of Omaha. Like many midwestern
towns, the city took its name from the original inhabitants of the
nrea. In this case, it was the Omaha Indians of the Sioux tribal
family. The area was a camping ground of the Lewis and Clark
Expedition of 1804. It grew in importance when it became a
licensed trading post and an important outfitting point during the
( 'olorado Gold Rush. But the main growth of South Omaha came
in the 1880s as the meat packing industry developed.
In 1877, the first refrigerated railroad cars were perfected. This
made it possible to slaughter livesto·ck in the midwest and ship the
rneat to the large markets in eastern cities. As a result, the meat
packing industry grew tremendously in the midwest.
The city leaders saw the opportunity and encouraged the
cxpanding packing industry to settle there-offering them special
tnx concessions and so forth. The town, situated on a plateau back
from the "hig muddy" (the Missouri River), began to grow. Soon it
was almost an industrial suburb of Omaha and was one of the
three largest packing centers in the country. All of the hig packers
of the time-Armour, Swift, Wilson and Cudahy-had hig
branches there. Cudahy's main plant was in South Omaha.
The industry brought with it growing railroad traffic. As a boy, I
watched the dozens of lines of cars as they carried livestock in
from the west and butchered meat to ship out to the east. The
Burlington; the Chicago and N orthwestern; the Chicago, Mil­
waukee, St. Paul and Pacific; the Illinois Central; the Rock Island;
I hc Union Pacific-all of these lines had terminals there. By 1910,
Omaha was the fourth largest railway center in the country.
When I was bom in 1898, South Omaha was a bustling town of
nhout 20,000. Most of these 20,000 people were foreign-born and
first generation immigrants. The two largest groups were the Irish
und the Bohemians (or Czechs). There was a sprinkling of other
Slavic groups-]?oles, Russians, Serbs-as well as Germans,
< ireeks and ltalians.
The Bohemians were the largest ethnic group in town. They
li ved mainly in the southern part of town, towards the river, in the
16 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Brown Park and Albright sections. One thing that impressed me

was their concern with education. They were a cultured group of
people. I can't remember any of them being illiterate and they had
their own newspaper. They were involved in the political wheelings
and dealings of the town and were successful at it. At one time,
both the mayor and chief of police were Bohemians.
The Irish were the second largest group, scattered throughout
the town. The newly arrived poor "shanty" Irish would first settle
on Indian Hill, near the stockyards. There were two classes of
Irish- the "shanty" lrish on the one hand, and the "old settlers" or
"lace curtain" lrish on the other. This second group, who had
settled only one generation befare, was mostly made up of middle
class, white collar, civil service and professional workers who lived
near N orth Omaha. There were also a few Irish who were very rich;
managers and executives who lived in Omaha proper. They had
become well assimilated into the community. The tendency was
.for the poorer Irish to live in South Omaha, and those who had
"made it" to ane degree or another would mave up to North
Omaha or Omaha proper.
There were only a few dozen Black families in South Omaha,
scattered throughout the community. There was no Black ghetto
and, as I saw it, no "Negro problem." This was due undoubtedly to
our small numbers, although there was a relatively large
number of Blacks living in North Omaha. The Black community
there had grown after Blacks were brought in as strikebreakers
during the 1894 strike in the packing industry, but no real ghetto
developed until after World War I.
Our family lived in the heart of the Bohemian neighborhood in
South Omaha. Nearly all our neighbors were Bohemians. They
came from many backgrounds; there were workers and peasants,
professionals, artists, musicians and other skilled artisans, all
fleeing from the oppressive rule of the Austro-H ungarian Empire.
They were friendly people, and kept up their language and
traditions. On Saturdays, families would gather at one of the beer
gardens to sing and dance. I remember watching them dance
scottisches and polkas, listening to the beautiful music of their
bands and orchestras, or running after their great marching bands
 A CHILD OF SLAVES 17

when they were in a parade. On special occasions, they would

hring out their colorful costumes. Much of their community life
l'.Cntered around the gymnastic clubs-Sokols or Turners' Halls­
which they had established.
There were differences in how the ethnic groups related to each
nt her and to the Blacks in town. In those days, Indian Hill was the
Ntomping ground of teenage Irish toughs. One day, a mob of
predominantly lrish youths ran the small Greek colony out of
town when one of their members allegedly killed an Irish cop. I
rcmember seeing the Greek community leaving town one Sunday
nfternoon. There Were men, women and children (about 100 in all)
walking down the railroad tracks, carrying everything they could
hold. Some of their houses had been burned and a few of them had
hcen beaten up in town.
We should have seen the <langer for us in this, but one Black
man even boasted to my Father about how he had helped run the
(ireeks out. My Father called him a fool. "What business did you
have helping that bunch of whites? Next time it might be you they
run out!" The incident was an ominous sign of tensions that were
to come many years later.
At the time, however, our family got along well with all the
immigrant families in our immediate neighborhood. I loved the
sweet haunting melodies of the Irish folk ballads: "Rose ofTralee,"
"Mother Machree" and many of the popular songs, like "Mylrish
Molly-0" and "Augraghawan, I Want. to Go Back to Oregon."
There was a Bohemian couple living next door. On occasion,
Mr. Rehau would get a bit too much under his helt. He'd come
home and really raise hell. When this happened, Mrs. Rehau
scurried to Officer Bingbarn, the Black cop, to get some help. I
rcmember one afternoon when Bingbarn came to lend a band in
taming him. The Bohemian was a little guy compared to him.
Officer Bingbarn threw him down out in the yard and plunked
himself down on Rehau's back.
Dust flew as he kicked and thrashed and tried to get out from
under the Black man. Bingham just "rode the storm" and when
Rehau raised his head, he'd smack him around until the rebellion
subsided.
18 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

"Had enough?" he'd yell at his victim. "You gonna behave now
and mind what Mrs. Rehau says?" All the while, she was running
around them, waving her apron.
"Beat him some more, Mr. Bingham, please! Make him be
good."
Finally, either Bingham got tired or Mr. Rehau just gave out
and peace returned to the neighborhood.
"Police and community relations" were less tense then. The cops
knew how to control a situation without using guns. Often this
meant they'd get into actual fist fights. In those days, there was a
big Black guy in town named Sam, a beef lugger like my Father.
Sam was a nice quiet guy, but on occasion he'd go on a drunk and
fight anyone within arm's length (which was a big area). The cops
generally handled it by fighting it out with him.
But I remember one time Sam really caused a row. He was
outside a bar on J Street, up in Omaha proper. During the course
of his drunk, he'd beaten up five or six of the regular cops. This
• called for extreme measures. Briggs, the chief of police, came to the
scene to restore law and order. He marched up to Sam and threw
out his chest. "Now Sam, it's time for you to behave, you hear?" He
even pulled out his thirty-eight to show he meant business.
But Sam wasn't ready to behave. He came at Briggs, intending
to lay him out like he'd done with the other officers. Briggs backed
up, one step at a time. "Sam, you stop. You hear me Sam? Time to
stop, now." Sam forced Briggs all the way back to his carriage.
Once Briggs was in, he delivered his final threat: "Sam, you come
down to City Hall on Monday and see me. This just can't happen
this way."
Briggs drove off. Monday morning came and Sam went down to
City Hall. He was fined for being drunk and disorderly. He didn't
fight the court and willingly paid the fine. It seemed like an
unwritten agreement. The cops wouldn't shoot when Sam went on
a spree. When it was over, Sam would go and pay his fine and that ·
would end the whole business.
Our family was the only Black family in our n ;ighborhood, and
we were pretty well insulated from the racist pressures of the
outside world. As children we were only very dimly aware of what
 A CHILD OF SLAVES 19

DuBois called the "veil of color between the races."

I first became aware of the veil, not from anything that
happened in the town, but from what my parents and grand­
parents told me of how Southern whites had persecuted Blacks
and of how they had suffered under slavery. I remember Grand­
father and Grandmother Thorpe showing me the scars they had on
their backs from the overseer's lash. I remember Pa reading
newspaper accounts of the endless reign of lynch terror in the
South, and about the 1908 riots in Springfield, lllinois.
In 1908, Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight champion,
defeated the "great white hope," Jim Jeffries. Pa said that it was
the occasion for a new round of lynchings in the South. There
were other great Black fighters-Sam Langford, Joe Jeanett and
Sam McVey for instance-but Johnson was the first Black
heavyweight to be able to fight for the championship and the first
to win it.
He was conscious that he was a Black man in a racist world. "I'm
Black, they never let me forget it. I'm Black, l'11 never forget it."
Jeffries had been pushed as the hope of the white race to reclaim
the heavyweight crown from Johnson. When Johnson knocked
out Jeffries, it was a symbol of Black defiance and self-assertion.
To Blacks, the victory meant pride and hope. It was a challenge to
the authority of bigoted whites and to them it called for extra
measures to "keep the niggers in their place."
To us children, Black repression seemed restricted to the South,
outside the orbit of our immediate experience. As I saw it then,
there was no deliberate plot of white against Black. I thought there
were two kinds of white folk: good and bad, and the latter were
mainly in the South. Most of those I knew in South Omaha were
good people. Disillusionment came later in my life.
The friendly interracial atmosphere of South Omaha was
illustrated by the presence of Officer Bingham and Officer Ballou,
two Black cops in the town's small police force. Bingbarn was a
big, Black andjollyfellow. His beat was our neighborhood. Ballou
was a tall, slim, ramrod straight and light brown-skinned Black.
He was a veteran of the Black Tenth Cavalry. He had fought in the
lndian wars against Geronimo and had participated in the chase
20 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

for Billy the Kid. Ballou was also a veteran of the Spanish­
American War. All the kids, Black and white, regarded himwith a
special awe and respect. Both Black officers were treated as
respectable members of the community, liked by the people
because they had their confidence. While they wore guns, they
never seemed to use them. These cops fought tough characters
with fists and clubs, pulling a gun only rarely, and then only in self­
defense. It seemed that a large part of their duty was to keep the
kids out of mischief.
"Officer Bingbarn," the Bohemian woman across the alley
would call, "would you please keep an eye on my boy Frontal. See
he don't make trouble."
"Don't worry, Mrs. Brazda. He's a good boy."
"Has Haywood been a good boy?"
"Oh yes, Mrs. Hall. He's all right." And he would stop for a chat.
My sister Eppa, a lad called Willy Starens and I were the only
�lack kids in the Brown Park Elementary School. My brother
Otto had already graduated and was in South Omaha High. Our
schoolmates were predominantly Bohemians, with a sprinkling of
Irish, German and a few Anglo-Americans. My close childhood
chums included two Bohemian lads, Frank Brazda and Jimmy
Rehau; an Anglo-Irish kid, Earl Power; and Willy Ziegler, who
was of German parentage. We were an inseparable fivesome, in
and out of each other's homes all the time.
During my first years in school, I was plagued by asthma, and
was absent from school many months at a time. The result was that
I was a year behind. I finally outgrew this infirmity and became a
strong, healthy boy. By the time I reached the eighth grade, I had
become one of the hest students in my class, sharing this honor
with a Bohemian girl, Bertha Himmel: Both of us could solve any
problem in arithmetic, both were good at spelling, and at
interschool spelling bees our school usually won the first prize. My
self-confidence was encouraged by my teache'rs, all of whom were
white and yet uniformly kind and sympathetic.
Of course, like all kids, I had plenty of fights. But ·race was
seldom involved. Occasionally, I would hear the word "nigger."
While it evoked anger in me, it seemed no more disparaging than
 A CHILD OF SLAVES 21

thc terms "bohunk," "sheeny," "dago," "shanty Irish" or "poor

white trash." All were terms of common usage, interchangeable as
slurring epithets on one's ethnic background, and usually employ­
c<l outside the hearing of the person in question.
In contrast to the daily life of the neighborhood, however, the
virus of racism was subtly injected into the classroom at the Brown
Park School I attended. The five races of mankind illustrated in
our geography books portrayed the Negro with the receding
forehead and prognathous j aws of a gorilla. There was a complete
absence of Black heroes in the history books, supporting the
inference that the Black man had contributed nothing to civili-
1.ation. We were taught that Blacks were brought out of the
savagery of the jungles of Africa and introduced to civilization
through slavery under the benevalent auspices of the white man.
In spite of my Father's submissive attitude, it is to him that I
must give credit for scotching this big lie about the Negro's past.
His attitude grew out of his concern for our survival in a hostile
cnvironment. He felt most strongly that the Negro was not
innately inferior. He perceived that his children must have same
sense of self-respect and confidence to sustain them until that
<l istant day when, through "obvious merit and just dessert," Blacks
would receive their award of equality and recognition.
Father possessed an amazing store of knowledge which he had
culled from his readings. He would tell us about the Black
civilizations of ancient Egypt, Ethiopia and Cush. He would quote
from the Song of Solomon: "I am Black and comely, oh ye
<laughters of Jerusalem." He would tell us about Black soldiers in
the Civil War; about the massacre of Blacks at Fort Pillow and the
battle cry they used thereafter, "Remember Fort Pillow! Remem­
ber Fort Pillow!" 2 He knew about the Haitian Revolution, the
defeat of Napoleon's Army by Toussaint L'Ouverture, Dessalines
and Jean Christophe. He told us about the famous Zulu chief
Shaka in South Africa; about Alexandre Dumas, the great French
romanticist, and Pushkin, the great R·ussian poet, who were both
Black.
Father said that he had taught himself to read and write. He had
an extensive library, which took up half of one of the walls in our
22 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

living room. His books were mainly historical works-his favorite

subject. They included such titles as The Decisive Battles of the
World, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, and many
histories of England, France, Germany and Russia. He had
Stanley in Africa, and a number of biographies of famous men,
including Napoleon, Caesar and Hannibal (who Father said was a
Negro). He had Scott's Ivanhoe and his Waverly novels; Bulwer
Lytton; Alexandre Dumas' novels and the Life and Times of
Frederick Douglass, and Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washing­
ton.
On another wall there was a huge picture of the charge of the
Twenty-fifth Black Infantry and the Tenth Cavalry at San Juan
Hill, rescuing Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders. There were
pietures of Frederick Douglass and, of course, his hero, Booker T.
Washington. He would lecture to us on history, displaying his
.extensive knowledge. He was a great admirer of Napoleon. He
would get into one of his lecturing moods and pace up and down
with his hands behind his back before the rapt audience of my
sister Eppa and myself. Talking about the Battle of Waterloo, he­
would say:
"Wellington was in a tough spot that day. Napoleon was about
to whip him; the trouble was Bluchei" hadn't shown up."
"Who was he, Pa?"
"He was the German general who was supposed to reinforce
Wellington with 13,000 Prussian troops. Wellington was getting
awful nervous, walking up and down behind the lines and saying,
'Oh! If Blucher fails to come! Where is Blucher?' "
"Did he finally get there, Pa?''
"Y es, son, he finally got there and turned the tide of battle. And
if he hadn't shown up and Napoleon had won, the whole course of
history would have been changed."
It was through Father that I entered the world of books. I
developed an unquenchable thirst to learn about people and their
history. I remember going to the town library when I was nine or
ten and asking, "Do you have a history of the world for children?"
My first love became the historical novel. I loved George
Henty's books; they always dealt with the exploits of a sixteen-
 A CHILD OF SLAVES 23

ycar-old during an important historical period. Through Henty's

hcroes, I too was with Bonnie Prince Charlie, with Wellington in
the Spanish Peninsula, with Gustavus Adolphus at Lutsen in
theThirty Years War, with Clive in India and Under Drake's Flag
uround the world. I was also fascinated by romances of the feudal
pcriod such as When Knighthood Was in Flower and lvanhoe. I
read Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and the works
of H. Rider Haggard.
I went through a definite Anglophile stage, in part due to the
influence of a Jamaican named Mr. Williams who worked as
ussistant janitor with my Father. Mr. Williams was a buge Black
man with scars all over his face. He was a former stoker in the
British Navy. I was attracted by his strange accent and haughty
dcmeanor. Evidently he saw in me an appreciative audience. I
would listen with open mouth and wonder at the stories of the
strange places he had seen, of his adventures in faraway lands. He
was a real British patriot, a Black imperialist, if such was possible.
He would declare, "The sun never sets on the British Empire,"
und then sing "Rule Brittania, Brittania Rule the Waves." He
l)UOted Napoleon as allegedly saying, "Britain is a small garden,
hut she grows some bitter weeds," and "Give me French soldiers
und British officers, and I will conquer the world." I pictured
myself as a British sailor, and read Two Years Before the Mast
und Battle of Trafa/gar.
"Do you think they would let me join the British Navy?" I asked
Mr. Williams.
"No, my lad," he answered, "You have to be a British citizen or
subject to do that." I was quite disappointed.
But it was not only British romance that fascinated me. At about
I hc age of twelve I became a Francophile. I read all of Dumas'
novels and quite a number of other novels about France. I had
hcgun to read French history, which to me turned out to be as
interesting as the novels and equally romantic. I- read about Joan
of Are, the Hundred Years' War, Francis I, about Catherine de
Mcdici, the Huguenots and Admiral Coligny, the Duc de Guise,
I hc massacre of St. Bartholomew Eve or the night of the long
knives; then the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities, the
24 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

guillotining of Charlotte Corday and the assassination of Marat.

Occasionally, the ugly reality of race would intrude upon the
dream world of my childhood. I distinctly remember two such
occasions. One was when a white family from Arkansas moved
across the alley from us. Mr. Faught, the patriarch of the elan, was
a typical red-necked peckerwood. He would sit around the store
front, chawing tobacco, telling how they treated "niggers" down
his way.
"They were made to stay in their place-down in the cotton
patch-not in factories taking white men's jobs."
As I remember, his racist harangues did not make much of an
impression on the local white audience. Apparently at that time
there was no feeling of competition in South Omaha because there
were so few Blacks. I would also imagine that his slovenly
appearance did not jibe with his white supremacist pretensions.
One day a substitute teacher took over our class. I was about ten
years old. The substitute was a Southerner from Arkansas.
During history class she started talking about the Civil War. The
slaves, she said, did not really want freedom because they were
happy as they were. They would have been freed by their masters in
a few years anyway. Her villain was General Grant, whom she
contrasted unfavorably with General Robert E. Lee.
"Lee was a gentleman," she put forth, "But Grant was a
cigar-smoking liquor-drinking roughneck."
She didn't like Sherman either, and talked about his "murdering
rampage" through Georgia. I wasn't about to take all of this and
ehallenged her.
"I don't know about General Grant's habits, but he did beat Lee.
Besides, Lee couldn't have been much of a gentleman; he owned
slaves!"
Livid with rage, she shouted, "That's enough-what I could say
about you!"
"Well, what could you say?" I challenged.
She apparently saw that wild racist statements wouldn't work in
this situation, and that I was trying to provoke her to do something
like that. She cut short the argument, shouting, "That's enough"
"Y es, that's enough/' I sassed.
 A CHILD OF SLAVES 25

During the heated exchange, I felt that I had the sympathy of

most of my classmates. After school, some gathered around me
and said, "Y ou certainly told her off!"
When I told Mother she supported me. "Y ou done right, son,"
she said.
But Father was not so sure. "Y ou might have gotten into
trouble."
I feel now that one of the reasons for my self-confidence during
my childhood years, and why the racist nations of innate Black
inferiority left me cold, was my ol der brother Otto. His example
belied such claims. He was the most brilliant ane in our family,
and probably in all of South Omaha. He had skipped a grade both
in grade school and in high school, and was a real prodigy. He was
a natura! poet, and won many prizes in composition. His poem on
the charge of the Twenty-fifth Black lnfantry and Tenth Cavalry
at San Juan Hill was published in ane of the Omaha dailies. Otto
was praised by all of his teachers. "An unusual boy," they said,
"clearly destined to become a leader of his race."
One day, ane of his teachers and a Catholic priest called on
Mother and Father to talk about Otto's future. Otto was about
fourteen at the time. They suggested that he might be good
material for the priesthood, and that there was a possibility of his
getting a scholarship for Creighton University, Omaha's famous
Jesuit school. The teacher suggested that if this were agreed to, he
should take up Latin. My parents were extremely flattered, despite
the faet that they were good Methodists (AME). Even Father, who
did not seem ambitious for his children, was impressed.
But when the proposition was placed befare Otto, he vehement­
ly disagreed. He did not want to become a priest nor did he want to
study Latin. He wanted, he said, to be an architect! Doctors,
dentists, teachers and preachers-these were the professions for an
ambitious Black in those days.
"An architect!" they exclaimed in amazement. "Who ever heard
of a Black architect?"
"Who ever heard of a Black priest?" Otto retorted. (At that time
there were only two or three Black priests in the entire U.S.)
"But Otto," Mother argued,"you'll have the support of a lot of
26 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

prominent white folks. They'll help you through college."

But Otto would have none of it. Undoubtedly, my parents
thought that they could finally wear down his opposition and that
he would become more amenable in time. They did force him to
take Latin, a subject he hated.
Otto stayed in school, but no longer seemed interested in his
studies. He dropped out of school suddenly in his senior year. He
was sixteen. He left home and got a job as a bellhop in a hotel in
N orth Omaha's Black community. This move cut completely the
few remaining ties he had with his white age group in South
Omaha.
Otto's drop-out from high school evidently signified that he had
given up the struggle to be somebody in the white world. He had
become disillusioned with the white world and therefore sought
identity with his own people. During my childhood years, our
relationship had never been close. There was, of course, the age
gap-he was seven years older. But even in tater years, when we
were closer and had more in common, we never talked about our
childhood. I don't know why. As a child I had been proud of his
academic feats and boasted about them to my friends.
At the time he left high school Otto was the only Black in South
Omaha High and was about to become its first Black graduate.
Highly praised by his teachers and popular among his fellow
students, he was a real showpiece in the school.
What caused him to drop out af school in his senior year?
Thinking back an it, I don't believe that it had anything to do with
the attempt to make him a priest. I think that he had won that
battle a couple of years before. At least, I never heard the matter
mentioned again.
Otto undoubtedly had had high aspirations at one time, as
evidenced by his desire to become an architect. Somewhere along
the line they disappeared. Perhaps a contributing factor was the
accumulating effect af Otto's malady. On occasion, Mother would
remind us that Otto had water an the brain, and that he was
different from Eppa and myself. At the time, he seemed smarter
than us, more independent and in rebellion against Pa's lack af
encouragement, moral support and his parental authority. Cer-
 A CHILD OF SLAVES 27

tainly in adult life Otto used to sleep about ten hours a day and
very often fell asleep .in meetings. He seemed to Jack the ability of
prolonged concentration, although whatever brain damage he
may have suffered never affected the quickness of his mind and
ability to grasp the nub of any question or the capacity for
leadership which he showed on a number of occasions.
But more debilitating, probably, than any physical disease was
lhe generation gap of that era-between parents of slave back­
grounds and children bom free, particularly in the north. Otto's
dropping out of school and his later radical political development
were undoubtedly related to a conflict more intense than the ones
of today.
Father was an ardent follower of Booker T. Washington. His
ambitions for his sons were very modest, to put it mildly. He
undoubtedly would have been satisfied if we could become good
law-abiding citizens with stable jobs. He thought of jobs a notch or
lwo above his own station, like a postal employee, a skilled
tradesman, or a clerk in the civil service. The offer of a scholarship
for the priesthood was, therefore, simply beyond his expectations,
and I guess that the old man was deeply disappointed at Otto's
rejection of it.
Otto was quite independent and would not conform to Father's
idea of discipline. For example, he was completely turned off on
lhe question of religion, and Father could not force him to go to
church. I don't remember Otto ever going to church with the
family. Father claimed that Otto was irresponsible and wild. As a
result, there was mutual hostility between them. The results were
numerous thrashings when Otto was young and violent quarrels
between them as he grew older. Mother would usually defend
Otto. Grandpa Thorpe, himself a strict disciplinarian, would warn
Mother: "Hattie, you mark my words, that boy is going to lan' in
the pen."
At some point, Otto came to the conclusion that there was no
use in continuing his education. He must have felt that it was
irrelevant. Opportunities for educated Blacks were few, even in
N orth Omaha's Black community where there were only a few
professionals. In that community there were a few preachers, one
28 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

doctor, one dentist and one or two teachers. Black businesses

consisted of owners of several undertaking establishments, a
couple of barber shops and a few pool rooms. The only other
Blacks in any sort of middle class positions were a few postal
employees, civil service workers, pullman porters and waiters.
Then too, Otto had passed through the age of puberty and was
becoming more and more conscious of his race. Along with the
natural detachment and withdrawal from childhood socializing
with girls-in his case w_hite girls who were former childhood
sweethearts-Otto experienced a withdrawal and non-socializa­
tion because of his race. He ended up quite alone because there
were not many Black kids his age in South Omaha. There wasn't
much contact with the Black kids from North Omaha either. As a
very sensitive person on the verge of manhood, I imagine he began
to feel these changes keenly.
Af ter he dropped out of school in 1908, Otto was soon attracted
tø the "sportin' life"-the pool halls and sporting houses of North
Omaha. He wanted to be among Black people; he was anxious to
get away from Father. Thus, he left home and gotjobs as a bellhop,
shoeshine boy, and busboy. He began to absorb a new way of life,
stepping fully into the social life of the Black community in North
Omaha. He'd evidently heeded the "call of the blood" and gone
back to the race. It was not until a few years later, when I had
similar experiences, that I understood that Otto had arrived at the
first stage in his identity crisis and had gone to where he felt he
belonged.
He would come home quite often, though, flaunting his new
clothes, a "box-backed" suit-"fitting nowhere but the shoulders,"
high-heeled Stacey Adams button shoes, and a stetson hat. He'd
give a few dollars to Mother and some <limes to me and my sister.
Sometimes he would bring a pretty girl friend with him. But most
of the time, he would bring a young man, Henry Starens, who was
a piano player. He played a style popular in those days, later to be
known as boogie-woogie, in which the piano was the whole
orchestra. He played Ma Rainey's famous blues, "Make Me a
Pallet on Your Floor, Make It Where Your Man Will Never
Know," and the old favorite, "Alabama Bound."
 A CHILD OF SLAVES 29

Alabama Bound
I'm Alabama Bound.
Oh, babe, don't leave me here,
Just leave a dime for beer.
A boy of ten at the time, I was tremendously impressed. There is
110 doubt that Otto's experience served to weaken some of my
rhildish notions about making it in the white world.

IIALLEY'S COMET AND MY RELIGION

On May 4, 1910, Halley's Comet appeared flaring down out of

t he heavens, its luminous tail switching to earth. It was an ominous
sight.
A rash or'religious revival swept Omaha. Prophets and messiahs
appeared on street corners and in churches preaching the end of
t he world. Hardened sinners "got religion." Backsliders renewed
t heir faith. The comet, with its tail moving ever closer to the earth,
scemed to lend credence to forecasts of imminent cosmic disaster.
Both my Mother and Father were deeply religious. Theirs was
t hat "old time religion," the fire-and-brimstone kind which leaned
hcavily on the Old Testament. It was the kind that accepted the
Bible and all its legends as the literal gospel truth. We children had
t he "fear of the Lord" drilled into us from early age. My image of
God was that of a vengeful old man who demanded unquestioned
faith, strict obedience and repentant love as the price of salvation:

I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of

the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth
generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto
thousands of them that love me and keep my command­
ments. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

Every Sunday, rain or shine, the family would attend services at

the little frame church near the railroad tracks. For me, this was a
30 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

tortuous ordeal. I looked forward to Sundays with dread. We

would spend all of eight hours in church. We would sit through the
morning service, then the Sunday school, after which followed a
break for dinner. We returned at five for the Young People's
Christian Endeavor and finally the evening service. It was not just
boredorn. Fear was the dominant emotion, especially when our
preacher, Reverend Jamieson, a hig Black man with a beautiful
voice, would launch into one of his fire-and-brimstone sermons.
He would start out slowly and in a low voice, gradually raising it
higher he would swing to a kind of sing-song rhythm, holding his
congregation rapt with vivid word pictures. They would respond
with "Hallelujah! " "Ain't it the truth! " "Preach it, brother!"
He would go on in this manner for what seemed an interminable
time, and would reach his peroration on a high note, winding up
with a rafter-shaking burst of oratory. He would then pause
dramatically amidst moans, shouts and even screams of some of
the women, one or two of whom would fall out in a dead faint.
Waiting for them to subside he would then, in a lowered, scarcely
audible voice, reassure his flock that it was not yet too late to
repent and achieve salvation. All that was necessary was to:
"Repent sinners, and love and obey the Lord. Amen." Someone
would then rise and lead off with an appropriate spiritual such as:
Oh, my sins areforgiven and my soul set free-ah,
Oh, glory Halelua-a-a-af
Just let me in the kingdom when the world is all a'fi-ah,
Oh Glory Hale/uf
I don't feel worried, no ways tiahd,
Oh, glory Hale/uf
I remember the family Bible, a buge hook which lay on the
center table in the front room. The first several pages were blank,
set aside for recording the vital family statistics: births, deaths,
marriages. The hook was filled with graphic illustrations of
biblical happenings. Leafing through Genesis (which we used to
call "the begats"), one came to Exodus and from there on a
pageant of bloodshed and violence unfolded. Portrayed in striking
colors were the interminable tribal wars in which the Israelites slew
 A CHILD OF SLAVES 31

I hc Mennonites and Pharoah's soldiers killed little children in

Nl'nrch of Moses. There was the great God, Jehovah himself,
whitcbearded and eyes flashing, looking very much like our old
nncker neighbor, Mr. Faught.
.I ust a couple of weeks before Halley's comet appeared, Mother
hnd taken us to see the silent film, Dante's Inferno, through which
I sat with open mouth horror. Needless to say, this experience did
not !essen my apprehension.
The comet continued its descent, its tail like the flaming sword
nf vengeance. Collision seemed not just possible, but almost
t·crtain. What had we poor mortals done to incur such wrath of the
I .ord?
My deportment underwent a change. I did all my chores without
rnmplaint and helped Mama around the house. This was so unlike
mc that she didn't know what to make of it. I overheard her telling
l'a about my good behavior and how helpful I had become lately.
But I hadn't really changed. J was just scared. I was simply trying
lo carry out another one of God's commandments, "Honor thy
fut her and thy mother that thy days may be prolonged, and that it
may go well with thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth
I hce."
Then one night, when the whole neighborhood had gathered as
11sual on the hill to watch the comet, it appeared to have ceased its
movement towards the earth. We were not sure, but the next night
wc were certain. It had not only ceased its descent, but was
dcfinitely withdrawing. In a couple more nights, it had disap­
pcared. A wave of relief swept over the town.
"lt's not true!" I thought to myself. "The fire and brimstone, thc
lccring devils, the angry vengeful God. None of it is true."
It was as if a great weight had been lifted from my mind. It was
I hc end of my religion, although I still thought that there was most
li kely a supreme being. But if God existed, he was nothing like the
(iod portrayed in our family Bi ble. I was no longer terrified of him.
I .ater, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, I read some of the lectures
of Robert G. lngersoll and became an agnostic, doubting the
cxistence of a god. From there, I later moved to positive atheism.
Two years tater, the great event was the sinking of the Titanic.
32 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

This was significant in Omaha because one of the Brandeis

brothers, owners of the biggest department store in North Omaha,
went down with her. In keeping with the custom of Blacks to gloat
over the misfortunes of whites, especially rich ones, some Black
hard composed the "Titanic Blues":
When old John Jacob Astor /eft his home,
He never thought he was going to die.
Titanic fare thee well,
I say fare thee well.
But disaster was more frequentiy reserved for the Black
community. On Easter Sunday 1913, a tornado struck North
Omaha. It ripped a two-block swath through the Black neighbor­
hood, leaving death and destruction in its wake. Among the
victims were a dozen or so Black youths trapped in a basement
below a pool hall where they had evidently been shooting craps.
Mother did not fail to point out the incident as another example of
God's wrath. While I was sorry for the youths and their families
(some of them were friends of Otto), the implied warning left me
cold. My God-fearing days had ended with Halley's Comet.
Misfortune, however, was soon to strike our immediate family.
It happened that summer, in 1913. My Father fled town af ter being
attacked and beaten by a gang of whites on Q Street, right outside
the gate of the packing plant. They told him to get out of town or
they would kill him.
I remember vividly the scene that night when Father staggered
through the door. Consternation gripped us at the sight. His face
was swollen and bleeding, his clothes torn and in disarray. He had
a frightened, hunted look in his eyes. My sister Eppa and I were
alone. Mother had gone for the summer to work for her
employers, rich white folks, at Lake Okoboji, Iowa.
"What happened?" we asked.
He gasped out the story of how he had been attacked and
beaten.
"They said they were going to kill me if I didn't get out of town."
We asked him who "they" were. He said that he recognized some
of them as belonging to the Irish gang on lndian Hill, but there
 A CHILD OF SLAVES 33

Wl'rc also some grown men.

"But why, Pa? Why should they pick on you?"
"Why don't we call the police?"
"That ain't goin' to do no good. We just have to leave town."
"But Pa," I said, "how can we? We own this house. We've got
lriends here. If you tel1 them, they wouldn't let anybody harm us."
Again the frightened look crossed his face.
"No, we got to go."
"Where, where will we go?''
"We'll mave up to Minneapolis, your uncles Watt and George
ure there. l'11 get work there. I'm going to telegraph your Mother to
l'ome home now."
He washed his face and then went into the bedroom and began
packing his bags. The next morning he gave Eppa same money and
sn id, "This will tide you over till your Mother comes. She'll be here
in a day or two. I'm going to telegraph her as soon as I get to the
depot. l'11 send for you all soon."
He kissed us goodbye and left.
Only when he closed the door behind him did we feel the full
impact of the shock. It had happened so suddenly. Our whole
world had collapsed. Home and security were gane. The feeling of
safety in our little haven of interracial goodwill had proved
clusive. Now we were just homeless "niggers" on the run.
The cruelest blow, perhaps, was the shattering of my image of
I "ather. True enough, I had not regarded him as a hero. Still,
however, I had retained a great deal of respect for him. He was
11ndoubtedly a very complex man, very sensitive and imaginative.
Probably he had never gotten over the horror of that scene in the
cabin near Martin, Tennessee, where as a boy of fifteen he had seen
his father kill the Klansman. He distrusted and feared poor whites,
especially the native bom and, in Omaha, the shanty Irish.
Mother arrived the next day. For her it was a real tragedy. Our
home was gone and our family broken up. She had lived in Omaha
for nearly a quarter of a century. She had raised her family there
and had built up a circle of close friends. With her regular summer
job at Lake Okoboji and catering parties the rest of the year, she
had helped pay for our home. Now it was gane. We would be lucky
34 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

if we even got a fraction of the money we had put into it, not to
speak of the labor. Now she was to leave all this. Friends and
neighbors would ask why Father had run away.
Why had he let some poor white trash run him out of town? He
had friends there. Ours was an old respected family. He also had
influential white patrons. There was Ed Cudahy of the family that
owned the packing plant where he worked. The Cudahys had
become one of the nation's hig three in the slaughtering and meat
packing industry. Father had known him from boyhood. There
was Mr. Wilkins, general manager at Cudahy's, whom Father had
known as an office boy, and who now gave Father all his old
clothes.
A few days later, Mr. Cannon, a railroad man in charge of a
buffet car on the Omaha and Minneapolis run and an old friend of
the family, called with a message from Father. He said that Father
was all right, that he had gotten ajob for himself and Mother at the
Minneapolis Women's Club. Father was to become caretaker and
janitor, Mother was to cater the smaller parties at the club and to
assist at the larger affairs. They were to live on the place in a
basement apartment.
The salary was ridiculously small (I think about $60 per month
for both of them) and the employers insisted that only one of us
children would be allowed to live at the place. That, of course,
would be Eppa. He said that Father had arranged for me to live
with another family. This, he said, would be a temporary arrange­
ment. He was sure he could find another job, and rent a house
where we could all be together again. As for me, Father suggested
that since I was fifteen, I could find a part-time job to help out
while continuing school. Mr. Cannon said that he was to take me
back to Minneapolis with him, and that Mother and Eppa were to
follow in a few days.
With regards to our house, Mr. Cannon said that he knew a
lawyer, an honest fellow, who for a small commission would
handle its sale. Mother later claimed that after deducting the
lawyer's commission and paying off a small mortgage, they only
got the paltry sum of $300! This was for a five-room house with
electricity and running water.
 A CHILD OF SLAVES 35

The next day, Mr. Cannon took me out to his buffet car in the
railroad yards. He put me in the pantry and told me to stay there,
and if the conductor looked in: "Don't be afraid, he's a friend of
mine;" Our car was then attached to a train which backed down to
the station to load passengers. I looked out the window as we left
Omaha. I was not to see Omaha again until after World War I,
when I was a waiter on the Burlington Railroad.
My childhood and part of my adolescence was now behind me. I
felt that I was practically on my own. What did the world hold for
me-a Black youth?
Arriving in Minneapolis, I went to my new school. As I entered
the room, the all-white class was singing old darkie plantation
songs. Upon seeing me, their voices seemed to take on a mocking,
derisive tone. Loudly emphasizing the Negro dialect and staring
directly at me, they sang:
"Down in De Caunfiel-HEAH DEM darkies moan
All De darkies AM a weeping
MASSAHS in DE Cold Cold Ground"
They were really having a hall.
In my state of increased racial awareness, this was just too much
for me. I was already in a mood of deep depression. With the
hreakup of our family, the separation from my childhood friends,
and the interminable quarrels between my Mother and Father (in
which I sided with Mother), I was in no mood to be kidded or
scoffed at.
That was my last day in school. I never returned. I made up my
mind to drop out and get a full-time job.
I was fifteen and in the second semester of the eighth grade.
 Chapter 2

A Black Regiment
in World War I

On the Negroes this double experience of deliberaie and

devilish persecution from their own countrymen, coupled
with a taste of real democracy and world-old culture, was
revolutionizing. They began to hate prejudice and discrimi­
nation as they had never hated it before. They began to realize
its eternal meaning and complications...they were filled with a
bitter, dogged determination never to give up the fight for
Negro equality in America....A new, radical Negro spirit has
been bom in France, which leaves us older radicals far
behind. Thousands of young Black men have offered their
lives for the Lilies of France and they return ready to offer
them again for the Sunflowers of Afro-America.
W.E.B. DuBois, June 1919 1

Despite my bitter encounter with racism in school, I liked

Minneapolis. I was impressed by the beauty of this city with its
many lakes and surrounding pine forests. The racial climate in
1913 was not ås bad as my early experience in school would
indicate, either. Blacks seemed to get along well, especially with
the Scandinavian nationalities, who constituted the most numer­
ous ethnic grouping in the city.
Upon quitting school, I became a part of the small Black
community and completely identified with it. I found friends
among Black boys and girls of my age group, attended parties,
dances, picnics at Lake Minnetonka, and ice skated in the winter
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 37

time. Here, as in Omaha, a ghetto had not yet fully formed, though
t here were the beginnings of one in the Black community on the
north side.
Included in the Black community and among my new friends
were a relatively large number of mulattos, the progeny of mixed
marriages between Scandinavian women and Black men. This
phenomenon dated back to the turn of the century. At that time it
was the fashion among wealthy white families to import Scandi­
navian maids. Many of these families had Black male servants­
hutlers, chauffeurs, etc.-and the small Black population was
preponderantly male. The result was a rash of inter-marriages
between the Scandinavian maids and the Black male house
servants. The interracial couples formed a society called Manas­
seh which held well-known yearly balls. 2 As a whole the children
of this group were a hot-headed lot and seemed even more racially
conscious than the rest of us.
It was in Minneapolis that I too reached a heightened stage of
racial awareness. This was hastened, no doubt, by the tragic events
in South Omaha and the faet that I was now an adolescent and
there was the problem of girls. I had noticed that it was in the
period of pubescence that a Black boy, raised even in communities
of relative racial tolerance, was first confronted with the problem
of race. It had been so with my brother Otto in Omaha, and now it
was so with me.
During the first year after dropping out of school I worked as a
. bootblack, barber shop porter, bell hop and busboy, continuing in
the last long enough to acquire the rudiments of the waiter's trade.
At the age of sixteen, I got ajob as dining car waiter on the Chicago
Northwestern Railway. The first run was also my first trip to the
big city, where I had four aunts (my Mother's sisters). All through
my childhood my Mother had told stories about her first visit there
at the time of the Chicago Exposition. Upon arrival, one of the
older waiters on the car, Lon Holliday, took me to see the town.
I'm sure he looked forward to showing a young "innocent" the
ropes. After a visit to my aunts, he took me to a notorious dive on
the Southside. It was the back room of a saloon at Thirty-second
and State Street.
38 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

The piano man was playing "boogie woogie" style, popular in

those days. The few couples on the floor were "walking the dog,"
"balling the jack," and so on. Then one of the dancers, a woman,
called to the pianist, "Oh, Mr. Johnson, please play 'Those Dirty
Motherfuckers.' " He enthusiastically complied and sang a
number of verses of the bawdy tune. I almost sank through the
floor in embarassment and even amazement. Lon, who was
watching, burst out laughing and he said, "Boy, you ain't seen
nothing yet!"
He then took me to the famous "Mecca Flats" on Federal Street,
where a rent party was in process. There he introduced me to a
young woman, whom he evidently knew, and slipped her some
money, saying, "Take care of my young friend here; be sure you get
him back on the car in the morning. We leave for Minneapolis at
10:00 A.M."
The railroads were a way to see the country and in the months
tb.at followed I took advantage of that, working for different lines,
on different runs as far west as Seattle. On one run in Montana
called the Loop, the dining car shuttled .between Great Palls and
Butte by way of Helena, stopping at each town overnight. It was
known as the "outlaw run" and I soon found out why. It attracted a
number of characters wanted by police in other cities, searching
for an escape or a temporary hideout.
While laying over in Butte one night, our chef murdered the
parlor car porter-cut his throat while he was sleeping in the
parlor car. They had been feuding for days. I went through the
parlor car that morning and was the first to see the ghastly sight.
The police came, but the chef had disappeared. My enthusiasm for
the job was gone. It might have been me, I thought, for I had had a
number of arguments with the chef about my orders.
I quit and headed back to Minneapolis, arriving there shortly
after war broke out in Europe in 1914. I was sixteen and had been
avidly following the news, reading of the invasions of Belgium,
France, the Battle of the Marne, etc.
One day, walking along Hennepin Avenue I saw a Canadian
recruiting sergeant. He was wearing the uniform of the Princess
Pat Regiment, bright red jacket and black kilt. A handsome
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 39

fcllow, I thought, looking like Bonnie Prince Charlie himself. He

noticed me looking at him and asked, "You want to join up with
thc Princess Pat, my lad? We've got a number of Black boys Iike
you in the regiment. You'II find you're treated like anyone else up
there. We make no difference between Black and white in
Canada."
lmagining myself in the red jacket and black kilt, I said, "Sure,
1'11 join."
Then looking at me closely, he asked, "How old are you?"
"Eighteen," I lied.
"Y our parents living?"
"Yes."
"Well, you've got to get their consent."
"Oh, they'II agree," I said.
"They live in the city?"
"Yes."
"Well, you come back here tomorrow and bring one of them
with you and I'II sign you up."
"Okay," I said, but I knew that my parents would never agree.
And well it was, too, for I later learned that this regiment was
among the first victims of the German mustard gas attack at Ypres,
and what was Ieft of them was practically wiped out at bloody
Paschendale on the Sommes front.
Life in Minneapolis was beginning to bore me. I was anxious to
get back to Chicago, "the big city," so I moved there and stayed
with my Aunt Lucy at Forty-third and State. In 1915 my parents,
at the urging of my Mother, also moved to Chicago, and I then
stayed with them.
In Chicago I got a job as a busboy ·at the Tip Top Inn, then
considered the finest restaurant in town. It was owned by old man
H ieronymous, a famous chef, and was noted for its French cuisine
and service. In the trade it was taken for granted that if you had
heen a waiter at the Tip Top Inn you could work anywhere in the
country. After a few months I was promoted to waiter and felt that
I had perfected my skills. Du ring the next three years I worked at a
number of places: the Twentieth Century Limited, the New
York Central's crack train; the W olverine (Michigan Central);
40 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

the Sherman House; the old Palmer House; and the Audi­
torium.
During this time in Chicago I saw Casey Jones, a Black man and
a legendary character known to at least four generations of Black
Chicagoans. As I remember, he was partially paralyzed, probably
from cerebral palsy. He would go through the streets with trained
chickens, which he put through various capers, shouting, "Crabs,
crabs, I got them!" He had a defect in his speech which he
exploited. The audience would literally fall out at his render­
ing of the popular sentimental ballad, "The Curse of an Aching
Heart":

You made me what I am today,

I hope you're satisfied.
You dragged and dragged me down until
The heart within me died.
Although you're not true,
May God bless you,
That's the curse of an aching heart!

Then there was the beloved comedian, String Beans, who often
appeared at the old Peking Theater at Thirty-first and State Street.
The Dolly Sisters also appeared there; they were very famous at
the time. Teenan Jones'slush night spot was at Thirty-fifth and
State Street. Then at the Panama, another night club, I would
listen to Mamie Smith sing "Shimmy-sha-Wobble, That's All," a
very popular song and dance at the time.
Once, when I wanted to go back to Minneapolis to visit, I caught
the Pioneer Limited-riding the rods-out of the station on the
west side. This was my first experience in hoboing. I rode the rods
as far as Beloit, Wisconsin.
At Beloit I got off, but was afraid to get back on because a yard
dick was going around the cars. I stayed there overnight-a fairly
cold night as I remember. I met a white man, a "professional" hobo,
who took me in tow and told me about the trains leaving in the
morning. He said we could catch a train that would pull us
right into Minneapolis. It was a pas,senger train, and we could
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 41

"ride the blinds in," that is, the space between the two Pull­
man cars.
We rode the blinds, reaching La Crosse, Wisconsin. On the way
he warned, "You know, there's a bad dick up there in La Crosse.
We gotta watch out for him." When the train pulled to a stop in La
Crosse both of us hopped off. Other guys were flying out of the
train from all sides-from the rods, the blinds, and there were
some on top, too. But this notorious yard dick caught us. He was a
rough character, and let us know it as he lined us up.
"Hey, up there!"
I was at the end of the line of about a dozen guys and was the
only Black there. I had my bands in my pocket.
"Take yer bands outta yer pockets!"
I took my bands out of my pockets.
The engine's fireman was looking out, watching all of this. He
called to the yard dick, "Say, Jim, let me have that young colored
boy over there to slide down coal for me into Minneapolis."
The dick looked at me and scowled, "All right, you, get up
there!"
He shouted to the fireman, "But see that he works!"
"I'll see to that; he'll work."
I scrambled on the engine tender and slid coal all the way to
Minneapolis, where I got off at the station.
Among my new friends in Chicago were several members of the
Eighth Illinois, Black National Guard Regiment. They would
regale me with tall stories of their exploits on the Mexican border
in the summer of 1916 when the regiment took part in a "show of
force" against the Mexican Revolution. None of us, of course,
knew the real issues involved.
I remember reading of the exploits of the famous Black Tenth
Cavalry Regiment, which was a part of the force sent by General
Funston across the border in pursuit of Pancho Villa. They had
been ambushed by Villa and a number of them killed. The papers,
on that occasion, had been full of accounts of the heroic Black
cavalrymen and their valiant white officers. The Eighth, however,
had been in the rear near San Antonio, Texas, and saw no action
during the abortive campaign.
42 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Intrigued by their experiences, I joined the Eighth Regiment in

the winter of 1917. I was nineteen. The regiment, officered by
Blacks from the colonel on down (many of them veterans of the
four Black Regular Army regiments), gave me a feeling of pride.
They had a high esprit de corps which emphasized racial solidarity.
I didn't regard it just as a part of a U.S. Army unit, but as some sort
of a big social club of fellow race-men. Still, I knew that we would
eventually get into the war. That did not bother me; on the
contrary, romance, adventure, travel beckoned. I saw possible
escape from the inequities and oppression which was the lot of
Blacks in the U.S. I was already a Francophile. I had read and
heard about the fairness of the French with respect to the race
issue. It seems now, as I look back upon it, that patriotism was the
least of my motives. I was avidly foliowing all the news of
the war and it seemed certain that the U.S. was going to
get involved, despite protestations of President Wilson to the
contrary.
Already the press was whipping up war sentiment. Tin Pan
Alley joined in with a rash of jingoistic songs: "Don't Bite the
Hand That's Feeding You," "Let's All Be American Now," ad
nauseum. All this left us cold. However, the song that brought
tears to my eyes was "Joan of Are":
Joan of Are, Joan of Are,
Do your eyes from the skies see the Joe?
Can't you see the drooping Fleur de Lys,
Can't you hear the tears of Normandy?
Joan of Are, Joan of Are,
Let your spirit guide us through.
A wake old France to vietory I
Joan of Are, we're ealling you.
Truly, nothing was sacred to Tin Pan Alley!
The Lusitania was sunk; the U.S. declared war in April 1917.
Our regiment was federalized on July 25, 1917, and in the late
summer we were on our way to basic training at Camp Logan,
near Houston, Texas.
A demagogic promise was widely circulated that things would
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 43

hc better if Blacks fought loyally. For example, there was the

statement of President Wilson: "Out of this conflict you must
t·xpect nothing Jess than the enjoyment of full citizenship rights." 3
This propaganda was immediately belied by the mounting wave of
ncw lynchings in the South, which claimed thirty-eight victims in
1917 and fifty-eight in 1918. Worst of all was the East St. Louis riot
in September 1917; at least forty Blacks were massacred in a
hloody pogrom that lasted several days. 4
Then there was the mutiny-riot of the Twenty-fourth Infantry in
Houston, Texas, where our regiment was to receive its basic
trainihg. Company G of our outfit was already in Houston at the
time, having been sent on as an advance detachment to prepare the
camp for our occupation. It was through them that I learned
cxactly what had happened.
Black soldiers of the Twenty-fourth lnfantry, an old Regular
Army regiment, had for months been subjected to insults and
ubuse by Houston police and civilians. The outfit had stationed its
military police in Houston, who were, in theory, supposed to
cooperate with local police in maintaining law and order among
soldiers on leave. Instead, the Black military police found
I hemselves the object of abuse, insults and beatings by local police.
This treatment of Black MPs by racist cops was evidently
cncouraged by the faet that they (the Blacks) were unarmed.
A report of the special on-the-spot investigator for the N AACP
published in the Crisis, its organ, reads:

In deference to the southern feeling against the arming of

Negroes and because ofthe expected cooperation ofthe City
Police Department, members of the provost guard were not
armed, thus creating a situation without precedent in the
history of this guard. A few carried clubs, but none of them
had guns, and most of them were without weapons of any
kind. They were supposed to call on white police officers to
make arrests. The feeling is strong among the colored people
of Houston that this was the real cause of the riot.
On the afternoon of August 23, two policemen, Lee Sparks
and Rufe Daniels-the former known to the colored people
as a brutal bully-entered the house ofa respectable colored
44 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

woman in an alleged search for a colored fugitive accused of

crap-shooting. Failing to find him, they arrested the wom­
an, striking and cursing her and forcing her out into the street
only partly clad. While they were waiting for the patrol wagon
a crowd gathered about the weeping woman who had become
hysterical and was begging to know why she was being
arrested.
In this crowd was a colored soldier, Private Edwards. Ed­
wards seems to have questioned the police officers or remon­
strated with them. Accounts differ on this point, but they all
agree that the officers immediately set upon him and beat him
to the ground with the butts of their six-shooters, con­
tinuing to beat and kick him while he was on the ground,
and arrested him. In the words of Sparks himself: "I beat that
nigger until his heart got right. He was a good nigger when I
got through with him."
Later Corporal Baltimore, a member of the military police,
approached the officers and inquired for Edwards, as it was
his duty to do. Sparks immediately opened fire and Balti­
more, being unarmed, fled .... They followed ...beat him up,
and arrested him. It was this outrage which infuriated the men
of the Twenty-fourth Infantry to the point of revolt. 5

When word of this outrage reached the camp, feeling ran high. It
was by no means the first incident of the kind that had occurred."
The white officers, feeling that the men would seek revenge,
ordered them disarmed. The arms were stacked in a tent guarded
by a sergeant. A group of men killed the sergeant, seized their
rifles, and under the leadership of Sergeant Vida Henry, an
eighteen-year veteran, marched on Houston in company strength.
When the soldiers left camp their slogan was "On to the Police
Station!" They entered town by way of San Felipe Street which ran
through the heart of the Black community. The faet that they took
this route and avoided the more direct one which lead through a
white neighborhood disproved the charge by local newspapers and
the police that they were out to shoot up the town and kill all
whites. Their target was clearly the Houston cops. On the way to
the station they shot every person who looked like a cop.
Finally meeting resistance, a battle ensued which ended with
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 45

seventeen whites, thirteen of them policemen, killed. The alarm

went out and a whole division of white troops, which was stationed
in the camp, was sent in to round up the mutineers. Finally
cornered, the men threw down their arms and surrendered, with
the exception of Sergeant Vida Henry, who committed suicide
rather than be taken.
The whole battalion of the Twenty-fourth Infantry, including
the mutineers, was hurriedly placed aboard a guarded troop train
and sent to Fort Huachuca, Arizona. Immediately upon arrival
there, those involved were given a drum-head court martial.
Thirteen were executed and forty-one others were sentenced to life
imprisonment. 6
The bodies of all the executed men were sent home to their
families for burial. I remember reading of the funeral of Corporal
Baltimore in some little town in Illinois.
Our regiment entrained for Camp Logan with our ardor
considerably dampened by these events. Indeed, we lefl Chicago in
an angry and apprehensive mood which lasted all the way to
Texas. We passed through East St. Louis in the middle of the
night. Those of us who were awake were brooding about the
massacre of our kinsmen which had recently taken place there. The
regiment traveled in three sections, a battalion each, in old style
tourist cars (sort of second-class Pullmans).
The next morning we arrived in Jonesboro, Arkansas, our first
stop on the other side of the Mason-Dixon line. We were in enemy
territory. For many of us it was our first time in the South.
Jonesboro was a division point-all three sections of the train
pulled up on sidings while the engines were being changed and the
cars serviced.
It was a bright, warm and sunny Sunday morning. It seemed
like the whole town had turned out at the station platform to see
the strange sight of armed Black soldiers. Whites were on one side
of the station platform and Blacks on the other. We pulled into the
station with the windows open and our 1903 Springfield rifles on
the tables in plain view of the crowd.
We were at our provocative best. We threw kisses at the white
girls on the station platform, calling out to them: "Come over here,
46 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

baby, give me a kiss!" "Look at that pretty redhead over there, ain't
she a beaut!" And so forth.
A passenger train pulled up beside us on the next track. There,
peering out the open window, was a real stereotype of an Arkansas
red-neck. The sight of him was provocation enough for Willie
Morgan, a buge Black in our company who was originally from
Mississippi. Morgan was sitting directly across from the white
man. He undoubtedly retained bitter memories of insults and
persecutions from the past and quickly took advantage of what
was perhaps his first opportunity to bait a cracker in his own
habitat.
He reached a big ham-like band through the window, grabbed
the fellow's face and shouted, "What the heil you staring at, you
peckerwood motherfucker?" The man pulled back, his hat flew
off. Bending down, he recovered it and then moved quickly to the
other side of his car, a frightened and puzzled look on his face. Our
whole car let out a big roar.
Then a yard man, walking along the side of the car, asked,
"Where are you boys going?"
"Goin' to see your momma, you cracker son-of-a-bitch!" came
the reply.
The startled man looked up in amazement.
All of us were hungry. We had been given only a couple of
apples for breakfast and now noticed that there were a number of
shops and stores in the streets behind the station. I believe our first
thought was to buy some food. The vestibule guards would not
allow us to take our rifles off the cars, so we left them on our seats
and proceeded to the stores in groups. As the stores became
crowded, and as the storekeepers were busy serving some of our
group, others started to snatch up any article in sight.
Cases of Coca-Cola, ginger ale and near-beer went back to the
cars. The path to the train was strewn with loot dropped by some
of the fellows. In the stores, some bought as others stole-this
spontaneously evolved pattern was employed in raids on all stores
in J onesboro and at other train stops along the road to Houston.
The only serious confrontation that took place that day
involved the group I was with. We crowded into a little store and a
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 47

fellow named Jeffries, one of my squad buddies, approached the

storekeeper who was standing behind the counter. Putting his
money down, he demanded a coke. Whereupon the guy said, "1'11
serve you one, but y'all can't drink it in heah."
"Why?" Jeffries asked, innocently.
"Cause we don't serve niggahs heah."
Just as we were about to jump him and wreck the place, Jeffries,
a comedian, decided to play it straight. He turned to us and said,
"N ow wait, fellahs, let me handle this. What the man is saying is
that you don't know your place."
Turning to the storekeeper he put his money down and with
feigned meekness said, "All right, mister, give me a coke. I know
my place, I'll drink it outside."
"Thank goodness this nigger's got some sense," the storekeeper
must have thought as he placed a coke on the counter. Jeffries
snatched up the bottle and immediately hit him on the head,
knocking him out cold.
We then proceeded to wreck the place. We took everything in
sight. Rushing back to the train, I heard a loud crash-a plate glass
window someone had smashed as a parting gift to the niggerhating
storekeeper.
Up to this time we had not seen any of our officers. They had
been up front in the first-class Pullmans. Many of them, we
suspected, were sleeping off the after effects of the parties held on
the eve of our departure. Major Hunt and Captain Hill now
appeared. and gave orders to the non-coms and the vestibule
guards to allow no one else to leave the train.
We waved goodbye to the Blacks on the station platform. They
looked frightened, sad and cowed. We were leaving, but they had to
stay and face the wrath of the local crackers.
The train headed to Texarkana, where the scene was repeated
though on a smaller scale. In Texarkana the train stopped only a
few minutes and we raided one store near the railroad station. I
was the last one out, running to the train with a box of pilfered
Havana cigars in my band. Nearing the train, I passed a couple of
local whites talking about the raid. One said to the other, "You see
all those niggers taking that man's stuff?"
48 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

"Y eah, I see it."

"Well, what are we going to do about it?"
I reached the train just as it was pulling out, relieved not to have
been left behind to find out the answer.
The next stop was Tyler, deep in the heart of Texas, scene of our
most serious confrontation. Here we confronted the law in the
person of the county sheriff. Tyler seemed to be a larger town than
the others. It was a division point and all three sections pulled up
on the sidings. As in Jonesboro, a large crowd had gathered at the
station; Blacks on one side, whites on the other. Again, with our
guns in view, we started flirting with the white women, throwing
kisses at them and so on.
We were very hungry. There had been some foul-up in logistics
so there wasn't any food on the train. All we had that day was a
couple of sandwiches and some coffee. We piled off the train and
ht;aded for the stores, elbowing whites out of the way. We didn't
carry our guns but many of us wore sheathed bayonets.
Major Hunt finally appeared but he was only able to stop a few
of us. By that time most of us were already ransacking the stores in
the immediate vicinity of the station. The path back to the station
was strewn with bottles of soft drinks, barns, fruits, wrappers from
the candy and cigarettes, etc. The major was frantically blowing
his whistle and calling the fellows to come back to the cars. Finally
we all got back and were eating our pilfered food, drinking our
near-beer and soda.
Suddenly a large white man stepped forward out of the crowd.
He wore a khaki uniform, a Sam Brown belt and a Colt forty-five
in his bolster. He approached Major Hunt and identified him­
self as the sheriff. (Or he might have been chief of police.) He
said he intended to search the train and recover the stolen
goods.
The major, a short, heavy-set Black man, said: "No, you don't.
This is a military train. Any searching to be done will be done by
our officers."
"I know," he said, "I want to accompany you."
"No you don't. Y ou won't set foot on this train."
The sheriff hesitated and looked around at the crowd of white
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 49

and Black. It was clearly a bitter pill for him to swallow, having for
the first time in his life to take low to a Black man in front of his
white constituents, as well as setting a bad example for the Blacks.
He pushed the unarmed major aside and walked forward.
"Come on you peckerwood son-of-a-bitch!" we hollered from
the car.
He approached the vestibule of our car where Jimmy Bland, a
mean, grey-eyed and light-skinned Black was on guard.
"Back! Get back or l'11 blow you apart!" Jimmy pushed the
sheriff in the belly with the barrel of his rifle. To further impress
upon him that the gun was loaded, he threw the bolt and ejected a
hullet. The sheriff, who had doubled over from the blow,
straightened up, his face ghastly white. He gasped out something
to the effect that he was going to report this affair to the
government and walked away. We all let out a tremendous
roar.
We arrived in Houston the next day, five days after the mutiny
of the Twenty-fourth. We were informed that five dollars would
be docked from each man's pay to cover the damage incurred
on the trip down. I believe we all felt that it was a small
price to pay for the lift in morale that resulted from our forays
on the trip.
We were greeted by our comrades from Company G of our
battalion on arriving at Camp Logan. They had been there at the
time of the mutiny-riot and gave us a detailed account of what had
happened. We expected to be confronted by the hostile white
population, but to our stuprise, the confrontation with the
Twenty-fourth seemed to have bettered the racial climate of this
typical Southern town. Houston in those days was a small city of
perhaps 100,000 people, not the metropolis it has now become.
The whites, especially the police, had learned that they couldn't
treat all Black people as they had been used to treating the local
Blacks.
I can't remember a single clash between soldiers and police
during our six-month stay in the area. On the contrary, if there
were any incidents involving our men, the local cops would
immediately call in the military police. There was also a notable
50 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

improvement in the morale of the local Black population, who

were quick to notice the change in attitude of the Houston cops.
The cops had obviously learned to fear retaliation by Black
soldiers if they committed any acts of brutality and intimidation in
the Black community.
Houston Blacks were no longer the cowed, intimidated people
they had been before the mutiny. They were proud of us and it was
clear that our presence made them feel better. A warm and friendly
relationship developed between our men and the Black commun­
ity. The girls were especially proud of us. Local Blacks would point
out places where some notorious, nigger-hating cop had been
killed.
"See those hullet holes in the telephone pole over there," they'd
say. "That's where that bad cop, old Pat Grayson, got his."
"Those Twenty-fourths certainly were sharpshooters!"
I occasionally took my laundry to an elderly woman who had .
Icnown Corporal Baltimore. She told me what a nice young man he
was.
"I hear he was hanged," she said.
"That's right," I replied.
Tears came to her eyes and she cluck-clucked. "He left some of
his laundry here; you're about his size, you want it?''
"Yes, I'll take it."
She handed me several pairs of khaki trousers and some
underwear and shirts all washed and starched and insisted that I
pay only the cost of the laundry.
In Camp Logan, our Black Regiment, a part of the Thirty-third
lllinois National Guard Division, went into intensive training. Wt;
had high esprit de cQrps. Our officers lost no opportunity to lecture
us on the importance of race loyalty and race pride. They went out
to disprove the ideas spread by the white brass to the effect that
Black soldiers could be good, but only when officered by whites.
Our solidarity was strengthened when the Army attempted to
remove Colonel Charles R. Young from the regiment. Young was
the first Black West Point graduate and the highest ranking Black
officer in the Regular Army. He wanted to go overseas very badly,
but it was quite clear that they did not want a Black officer of his
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 51

rank over there. He was examined by an Army medical board and

found unfit for overseas service. We all knew it was a fraud. It was
in all the Black papers and was known by Blacks throughout the
country.
We men didn't let our officers down. We were out to show the
whites that not only were we as good in everything as they, but
better. In Camp Logan, our regiment held division championships
in most of the sports: track, boxing, baseball, etc. We had the
highest number of marksmen, sharpshooters and expert riflemen.
Of course, there was no socializing between Blacks and whites, but
it was clear that we had the respect, if not the friendship, of many
of the white soldiers in the division.
In faet, despite all the efforts of the command, there was a
certain degree of solidarity between Black and white soldiers in our
division. In Spartanburg, North Carolina, white soldiers from
New York came to the defense of their Black fellows of the
Fifteenth New York when the latter were attacked by Southern
whites. Many of us felt that in the case of a showdown in town with
the local crackerdom, we could get support from some of the white
members of our division who happened to be around. At least, we
felt they would not side with the crackers against us.
The high morale of the regiment, the new tolerance (at least on
the part of the local white establishment), the new spirit of
Houston Blacks were all displayed during the parade of our
division in downtown Houston. About two months before our
departure, we received notice from headquarters tbat the regiment
was to participate in a parade. We were to pass in review before
Governor Howden of Illinois, our host governor of Texas, high
brass from the War Department and other notables.
We spent a couple of days getting our clothes and equipment
into shape. We washed and starched our khaki uniforms, bleached
our canvas leggings snow white, cleaned and polished our rifles
and side arms, shined our shoes to a mirror gloss. On the day of the
parade, we marched the five miles into town, haltingjust before we
reached the center of the city. We wiped the dust from our rifles
and shoes and continued the march.
Executing perfectly the change from squad formation to
52 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

platoon front, we entered the main square. With our excellent

band playing the Illinois March, we passed the reviewing stand
with our special rhythmic swagger which only Black troops could
affect. We were greeted by a thunderous ovation from the crowds,
especially the Blacks.
I believe all of Black Houston turned out that day. The next
morning, the Houston Pos�. a white daily, headlined a story about
the parade and declared that "the best looking outfit in the parade
was the Negro Eighth Illinois."
Given final leave, we bid good-bye to our girls and friends in
Houston. After that, security was clamped down and no one was
allowed to leave the camp. A few days later, we boarded the train
and were on our way to a port of embarkation. We didn't know
where we were headed but suspected it was New York. lnstead, five
days later, we wound up in Camp Stewart near Newport News,
VJrginia.
In Newport News, we barely escaped a serious confrontation
with some local crackers and the police. The first batches of our
fellows given passes to the town were subjected to the taunts and
slurs of the local cops.
"Why don't you darkies stay in camp? We don't want you
downtown making trouble."
Several fights ensued. Some of the men from our regiment were
arrested and others literally driven out of town. They returned to
the barracks, some of them badly beaten, and told us what had
happened. A repetition of the riot of the Twenty-fourth Infantry
at Houston was narrowly averted, as a number of us grabbed our
guns and were about to head downtown. We were turned back,
however, by our officers, who intervened and pleaded with us to
return to our barracks. Among them was Lt. Benote Lee, whom we
all loved and respected.
"Don't play into the bands of these crackers," he said. "We'll be
leaving any day now. All they want is to get us in trouble on the eve
of our departure."
"How about our guys who were arrested?" we asked.
"Don't worry. We'll get them out."
We returned to the barracks and, sure enough, our comrades
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 53

were returned the next day, escorted by white MPs. We spent the
next days on standby orders, apparently waiting for our ship to
arrive. After that, all leaves were cancelled.
It was on the same day, I believe, that we first learned that we
had been separated from our Thirty-third Illinois Division.
Henceforth, we were to be known as the 370th Infantry.
One morning shortly after this, we looked down into the harbor
and saw three big ships. We knew then that we would soon be on
our way. The following morning the regiment marched down to
the dockside to board ship. Yet another incident occurred at the
dock. We lined up in company front facing the harbor and halted a
few yards from the fence which ran the entire length of the dock.
Facing us in front of the fence were several groups of loitering
white native males, probably dockworkers. They stared at us as if
we were some strange species. Our captain apparently wanted to
move the company doser to the fence and gave the command,
"Forward march." But he "forgot" to call "halt." That was all we
needed.
We were still angry about the beating of our comrades in
downtown Newport News a few days before. We marched
directly into the whites, closing in on them, cursing and cuffing
them with fists and rifle butts, kicking and kneeing them; in short,
applying the skills of close order combat we had iearned during
our basic training. Of course, we didn't want to kill anybody, we
just wanted to rough them up a bit.
We were finally stopped by the excited cries of our officers,
"Halt! Halt!" We withdrew, opening up a path through which our
victims ran or limped away. Then at the command of "Attention!
Right face!" we marched along the dock in columns of two's and
finally boarded the ship.

ON TO FRANCE

We sailed for France in early April 1918, on the old USS

Washington, a passenger liner converted into a troop ship. I have
crossed the Atlantic many times since, but I can truthfully say that
54 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

I have never experienced rougher seas. Our three ships sailed out
of Newport News without escort. Of course, we were worried;
there were rumors of German submarines. Our anxiety was
relieved when in mid-ocean we picked up two escort vessels, one
of which was the battle cruiser Covington. When we reached the
war zone, about three days out of Brest, a dozen destroyers took
over, circling our ships all the way into port.
It took us sixteen days in all to reach Brest, France, where we
arrived on April 22. We were so weak on landing that one-half of
the regiment fell out while climbing the hill to the old Napoleon
Barracks where we were quartered. Immediately upon our arrival,
we were put to work cleaning up ourselves and our equipment,
notwithstanding our weakened condition.
The next morning we passed in review befare same U.S. and
French big brass. The following day we boarded a train. We
q;ossed the whole of France from east to west and detrained at
Granvillars, a village in French Alsace, close to the Swiss frontier.
There we found out that we had been brigaded with and were to be
an integral part of the French Army.
The reason we were separated from the white Americans was, as
the white brass put it, "to avoid friction." But the American
command of General Pershing was not satisfied just to separate us;
they tried to extend the long arm of Jim Crow to the French. The
American Staff Headquarters, through its French mission, tried to
make sure that the French understood the status of Blacks in the
U nited States. Their Seere! Information Bulletin Concerning
Black American Troops is now notorious, though I did not Iearn
of it until after I had returned from France. The Army of
Democracy spoke to its French allies:
It is important for French officers who have been called upon
to exercise command over black American troops, or to live
in close contact with them, to have an exact idea of the
position occupied by Negroes in the United States. The
increasing number of Negroes in the United States (about
15,000,000) would create for the white race in the Republic a
menace of degeneracy were it not that an impassable gulf has
been made between them....
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 55

Although a citizen of the United States, the black man is

regarded by the white American as an inferior being with
whom relations of business or service only are possible. The
black is constantly being censured for his want ofintelligence
and discretion, his Jack of civic and professional conscience,
and for his tendency toward undue familiarity.
The vices of the Negro are a constant menace to the American
who has to repress them sternly. For instance, the black Ameri­
can troops in France have, by themselves, given rise to as
many complaints for attempted rape as the rest ofthe army....
Conclusion:
1. We must prevent the rise of any pronounced degree of
intimacy between French officers and black officers. We may
be courteous and amiable with these last, but we cannot deal
with them on the same plane as with the white American
officers without deeply wounding the latter. We must not eat
with them, must not shake bands or seek to talk or meet with
them outside the requirements of military service.
2. We must not commend too highly the black American
troops, particularly in the presence of [white] Americans....
3. Make a point of keeping the native cantonment popu­
lation from "spoiling" the Negroes. [White] Americans
become greatly incensed at any public expression ofintimacy
between white women with black men.... Familiarity on the
part of white women with black men is furthermore a source
of profound regret to our experienced colonials, who see in it
an overweening menace to the prestige of the white race. 7

Apparently this classic statement of U.S. racism was ineffectual

with the French troops and people, even though it was supple­
mented by wild stories circulated by the white U.S. troops. These
included the claim that Blacks had tails like monkeys, which was
especially told to women, including those in the brothels.
Our regiment was not sorry to be incorporated into the French
military. In faet, most of us thought it was the hest thing that could
have happened. The French treated Blacks well-that is, as human
beings. There was no Jim Crow. At the time, I thought the French
seemed to be free of the virulent U.S. brand of racism.
The American Command not only wanted its front line to be all
56 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

white, it also wanted all regiment commanders (even those under

the French) to be white. Consequently, our Black colonel,
Franklin A. Dennison; our lieutenant colonel, James H. Johnson;
and two of our majors (battalion commanders) were replaced by
white officers. Colonel Dennison was sent back to the States,
kicked upstairs, given the rank of brigadier general, and placed in
command of the Officer Training Camp for Colored Men at Fort
Des Moines, Iowa. Although our first reaction was anger, we
became reconciled to the shift.
Our new white colonel, T. A. Roberts, seemed to be warm,
paternalistic and deeply concerned about the welfare of his men.
He -would often make the rounds of the"field kitchens, tasting the
food and admonishing the cooks about ill-prepared food. He even
gave instructions on how the various dishes should be cooked.
Naturally, this made a great hit with the men. Our confidence in
him was high because we felt that he was a professional soldier who
k�ew his business. 8
I remember the day the new colonel took over. The regiment
formed in the village square. Colonel Roberts introduced himself.
He seemed quite modest. He said that he was honored to be our
new commander and that he knew the record of our regiment
dating back to 1892 and its exploits during the Spanish-American
War.
"Since West Point," he said, "I have always served with colored
troops-the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry." He then turned to Captain
Patton, our Black regiment adjutant. "Captain Patton knows me,
he was one of my staff sergeants in the old Tenth Cavalry." Patton
nodded.
The colonel smiled and pointed to our top sergeant. "Over there
is Mark Thompson. I remember him when he was company clerk
in Troop C of the Tenth Cavalry." He went on to point out a dozen
or so officers and non-coms with whom he had served in the Ninth
or Tenth Cavalry. "These men will tel1 you where I stand with
respect to the race issue and everything else. We are going into the
lines soon and I am sure that the men of this regiment will pile up a
record of which your people and the whole of America will be
proud."
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 57

The process of integration into the French Army was thorough.

The American equipment with which we had trained at home was
taken away and we were issued French weapons-rifles, carbines,
machine guns, automatic rifles, pistols, helmets, gas masks and
knapsacks. We were even issued French rations-with the excep­
tion of the wine, which our officers apparently felt we could not
handle. We got all the wine we wanted anyway from the French
troops. They were issued a liter (about a quart) a day and for a few
centimes could buy more at the canteen.
The regiment was completely reorganized along French lines,
with a machine gun company to every battalion. My Company E
of the Second Battalion was converted into Machine Gun
Company No. 2. We entered a six-week period of intensive
training under French instructors to master our new weapons. Our
main weapon was the old air-cooled Hotchkiss. And we had to
master the enemy's gun, the water-cooled Maxim.
The period of French training was not an easy one. It was a
miserable spring-dark and dreary, and it rained incessantly the
whole time we were there. There was a lot of illness-grippe,
pneumonia and bronchitis. We lost a number of men, several from
our company. The men were in a sullen mood as the time
approached for the regiment to move up to the front.
Disgruntlement was often voiced in the now familiar form of
"What are we doing over here? Germans ain't done nothing to us.
lt's those crackers we should be fighting." While we were lined up
in the square one day, our captain took the occasion to comment
on \bese sentiments.
"Well," he said, "l've been hearing all this stuff about guys
saying that they weren't going to fight the Germans. Well, we
certainly can't make you fight if you don't want to. But 1'11 tel1 you
one thing we can and will do is take you up to the front where the
Germans are, and you can use your own judgment as to whether
you fight them or not."
In early June 1918, we entered the trenches at the St. Mihiel
Salient near the Swiss frontier as a part of the Tenth Division of
the French Army under General Mittelhauser. We were inter­
mingled with the French troops in the Tenth Division so that our
58 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

officers and men might observe and profit by close association

with veteran soldiers. At that time St. Mihiel was a quiet sector.
Except for occasional shelling, desultory machine gun and rifle
fire, nothing much occurred. We lost no men.
It was here, however, that we made our first acquaintance with
two pests-the rat and the louse-whom thereafter were our
inseparable companions for our entire stay at the front. Undoubt­
edly there were more rats than men; there were hordes of them.
Regiments and battalions of rats. They were the largest rats I had
ever seen. We soon became tired of killing them; it seemed a wasted
effort. Some of the rats became quite bold, even impudent. They
seemed to say, "l've got as much right here as you have." They
would walk along, pick up food scraps and eat them right there in
front of you! The dark dug-outs were their real havens. When we
slept we would keep our heads covered with blankets as protection
against rat bites. This may seem flimsy protection, but we were so
cbnditioned that we would awake at any attempt on the part of a
rat to bite through the blanket. I have often wondered why there
were so few rat bites. Probably the rats felt that it was not
worthwhile fooling with live humans when there were so many
dead ones around. We soon got used to the rats and learned to live
with them.
It was the same with the lice. I woke up lousy after my first sleep
in a dug-out. My reaction to the pests took the foliowing
progression: first, I was besieged by interminable itching, followed
by depression. Then I began to lose appetite and weight, finally
becoming quite ill. All this was within a period of a few days. Most
of the fellows exhibited the same symptoms.
One might say that our illness was mainly psychological, but it
was nonetheless real. Since this was a quiet front, I had no
difficulty in getting permission to go back to the rear for a few
hours. Foolishly, I thought if I could get cleaned up just once, I
would feel a lot better. I got some delousing soap, took a bath and
washed my clothes. I then returned to the front, stood machine gun
watch and then went into the dug-out for a nap. Needless to say, I
woke up lousy again.
I told my troubles to an old French veteran who had been
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 59

assigned to my machine gun squad. "Oh, it's nothing! You must

forget all about it," he said. "You'll get used to it. I've been at the
front for nearly four years and I've been lousy all the time, except
when I was in the hospital or at home on leave."
I took his advice which was all to the good, because I was not to
be rid of these pests until six months later during my sojourn in
hospitals at Mantes-sur-Seine and Paris after the Armistice. Even
then, it was only a temporary respi te, for I was reinfected upon
rejoining my regiment at the embarkation port of Brest. After a
brief stay with the regiment, I was teturned to the hospital, again
deloused, only to be reinfected again on the hospital ship returning
to the States. I parted company with my last louse at the
debarkation hospital at Grand Central Palace in New York City.
We remained in the St. Mihiel sector about two weeks. We were
then withdrawn and moved into a sector in the Argonne Forest
near Verdun, site of the great battles of 1916; we arrived there in
late July 1918. We were still brigaded with the Tenth French
Division. The area around Verdun was a vast cemetery with a half
million crosses of those who had perished in that great holocaust,
each bearing the legend, Mort Pour La France.
The Argonne at that time was also a quiet sector. But it was here
that we suffered our first casualty, Private Robert M. Lee of
Chicago. The incident occurred during machine gun target
practice. The first and second line trenches ran along parallel hills
about a hundred yards apart. The French had set up a make-shift
range in the valley in between the trenches. Behind the gun there
was a two or three foot rise in the earth, on which a number of us
French and Blacks were sitting, chewing the rag, awaiting our turn
at the machine gun.
Suddenly, there was a short burst of machine gun fire. It was not
from our guns. Bullets whizzed over our heads-they seemed to be
coming from behind the target. All of us scrambled to get into the
communication trench which opened on the valley. Second
Lieutenant Binga DesMond, our platoon commander (and the
U niversity of Chicago's great sprinting star), fell from the
embankment on top of me. Fortunately, he was not hit. But even
with his 180 . pounds on my back, I am sure I made that ten or
60 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

fifteen yards to the communication trench, crawling on my bands

and knees, as fast as he could have sprinted the distance!
The fire was coming from behind the target. What obviously
had happened was that the Germans had cased the position of our
guns and had somehow got around behind the target and waited
for a pause in our target practice to open fire on us. We never
found out how they did it, for none of us knew the exact
topography of the place. The French of course knew it, but they
had assured us that the place was safe and that they had been using
the range for months.
We were crouched down, panting, in the communication trench
for about five minutes after the German guns ceased fire. The
French lieutenant (bless his soul) then sent a French gun crew out
to get the gun. To our great surprise they also brought back Robert
M. Lee. He was quite dead, with hullets right through the heart. He
h�d evidently been hit by the first burst and had fallen forward in
front of the embankment. All of us were deeply saddened by the
incident.
No one spoke as we bore his body back to the rear. He was only
nineteen, a very sweet fellow, and he was our first casualty. We
buried him down in the valley, beside the graves of those fallen at
Verdun. The funeral was quite impressive. He was given a hero's
burial, with representatives both from our regiment and our
French counterparts. We were especially impressed by the appear­
ance of General Mittelhauser who came down from Division
Headquarters to express condolences and appreciation to the
Black troops now under his command.

THE SOISSONS SECTOR

Despite the faet that we had been in a quiet sector, it was still the
front lines with its daily tensions of anticipated attack. In the
middle of August, we were pulled out of the Argonne sector and
sent to rest behind the lines near Bar-le-Duc. We were deeply
pleased by the hospitality and kindness extended to us by the
townspeople there. They invited us into their homes and plied us
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 61

with food and wine. Half-jokingly they told us to come back after
the war and we could have our pick of the girls. As we did
throughout our stay in France, we deported ourselves well. For
pleasures of the flesh, there were a number of legal houses of
prostitution, or "houses of pleasure" as they were called by the
French. It was with regret that we left that area.
By this time, we had become an integral part of the French
Army. Along with our French equipment, training and so forth,
we had affected the style of the Frenchpoi/u(doughboy). Theflaps
of our overcoats were buttoned back in arder to give us more leg
room while on the march, as was their style. Like the French
infantry, we used walking sticks, which helped to ease the burden
of our seventy pounds of equipment. French peasants along the
road, hearing our strange language and noticing our color, would
often mistake us for French colonials. Not Senegalese, who were
practically all black but Algerians, Moroccans or Sudanese. We
would swing along the road to the tune of our favorite marching
song:
My old mistress promised me,
Raise a ruckus tonight,
When she died she'd set me free,
Raise a ruckus tonight.
She /ived so long her head got bald,
Raise a ruckus tonight.
She didn't get to set me free at all,
Ra;se a ruckus tonight !
Oh, come along, little children come along,
While the moon is shining bright,·
Get on board on down the river flow,
Gonn·a' raise a ruckus tonight.
But we had not escaped the long arm of American racism. We
were rudely confronted with this reality upon our arrival in a small
town on the Compiegne front in the department of Meuse. We
entrained here for our next front. The regiment was confronted
dramatically with the effects of the racist campaign launched by
62 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

the American high brass.

Upon entering the town, the regiment was drawn up in battalion
formation in the square. Before being assigned to billets, we were
informed by the battalion commander that a Black soldier from a
labor battalion had been court martialed and hanged in the very
square where we were standing. It had happened just a few weeks
before our arrival. His crime was the raping of a village girl. His
body had been left hanging there for twenty-four hours, as a
demonstration of American justice.
"As a result," he told us, "you may find the town population
hostile. In case this is so," the major warned, "you are not to be
provoked or to take umbrage at any discourtesies, but are to
deport yourselves as gentlemen at all times." In any case, we were
to be there only for a few days, during which time we were to
remain close to our barracks. Then, in a lowered voice, he
mwttered, "This is what I have been told to tel1 you."
We kept close to our billets the first day or so, but then gradually
ventured further into town. At first, the townsfolk seemed to be
aloof, but the coolness was gradually broken down, probably as a
result of our correct deportment, especially our attitude towards
the children (with whom we always immediately struck up
friendships). Friendly relations were finally established with the
villagers. When we asked about the hanging, they shrugged the
matter off.
"So what? That was only one soldier. The others were nice
enough." When asked why they had been so aloof when we first
arrived, they said it was the result of the warnings of the white
officers. "They didn't want us to fraternize with the Blacks."
Continuing the conversation, they seemed puzzled about why
the sentence had been so severe and the body barbarously left
exposed in the square. "Tres brutale, tres horrible!" they ex­
claimed. With regard to the girl, "Ah, she had been raped many
times before," one of them jeered.
After two weeks of rest, the regiment began to move by stages
toward the front lines again. A few days later, we boarded a train
consisting of a long line of box-cars. Bach car was marked:
"Quarante hommes ou huit chevaux. "(Forty men or eight horses.)
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 63

The last couple of months had been quiet and relatively pleasant,
with the exception of the Lee incident and the events just related.
But now, we felt, we were going into the thick of it. The
premonition was confirmed the very next morning when we woke
(that is, those of us who had been able to sleep in such crowded
conditions).
We were passing through Chåteau-Thierry. There could be no
doubt about it, even though part of the sign had been blown away
and only the word "Thierry" remained. The woods around the
station and Belleau Woods, a few miles further on, looked like they
had been hit by a cyclone: broken and uprooted trees, gaping shell
holes, men from the Graves Registration walking around with
crosses, Black Pioneers removing ammunition. All were grim
reminders of the great battles that had been fought there by
American troops only several weeks before.
We were on the Soissons front, where we became part of the
famous Armee Mangin. General Mangin (le boucher or the
butcher as he was called by the French) was commander of the
Tenth Army of France, among whom were a number of shock
troops: Chausseurs Alpines, Chausseurs d' Afrique (Algerians and
Moroccans), Senegalese riflemen and the Foreign Legion. His
army was pivotal in breaking the Hindenburg Lineabout Soissons.
On this front, we were brigaded with the Fifty-ninth French
Division, under the command of General Vincendon.
We bypassed Thierry and Belleau Woods and detrained at the
village of Vil1ers-Cotterets, the birthplace of Alexandre Dumas.
The atmosphere was charged with expectancy. Observation
balloons hung like giant sausages on the horizon. Big guns
rumbled ominously in the distance. A steady stream of ambulances
carrying wounded jammed the roads leading from the front.
Obviously a big battle was in progress not too far away. But it
turned out that we were not going into that sector. We left the
village and marched west to Crepy-en-Valois. Turning north
through the Compiegne Forest, we reached the Aisne River at a
point near Vic-sur-Aisne and continued on to Resson-le-Long
where we established our depot company. The march from the
railhead to Resson took about three days. It was a forced march
64 BLACK. BOLSHEVIK.

and covered about twenty-five kilometers (fifteen miles) a day.

This was pretty rough after the restless night we had spent on the
crowded train. As one of the company wags observed, "One thing
'bout these kilomeeters, they sho' will kill you if you keep on
meetin' 'em."
Our regiment spent six months in the lines in all. We took part in
the fifty-nine day drive of Mangin's Tenth Army which ended on
the day of the Armistice. During that period, one or another of our
units was always under fire or fighting. Our toughest battles were
at the Death Valley Jump Off near the Aisne Canal, the taking of
Mont Singes (Monkey Mountain which was later renamed Hill
370 in honor of our regiment), fighting at a railroad embankment
northwest of Guilleminet Farm, and the advance into the Hinden­
burg Line at the Oise-Aisne Triangle.
It was in the battles on the Hindenburg Line that we met the
strongest enemy resistance and sustained most of our losses. The
enemy resistance was broken in these battles and they began a
general withdrawal, at first orderly and accompanied by brief
rearguard actions. Finally, there was the flight to the Belgian
frontier, destroying roads and railroads on orders to impede our
advance. After Laon, their flight was so precipitous that we had
difficulty maintaining contact. We entered many villages which
they had left the day before.
Our outfit was the first allied troops to enter the fortified city of
Laon, wresting it from the Germans after four years of war. We
were greeted with tremendous elation by the population, who had
lived under German occupation the whole af that period.
The regiment was highly praised by the French. It won
twenty-one Distinguished Service Crosses, sixty-eight Croix de
Guerre and one Distinguished Service Medal. In the whole two
months' drive, casualties were 500 killed and wounded-a total of
about one-fifth of the regiment. These casualties were light when
compared with those of Black regiments on other fronts. For
example, the 371st Infantry of drafted men lost 1,065 out of 2,384
men in three days' fighting during the great September defensive
on the Compiegne Front. I believe that the German resistance on
these other fronts, east and west of Soissons, was more stubborn
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 65

than on our front.

All of our Black regiments were fortunate to have been brigaded
with the French. In this respect, the American High Command did
us a bigfavor, unintentionally, I am sure. For as far as we were able
to observe, the French made no discrimination in the treatment of
Black officers and men, with whom they fraternized freely. They
regarded us as brothers-in-arms.
Similarly, the French people in the villages in which we stopped
or were stationed were uniformly courteous and friendly, and we
made many friends. I must say that we were also on our hest
behavior. I don't remember a single incident of misbehavior on the
part of our men toward French villagers. The latter were quick to
notice this and to contrast our gentlemanly deportment with the
rudeness of the white Americans. Many of the white soldiers made
no effort to hide their disdain for the French (whom they regarded
as inferiors) and commonly referred to them as "frogs."
But even as we fought, we were being stabbed in the back by the
American High Command. We were not to learn, however, until
our return to the States of the slanderous, racist document issued
by the American General Staff Headquarters through its brain­
washed French Mission (the Secret lnformation Concerning
Black American Troops referred to earlier).
We learned also that the hanging of the Black soldier on the
Compiegne Front was not . an isolated incident, but part of a
deliberate campaign conducted by higher and lower echelons in
the American Command to influence French civilians against
Blacks. The campaign focused on the effort to build up the Black
rapist scare among them.
Such was a memorandum issued by headquarters of the
Ninety-second Division (a Black division officered largely by
whites) on August 21, 1918. lts purpose was to "prevent the
presence of colored troops from being a menace to women." The
memorandum read in part:
On account of increasing frequency of the crime of rape, or
attempted rape, in this Division, drastic preventive mea­
sures have become necessary... Until further notice, there will
be a check of all troops of the 92nd Division every hour daily
66 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

between reveille and 11 P.M., with a written record showing

how each check was made, by whom, and the result...the one­
mile limit regulation will be strictly enforced at all times, and
no passes will be issued except to men of known reliability.

This was followed the next day by another memorandum saying

that the commander-in-chief of the American Expeditionary
Forces "would send the 92nd Division back to the States or break
it up into labor battalions as unfit to bear arms in France, if efforts
to prevent rape were not taken more seriously."9
As a result, Dr. Robert R. Moton of Tuskegee was sent by
President Wilson and the secretary of war to investigate the
charges. He found only one case of rape in the whole division of
15,000 men. Two other men who were from labor battalions in the
Ninety-second area were convicted. One of these was hanged, and
I'm sure that this was the unfortunate soldier whom we saw on the
Cc,mpiegne Front. General headquarters was forced to admit that
the crime of rape, as later stated by Moton, "was no more
prevalent among coloured soliders than among white, or any
other soldiers." 10
This whole racist smear of Black troops, I was to conclude later,
represented but an extension to France of the anti-Black racist
campaign then current in the States. It was designed to maintain
Black subjugation and prevent its erosion by liberal racial
attitudes of the French. Back in the States, the campaign was
marked by an upturn of lynchings during the war years, with
thirty-eight Black victims in 1917 and half again that number in the
foliowing year. Even then, things were working up to the bloody
riots of 1919.
In contrast to all of this, the appreciation of the French for
Black soldiers from the U.S. was shown by the accolade given by
the French division commander, General Vincendon, to our
regiment. On December 19, 1918, we were transferred from the
French Army back to the American Army. On that day, General
Order 4785, directed to the Fifty-ninth Division of the Army of
France, was read to the officers and men of the 370th. It
commended us for our contributions to France. I remember being
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 67

struck by the poetry of the language, it was all beautifully French

to me:
We at first, in September at Mareuil-sur-Ourcq, admitted
your fine appearance under arms, the precision of your
review, the suppleness of your evolutions that presented to the
eye the appearance of silk unrolling its waves...
Further on in remembering our dead, the communique read:
The blood of your comrades who fell on the soil of France,
mixed with the blood of our soldiers, renders indissoluble
the bonds of affection that unite us. 11

THE ROAD HOME

The road back from Soissons lay through the old battlefields
where we had fought a couple of months before. Near Anizy-le­
Chåteau there were crosses marking the graves of some of our
comrades who had died in the fighting there. We paused before the
graves, seeking out those of the comrades we knew. We all had the
same thoughts: "What rotten luck that they should die almost in
sight of victory."
Among the crosses, there was one marked "Sergeant Theodore
Gamelin." Gamelin hadn't died in combat. I remember the
incident clearly. We were all lined up in some hastily dug trenches
that morning, waiting for the "over the top" signal. The cooks had
just distributed reserved rations. These consisted of a half-loaf of
French bread (not the crispy white kind, but a coarse grayish loaf
baked especially for the troops, which we called "war bread") and a
big bar of chocolate. Somehow, Gamelin had missed out on these
rations. Jump-off time was drawing near. He looked around and
his eyes fixed upon a private named Brown, who was sitting on the
firing step, putting his rations in a knapsack. Now, Private Brown
was one of those quiet, meek little fellows. He always took low,
was never known to fight. But Brown was the type of man, I have
observed, who can become dangerous. This is particularly true in a
combat situation where one doesn't know whether one will live five
68 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

minutes longer. Gamelin, a big bullying type, an amateur boxer

and very unpopular with his men, called to Brown:
"Give me some of that bread, Brown. I didn't get my rations."
"Now, that's just too bad, sergeant," Brown responded. "l'm not
going to give you any of this bread. lt's not my fault you missed
your rations."
. Gamelin, with one hand on his pistol, moved as though he were
going to seize the bread. Brown had his rifle lying across his lap. He
simply raised it and coolly pulled the trigger. The sergeant fell
dead!
The platoon commander heard the commotion and ran to the
spot, inquiring about what had happened. The men told him that
Gamelin was trying to take Brown's reserve rations and had made
a move toward his pistol. Brown, they said, had shot in self-def ense.
Obviously nothing could be done about Brown in . those
circumstances. So the lieutenant said, "Consider yourself under
artest, Brown. We will take this matter up after this action."
Unfortunately, Brown was killed a few days later. The memory
of this incident was on our minds as we viewed Gamelin's grave.
His helmet hung on a cross, which ironically bore the inscription
"Sergeant Theodore Gamelin-Mort Pour La France (Died for
France), September 1918."
I had gone through six months at the front without a scratch or a
day of illness. But as we neared Soissons, I began to feel faint and
light-headed. By the time we reached the city, I had developed
quite a high fever. It was the period of the first great flu epidemic
which wreaked havoc among U.S. troops in France. I reported to
the infirmary and lined up with a group of about fifty men. The
medical sergeant took our temperatures and then tied tags to our
coats. I looked at mine and it read "influenza." We were evacuated
to a field hospital near Soissons, where I remained for about five
days. After that, we boarded a hospital train and were told that we
were going to the big base hospital in Paris. Now, I liked that.
I had never seen Paris and was most anxious to visit the famed
city before going home. There were two of us in the compartment,
another soldier from the regiment and myself. I felt a little drowsy,
so I told my compartment mate that I was going to take a little nap
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 69

and to wake me up when the chow came around. I "awoke" five

days later in a French hospital at Mantes-sur-Seine, near Paris.
They had put me off the train as an emergency case just before
Paris. I came out of a coma to find a number of strange people
around my bed-nurses who were Catholic nuns, doctors and a
number of patients. They were all smiling. "Thank God, young
man," said the doctor, "we thought we were going to Jose you.
You've been in a coma for five days, but you're going to be all right
now."
"Where am I? Is this Paris?" I asked.
"No, this is Mantes-sur-Seine, close to Paris. They had to put
you off here as an emergency case."
"What's wrong with me?" I asked.
"Oh, you've had a little kidney infection and it has affected your
heart."
"That sounds bad," I said.
"Well, you're young and have a remarkable constitution. You'll
pull through all right-you're out of danger now," he assured me.
I remained in the hospital for about a month, receiving the
kindest and most solicitous attention from nurses, doctors and
patients. All seemed to regard me as their special charge. No one
spoke English, but I got along all right. It was like a crash course in
French. They told me I had a beautiful accent. They brought in an
old lady to talk English with me, but she bo red me to death. Really,
my French was better than her English. She came once and didn't
return.
I was feeling much better when the head sister came to me one
evening to tell me I was to leave the next morning for Paris and the
American hospital at Neuilly.
"You've never been to Paris, have you?'' she asked.
"No," I said.
"Well, you've got a treat coming!"
I was filled with great expectations. The next morning, after
embracing all my fellow patients and exchanging warm goodbyes
with the doctor and sisters, the head nurse ( or sister) took me out in
front of the hospital where an American ambulance was waiting.
"Hop in, buddy," said the driver.
70 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

"Haywood, be sure to write us when you get back to Chicago,"

said the sister. "Remember we are your friends and want to know
how you are getting along."
I promised that I would. As we pulled out, she stood on the road
waving a white handkerchief and continued to wave it as long as
we were in sight. I never wrote them, but often thought of them.
Paris, you wondrous city! I was feeling good that morning as we
pulled into the hospital at Neuilly. The hospital was situated on the
Avenue Neuilly near the Boulevard de la Grande Armee, only a
few blocks from the Are de Triomphe. It was a veritable palace. I
was assigned to a ward in which there were only four guys, three
Australians and one white American from Wisconsin. They
greeted me and gave me a run-down on the situation. They were
having a hall seeing Paris, taking in all the events, theaters, race
tracks, boxing and girls. I don't believe that I saw a real sick man in
that hospital. There were some of course, but they must have been
seciuded in some out of sight wards. We were all convalescents in
our ward. A couple were recuperating from wounds received at the
front.
"What do you do for money?" I asked.
"Oh, we don't worry about that-just stick around a while and
we'll show you the ropes."
Under their tutelage, it didn't take me long to catch on. At that
time there were dozens of rich American women, including a
number from the social register in Paris. They were under the
auspices of the Red Cross and had taken over the hospital and its
patients as their special "war duty." They would organize excur­
sions, get tickets for shows, sports events, etc. Coming to the
hospital in relays, they would leave buge boxes of chocolates and
other goodies.
We were showered with gifts-Gillette razors, Waterman
fountain pens, and even some serviceable wrist watches if you
asked for them. They would come in waves. Scarcely had one
group left when another would come, leaving the same gifts. The
guys had it down perfect. They always left one man on watch in the
ward. He was there in case the gals would come in while the others
were out and receive all the presents and gifts for them. He would
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 71

point to the three unoccupied beds (there were only five of us in an

eight bed ward) and pretend that their occupants were out in the
streets. He would suggest that the presents be left for them, also.
Old Wisconsin Slim was the real genius in all this. He even hung a
couple of crosses over the unoccupied beds to give more substance
to the fiction that they were occupied.
Every morning we would gather all our presents, take them to
the gate, and sell them for a good price to the French who gathered
there to buy them. We would then return to the ward and divide
the "swag." Razors and fountain pens seemed to be rare in France
at that time. The going rate for razors was about ten francs ($2)
and for Waterman fountain pens even more. All this was carried
out under the benign gaze of the hospital authorities.
Discipline was lax, almost nonexistent. We could stay out for
two days at a time. The attitude seemed to be: let the boys have a
good time, they deserve it. Besides, it's essential for their conva­
lescence. When we would get a little money together (about once a
week), we would run out to Montmartre and the famous Rue
Pigalle, "Pig Alley," to see the girls.
As an old Francophile, I was also interested in French history
and culture. I got a guidehook and spent days walking all over
Paris, visiting all the historical places about which I had read,
mentally reconstructing the events.
Time was passing rapidly. I had been in the hospital about two
months when an administrator called me into his office.
"Well, Corporal Hall," he said. "I hope you've been having a
good time in Paris."
"Oh yes," I replied.
"That's good," he said, "We're sending you back to your
regiment tomorrow."
"Where are they?" I asked.
"They're in Brest, waiting to embark for the voyage home."
The next morning I got on the train at the Gare Ouest and
arrived in Brest that evening. In Brest, I strolled around a bit on the
waterfront and finally sat down at a sidewalk cafe. I was in no
hurry to get back into the old regimental harness. I was about to
order a drink when suddenly a hig white MP appeared. Glowering
72 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

at me, he said, "Where's your pass, soldier?"

"Here it is. I've just got back from the hospital in Paris and I'm
going to my outfit up on the hill," I explained.
He grabbed it, glanced at it and shouted, "Well, get going up
that hill right now. You're not supposed to hang around here."
I left without my drink and started climbing the hill to the old
Napoleon barracks where we had been eleven months before. It
seemed like that had been years ago, so much had been crowded
into the brief intervening period.
I rejoined my outfit. They were living in tents in what seemed to
me like a swamp. The weather was miserable, a steady cold rain.
The mud was ankle deep. I was greeted warmly by my comrades. I
don't think that more than half the old boys of my company were
left. The rest were dead, wounded, or i11 in hospitals all over
France.
� couple of bottles of cognac were produced. The guys started
reminiscing about what they were going to do when they got home.
The news from home was bad. Discrimination and Jim Crow were
rampant, worse than before. Blacks were being lynched every­
where. "Now, they want us to go to war with Japan," observed one
of the fellows. (The Hearst newspapers at the time were again
raising the specter of the "yellow peril.")
"Well," someone said, "they won't get me to fight their yellow
peril. If it comes to that, I'lljoin the Japs. They are colored." There
was unanimous agreement on that point.
I bunked down: that night and awoke the next morning with a
high fever. I went to the infirmary and again was evacuated to a
hospital. I immediately began to worry whether I would be able to
return with my outfit. As I was waiting on the side of the road to
hitch a ride to the hospital, I heard footsteps behind me. I turned
and there was Colonel Roberts, our white commander whom I had
not seen for months.
I started to spring to my feet and salute, but he motioned me to
remain seated. "Corporal, you're from our regiment, aren't you?"
"Yes, sir," I said, "I'm sick and going to the hospital."
"What's the matter?"
"I guess I got the fl u."
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 73

"Well," he said, "you're in no condition to walk that distance."

He hailed a passing truck and instructed the driver to take me to
the hospital. "Take care, son; we're going home soon. Try to come
back with us." That's the last time I saw Colonel Roberts.
A month tater, while in the hospital, I picked up the Paris
edition of the Herald Tribune. The headline read: "The 370th
Infantry (the old Eighth Illinois) returns and is given hero's
welcome in victory parade down State Street." I felt pretty bad,
because I could imagine my old Mother standing there waiting for
me to pass by. Since I hadn't written in months, she would
probably assume the worst.
I had been away from the States for quite a while, in free France
so to speak, and I had become less used to the American
nigger-hating way of life. But I was thrown abruptly back into
reality as soon as I crossed the threshold of the American Army
hospital in Brest.
It seemed to be manned by an all Southern staff: doctors,
nurses, etc. All of them spoke with broad Southern accents. I was
assigned a bed at one end of the ward. When I looked around, I
could see only Blacks were in that end. Whites were at the other
end. There were no screens, no Jim Crow signs. The Jim Crow was
de facto, but nonetheless real. I also noticed that there was a large
space between the Black and white sections.
After a cursory entrance examination, the doctor seemed to
think thaJ I didn't have the flu, and upon hearing my recent
medical history, he decided that it was a relapse of the old illness.
I had no sooner gotten settled when I heard a nurse. bawling· out
a Black soldier for being so dirty. The poor fellow had just come in
from some mud hole like the one in which my regiment was
situated, where there was no opportunity to bathe.
"You don't see any of our white boys that dirty!" she shouted,
her eyes flashing indignantly at what she, a white lady, was forced
to put up with. For the first time, it occurred to me that our Black
regiment had been put in a worse location than the whites. Now,
that's pretty hard stuff for a front-line veteran to take. If I had been
ill when I came in, I was really sick now. I could feel my blood
pressure and fever mount.
74 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

There was a Black sergeant from my outfit in the same ward. He

was a tall, dignified and proud looking man, convalescing from a
previous illness. He wasn't a bed patient and was therefore
supposed to make his own bed. This he did, but he never seemed to
do it to the satisfaction of the nurse, who kept berating him.
"Make it over, that's not good enough."
''I've already made it, and I'm not going to do it again."
"Don't talk back to me," she shouted. "Make that bed!"
"l'm not going to," he said.
"You dare disobey my order?" she yelled.
"I'm a front-line soldier and you don't have to yell at me."
She tumed and walked to the office and retumed with the ward
doctor, a little pip-squeak of a man. In a stentorian voice he said:
"Make that bed, soldier." The sergeant didn't move. The doctor
looked at his watch and said, "l'm giving you two minutes to start
m,king that bed. If you don't, I'm going to prefer charges against
you for disobeying your superior officers."
You could see that the proud sergeant was thinking it over and
coming to a decision. I could almost read his mind; it seemed that
he was thinking that this wasn't the time to die. He only had a
couple more months to go.
He finally burst into tears, but he got up and made the bed. I've
seen this sort of situation before, and I feel almost certain that had
there been a loaded gun around, the sergeant might have started
shooting. It would have been reported in the news as "Another
nigger runs amuck." All of us, including some of the whites,
breathed a sigh of relief at this peaceful culmination of what could
have been a dangerous incident. At least the nurse never bothered
the sergeant after that. Undoubtedly, she sensed the inherent
<langer of any furtlier provocation.
After my stay in Paris, I was seized periodically by moods of
depression. These deepened and became chronic during my stay at
the Brest hospital, especially after witnessing such humiliating
incidents. I felt that I could never again adjust myself to the
conditions of Blacks in the States after the spell of freedom from
racism in France. I did not want to go back and my feeling was
shared by many Black soldiers.
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 75

I thought of remaining in France, getting my discharge there

and possibly becoming a French citizen. But I did not know how to
go about this. Besides, I was ill, and there was my Mother whom I
wanted to see again. Probably, some day, if I got well, I would
come back-or so I thought as I lay in the hospital at Brest.
Finally, the day came. We were discharged from the hospital,
given casual's pay (one month's pay), which in my case amounted
to $33, and boarded the ship for home. There was no change in the
Jim Crow pattern. We were merely transferred from a Jim Crow
hospital to a Jim Crow hospital ship. We Blacks found ourselves
quartered in a separate section of the ship. The segregation,
however, did not extend to the mess hall or the lavatories (heads). I
guess that would have been too much trouble. But the ship's
military command passed up no opportunity to let us know our
place.
For example, on the first day out we were given tickets for
mess-breakfast, lunch and supper. We were supposed to present
them to a checker who stood at the foot of the stairway leading up
to the mess hall. A Black soldier who had evidently misplaced his
ticket tried to slip by the checker unnoticed, but he was not quick
enough. A cracker officer who was standing by the checker
hollered: "Hey, Nigger, come back here!"
The guy kept going and tried to merge into a group of us Blacks
who had already passed through. Again the officer shouted,
"Nigger, come back here. You, I mean. I mean the tall one over
there. That nigger knows who I'm calling." The soldier finally
turned and walked back. Purple with rage, protected by his bars
and white skin, the officer said, "Listen, you Black son of a bitch,
where is your ticket?" Clearly, the officer had already gauged his
man and concluded that there was no fight in him.
"I couldn't find it," said the soldier.
"Well, why didn't you say that in the first place instead of tryin'
to slip through heah? Well, you go on back and try to find it. If you
can't, see the sergeant in charge. Don't evah try that trick again,"
said the officer. His anger seemed to ebb and a glow of
self-satisfaction spread across his face. He had done his chore for
the day. He had put a nigger in his place.
76 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

The seas were rough again. It was a small ship, leased from the
Japanese. Most ofus were seasick. The sailors were having a ball at
our expense. When one of us would rush to the rail to vomit, one of
them would holler, "A dollar he comes."
One night, the ship tilted sharply and a number of us were
thrown out of our bunks. The bunks were in tiers and I was in a top
one. I got a pretty hard bump. The next morning on deck the
sailors were talking loudly among themselves (for our benefit of
course).
"Gee," said one, "this is the roughest sea l've ever seen. This old
pile is about to come apart. The Japs Jeased us the worst ship they
had."
"It just might be sabotage," another one suggested.
"I hope we make it, but I'm not so sure," said another.
Not beingseamen, most of us were taking this seriously. A Black
soldier turned to me and said, "You know man, after all I've been
thr�ugh, if this ship were to sink now almost in sight of home, I
would get off and walk the water like the good Lord."
Another voice, that of a white sergeant from Florida who had
been rather friendly to us: "You know," he drawled, "this reminds
me of old Sam down home."
Here it comes, we thought, one of those nigger jokes.
"He was up theah on the gallows with a rope around his neck
and the sheriff said, 'Well Sam, is there anything you want to say
before you die?'
"'All I got to say sheriff,' said Sam, 'this sho' would be a lesson
to me.'"
The voyage proceeded uneventfully, with one exception. The
gamblers among us were out to get the soldiers' casual pay. The
law of concentration of money into fewer and fewer hands was in
process. This was taking place in one of the endless crap games
which started in the Bay of Biscay and wound up at Sandy Hook.
I never really gambled, even in the Army with room and board
guaranteed. If you were broke, you could always borrow some
money. The lender knew you couldn't run out on him. His only
risk was that you might become a casualty. But motivated by
nothing more than sheer boredorn, I got into the game this time.
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 77

After all, what good was $33 going to do me? To my surprise, I hit a
streak of luck and over a period of a week in and out of the game, I
ran my paltry grub stake up to the tremendous sum of $1200. That
was the high point, after which time my luck began to peter out.
Nevertheless, I left the ship with $500. It was my last gambling
venture.
That morning, we lined up at the rail as our ship passed Sandy
Hook and pulled into New York Harbor. It was my first view of
the New York skyline. Overcome with emotion, tears welled up in
my eyes. Embarrassed, I looked around and found that I was not
alone. The guy next to me was obviously crying.
Our landing was a memorable one. Ship stacks were biasting,
foghorns blowing, bells were ringing and fire boats were sending
up great sprays of water. Passengers in ferryboats were waving and
shouting greetings.
Upon docking, we were met by two reception committees of
young women. A white one to receive the white soldiers and a
Black one to greet us. This time segregation didn't bother us at all,
we were so pleased to see the pretty Black girls. They drew us aside
as we came down the gang plank, ushered us into waiting
ambulances, and drove us to Grand Central Palace which had
been converted into a debarkation hospital. Leaving us in the
lobby, they said goodbye and promised to come back soon and
show us around.
A woman from the Red Cross took our home addresses to notify
our families of our arrival. We were then escorted into a large
room and told to strip off our clothes. Leaving them in the room,
we then went through the delousing process. We were sprayed
with same sort of chemical and washed off under showers. We
were then given pajamas and a bathrobe and shown to our Jim
Crow ward.
The next day, after a physical examination, we were paid off,
receiving all of our back pay. In my case, it was for twelve months,
amounting to about $450. This, plus the $500 I had won on the
ship, seemed to me a small fortune, the !argest amount of money I
had ever had in my lif e. I was, so to speak, chafing at the bit, raring
to get out and up to famed Harlem.
78 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

On the ship, I had met a Black sergeant named Patterson, who

was from the 369th, the old Fifteenth New York. He had also won
a considerable sum in the crap game. He suggested that we team up
and go to Harlem together. He said he knew his way around there
since that was where he lived before he joined the Army.
After the pay off, we were still without clothes. But a clothing
salesman came around to take orders for new uniforms. Patterson
and I ordered suits, for which we were measured. In a couple of
hours the man was back with two brand new whip cord uniforms
with chevrons and service stripes sewed on. We had also ordered
shoes, which were promptly delivered. We then sneaked out of the
hospital.
After we banked most of our money downtown, we took the
subway up to 125th Street and visited several "Buffet Flats" (a
current euphemism for a high-class whorehouse), drinking and
looking over the girls. Patterson seemed to be an old friend of all
the madams. They greeted him like a long lost brother. We finally
wound up in one real classy joint where we stayed for four days,
playing sultan-in-a-harem with the girls.
We returned to the hospital, expecting to be sharply repri­
manded and restricted to quarters, but the doctor on his rounds
merely asked, "Where have you boys been?" Before we could
answer, he simply said, "I suggest that you stick around a day or
two, we have some tests to make."
From New York, we left for Camp Grant near Rockford,
lllinois, where we were demobilized out of the service. I was
discharged on April 29, 1919. After a cursory examination, I was
pronounced physically fit. "What about my chronic endocarditis
and chronic nephritisT' I protested.
"Oh, you're all right, you've overcome it all. You're young and
fit as a fiddle," the doctor answered me. From Camp Grant I
returned home to Chicago to see my parents.

REUNION WITH OTTO

Not too long after my discharge, I came home one evening to
find Otto. He had just arrived after mustering out of the service at
 A BLACK REGIMENT IN WORLD WAR I 79

Camp Grant. We were all happy to see him, especially Mother. He

showed us his honorable discharge.
"You know," he said, "l'm lucky to get this."
He then told stories about his harrowing experiences in a
stevedore battalion in the South and then in France. The main
mass of Black draftees had been relegated to these labor units,
euphemistically called "service battalions," "engineers," "pioneer
infantry," etc.
Regardless of education or ability, young Blacks were herded
indiscriminately into these stevedore outfits and faced the drudg­
ery and hard" work with no possibility of promotion beyond the
rank of corporal. With few exceptions, the officers were KKK
whites, as also were the sergeants. Many of them were plantation
riding boss types, especially recruited for these jobs. Southern
newspapers openly carried want ads calling for white men who had
"experience in handling Negroes." Black draftees were not only
subjected to the drudgery of hard la bor, but insults, abuse, and in
many cases blows from white officers and sergeants.
Otto told us his worst experience was in Camp Stewart in
Newport News, Virginia, where he was stationed during the
terribly cold winter of 1917-18. For a considerable period after
their arrival, they were forced to live in tents without floors or
stoves. In most cases, they had only a blanket, some not even that.
New arrivals to the camp were forced to stand around fires
outside all night or sleep under trees for partial protection from the
weather. For months there were no bathing facilities nor clothing
for the men. These conditions were subsequently changed as a
result of protests by the men and reports by investigators.
His outfit landed in the port of St. Lazare, France, and during
the great advance participated in the all-out effort to keep the
front-lines supplied in the "race to Berlin." They worked from
dawn to nightfall unloading supplies, including all kinds of
railroad equipment, engines, tractors and bulldozers. They built
and repaired roads, warehouses and barracks. Discipline was
strict; guys were thrown in the guardhouse on the most flimsy
pretexts. A Black soldier seen on the street with a French woman
was Iikely to be arrested by the MPs. "The spirit of St. Lazare,"
80 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

said one officer, "is the spirit of the South." 12

Needless to say, Otto often found himself in the guardhouse as a
result of fights, AWOLs, etc. How he escaped general court
martial or imprisonment I don't know.
His outfit was finally moved to the American military base at Le
Mans, about a hundred miles from Paris. Things were somewhat
better there. There were even a few "reliable" Black corporals who
were allowed weekend passes to visit Paris. Otto was assigned to
mess duty as a cook.
When he applied for leave, he was refused, however. "Well, I
didn't intend to come this close to Paris without seeing it," he said,
"so I went AWOL."
He did not see much of it, however, before he was arrested by
MPs. I was surprised to learn that he had been in Paris during the
period that I was in the hospital in Neuilly. Most of his time in the
great city was spent in the Hotel St. Anne, the notorious American
military jail run by the sadistic Marine captain, "hard-boiled
Smith."
Here now, bitter and disillusioned, Otto continued his rebellion.
It led him first to the Garvey movement where he served for a brief
period as an officer in Garvey's Black Legion. Theo in succession,
Wobblies, or lndustrial Workers of the World (IWW), the African
Blood Brotherhood and finally the Communist Party-joining
soon after its unity convention in 1921. After returning from the
service, Otto stayed at home only a short time and then moved in
with some of his new friends.
 Chapter 3

Searching for Answers

Back home in Chicago, I was soon working again as a waiter on

the Michigan Central Railroad. As I have already mentioned, the
first day of the bloody Chicago race riot(July 28, 1919) came while
I was working on the Wolverine run up through Michigan. When I
arrived home from work that afternoon, the whole family greeted
me emotionally. We were all there except for Otto. The disagree­
ments I had had with my Father in the past were forgotten. Both
my Mother and sister were weeping. Everyone was keyed up and
had been worrying about my safety in getting from the station to
the house.
Foliowing our brief reunion, I tore loose from the family to find
out what was happening outside. I went to the Regimental Armory
at Thirty-fifth and Giles Avenue because I wanted to find some of
my buddies from the regiment. The street, old Forrest Avenue, had
recently been renamed in honor of Lt. Giles, a member of our
outfit killed in France. I knew they would be planning an armed
defense and I wanted to get in on the action. I found them and they
told me of their plans. It was rumored that Irishmen from west of
the Wentworth Avenue dividing line were planning to invade the
ghetto that night, coming in across the tracks by way of Fifty-first
Street. We planned a defensive action to meet them.
It was not surprising that defensive preparations were under
way. There had been clashes before, often when white youths in
"athletic clubs" invaded the Black community. These "clubs" were
82 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

really racist gangs, organized by city ward heelers and precinct

captains.
One of the guys from the regiment took us to the apartment of a
friend. It had a good position overlooking Fifty-first Street near
State. Someone had brought a Browning submachine gun; he'd
gotten it sometime before, most likely from the Regimental
Armory. We didn't ask where it had come from, or the origin of the
1903 Springfield rifles ( Army issue) that appeared. We set to work
mounting the submachine gun and set up watch for the invaders.
Fortunately for them, they never arrived and we all returned home
in the morning. The foliowing day it rained and the National
Guard moved into the Black community, so overt raids by whites
did not materialize.
Ours was not the only group which used its recent Army training
for self-defense of the Black community. We heard rumors about
allJ)ther group of veterans who set up a similar ambush. On several
occasions groups of whites had driven a truck at breakneck speed
up south State Street, in the heart of the Black ghetto, with six or
seven men in the back firing indiscriminately at the people on the
sidewalks.
The Black veterans set up their ambush at Thirty-fifth and
State, waiting in a car with the engine running. When the whites on
the truck came through, they pulled in behind and opened up with
a machine gun. The truck crashed into a telephone pole at Thirty­
ninth Street: most of the men in the truck had been shot down and
the others fled. Among them were several Chicago police of­
ficers-"off duty," of course!
I remember standing before the Angeles Flats on Thirty-fifth
and Wabash where the day before four Blacks had been shot by
police. It appeared that enraged Blacks had set fire to the building
and were attacking some white police officers when the latter fired
on them.
Along with other Blacks, I gloated over the mysterious killing of
two Black cops with a history of viciousness in the Black
community. They had been found dead in an alley between State
and Wabash. Undoubtedly they had been killed by Blacks who
had taken advantage of the confusion to settle old scores with these
 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 83

Black enforcers of the white man's law.

Bewilderment and shock struck the Black community as well. I
had seen Blaclcs standing before the burned-out buildings of their
former homes, trying to salvage whatever possible. Apparent on
their faces was bewilderment and anger.
The Chicago rebellion of 1919 was a pivotal point in my life.
Always I had been hot-tempered and never took any insults lying
down. This wa� even more true after the war. I had walked out of a
number of jobs because of my refusal to take any crap from
anyone. My experiences abroad in the Army and at home with the
police left me totally disillusioned about being able to find any
solution to the racial problem through the help of the government;
for I had seen that official agencies of the country were among the
most racist and most dangerous to me and my people.
I began to see that I had to fight; I had to commit myself to
struggle against whatever it was that made racism possible.
Racism, which erupted in the Chicago riot-and the bombings
and terrorist attacks which preceded it-must be eliminated. My
spirit was not unique-it was shared by many young Blacks at that
time. The returned veterans and other young militants were all
fighting back. And there was a lot to fight against. Racism reached
a high tide in the summer of 1919. This was the "Red Summer"
which involved twenty-six race riots across the country-"red" for
the blood that ran in the streets. Chicago was the bloodiest.
The holocaust in Chicago was the worst race riot in the nation's
post-war history. But riots took place in such widely separate
places as Long View, Texas; Charleston, South Carolina; Elaine,
Arkansas; Knoxville, Tennessee, and Omaha, Nebraska. The
flareup of racial violence in Omaha, my old home town, followed
the Chicago riots by less than two months. It resulted in the
lynching of Will Brown, a packing house worker, for an alleged
assault on a white woman. When Omaha's mayor, Edward P.
Smith, sought to intervene, he was seized by the mob. They were
close to hanging the mayor from a trolley pole when police
cut the rope and rushed him to a hospital, badly injured. 1
The common underlying cause of riots in most of the northern
cities was the racial tension caused by the migration of tens of
84 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

thousands of Blacks into these centers and the competition for

jobs, housing and the facilities of the city. Rather than being at a
temporary peak, this out break of racism was more like the rising of
a plateau-it never got any higher, but it never really went down,
either. Writing in the middle of a riot in Washington, D.C., that
summer, the Black poet Claude McKay caught the bitter and
belligerent mood of many Blacks:
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, 0 let us nobly die
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
• 0 kinsmen! We must meet the common Joel
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back! 2
The war and the riots of the "Red Summer" of 1919 left me bitter
and frustrated. I felt that I could never again adjust to the situation
of Black inequality. But how had it come about? Who was
responsible?
Chicago in the early twenties was an ideal place and time for the
education of a Black radical. As a result of the migration of Blacks
during World War I, the Chicago area came to have the largest
concentration of Black proletarians in the country. It was a major
point of contact for these masses with the white labor movement
and its advanced, radical sector. In the thirties it was to become a
main testing ground for Black and white labor unity.
The city itself was the core of a vast urban industrial complex.
Sprawling along the southeast shore of Lake Michigan, the area
includes five Illinois counties and two in Indiana. The latter
contains such industrial towns as East Chicago, Gary and
 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 85

Hammond. This metropolitan area contains the greatest concen­

tration of heavy industry in the country.
By the second half of the twentieth century, it had forged into
thc lcad of the steel-making industry, surpassing the great
Monongahela Valley of Pittsburgh in the production of primary
metals; including steel mill, refining and non-ferrous metals
operations. There was the gigantic U.S. Steel Corporation in
Gary, the Inland Steel Company plant in East Chicago and the
U.S. Steel South Works. These are now the three }argest
steel works in the United States. The steel mills of the Chicago area
supply more than 14,000 manufacturing plants.
Chicago was at that time, and remains today, the world's }argest
railway center. It ranks first in the manufacture of railroad
equipment, including freight and passenger cars, Pullmans, loco­
motives and specialized rolling stock.
The core city itself was most famous for its wholesale slaughter
and meat packing industry. Chicago was known as the meat
capital of the world, or in Carl Sandburg's more homely terms,
"hog butcher for the nation."
The city's colossal wealth was concentrated in the bands of a few
men, who comprised the industrial, commercial and financial
oligarchy. Among these were such giants as Judge Gary of the
mighty U .S. Steel; Cyrus McCormick of International Harvester;
the meat packers Philip D. Armour, Gustavus Swift and the
Wilson brothers; George Pullman of the Pullman Works; Rosen­
wald of Montgomery Ward; General Wood of Sears and Roe­
buck; the "merchant prince" Marshall Field; and Samuel Insull of
utilities. These were the real rulers. Ostensible political power
rested in the notoriously corrupt, gangster ridden, county political
machine headed by Mayor William Hale (Big Bill) Thompson,
who carried on the tradition exposed as early as 1903 by Lincoln
Steffens in his book, The Shame of the Cities.
The glitter and wealth of Chicago's Gold Coast was based on the
most inhuman exploitation of the city's largely foreign-born
working force. A scathing indictment of the horrible conditions in
Chicago's meat packing industry was contained in Upton Sin­
clair's novel, The Jungle, published in 1910. It was inevitable that
86 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

the wage slave would rebel, that Chicago should become the scene
of some of the nation's bloodiest battles in the struggle between
la bor and capital. The first of these clashes was the railroad strike
of 1877 which erupted in pitched battles between strikers and
federal troops.
Then in 1886 came the famous Haymarket riot which grew out
of a strike for the eight-hour day at the McCormick reaper plant.
During a protest rally, a bomb was thrown which killed one
policeman and injured six others. This led to the arrest of eight
anarchist leaders; four were hanged, one committed suicide or was
murdered in his cell, and the others were sentenced to life
imprisonment. Obviously being tried and executed simply because
they were la bor leaders, these innocent men became a cause celebre
of international labor. Thousands of visitors made yearly pilgrim­
ages to the city where monuments to the executed men were raised.
H�ymarket became a rallying word for the eight-hour day. The
martyrs were memorialized by the designation of the first of May
as International Labor Day.
Several years later the city was the scene of the great Pullman
strike led by Eugene V. Debs and his radical but lily-white
American Railway Union, which precipitated a nationwide shut­
down of railroads in 1894. Again the federal troops were called in
and armed clashes between workers and troops ensued. These
battles were merely high points in the city's long history of labor
radicalism. It was the national center of the early anarcho-socialist
movements. In 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World (the
IWW or Wobblies) was founded there. The IWW maintained its
headquarters and edited its paper, Solidarity, there. In 1921,
Chicago was to become the site of the founding convention of the
Workers (Communist) Party, USA, which maintained its head­
quarters and the editorial offices of the Daily Worker there from
1923 to 1927.
Blacks, however, played little or no role in the turbulent early
history of the Chicago labor movement. This was so simply
because they were not a part of the industrial la bor force. Prior to
World War I, Blacks were employed mainly in the domestic or
personal service occupations, untouched by labor organizations.
 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 87

They were not needed in industry where the seemingly endless tide
ol' cheap European immigrant labor-Irish, Scots, English,
Swedes, Germans, Poles, East Europeans and ltalians-sufficed
to fill the city's manpower needs.
The only opportunity Blacks had of entering basic industry was
as strikebreakers. Thus, in the early part of the century, Blacks
were brought in as strikebreakers on two important occasions; the
stockyards strike of · I 904 and the city-wide teamsters' strike in
1905. In the first instance, Blacks were discharged as soon as the
strike was broken. After the teamsters' strike, a relatively large
number of Blacks remained. As a result of the defeat of the 1904
strike, the packing houses remained virtually unorganized for
thirteen more years, and the animosities which developed toward
the Black strikebreakers became a part of the racial tension of the
city. 3
At the outbreak of World War I, the situation with respect to
Chicago's Black labor underwent a basic change. N ow Blacks were
needed to fill the labor vacuum caused by the war boom and the
quotas on foreign immigration. Chicago's employers turned to
the South, to the vast and untapped reservoir of Black labor eager
to escape the conditions of plantation serfdom-exacerbated by the
cotton crisis, the boll weevil plague and the wave of lynchings. The
"great migrations" began and continued in successive waves
through the sixties.
During the war, the occupational status of Blacks thus shifted
from largely personal service to basic industry. In the tens of
thousands, Blacks flocked to the stockyards and steel mills.
During the war, the Black population went from 50,000 to
I 00,000. Successive waves of Black migration were to bring the
Black population to over a million within the next fifty years.
Black labor, getting its first foothold in basic industry during the
war, had now become an integral part of Chicago's industrial labor
force. 4
With the tapping of this vast reservoir of cheap and unskilled
labor, there was no longer any need for the peasantry of eastern
and southern Europe. There was, however, a difference between
the position of Blacks and that of the European immigrants. The
88 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

latter, after a generation or two, could rise to higher skilled and

better paying jobs, to administrative and even managerial posi­
tions. They were able to leave the ethnic enclaves and disperse
throughout the city-to become assimilated into the national
melting pot. The Blacks, to the contrary, found themselves
permanently relegated to a second-class status in the labor
force, with a large group outside as a permanent surplus labor pool
to be replenished when necessary from the inexhaustible reservoir
of Black, poverty-ridden and land-starved peasantry ofthe South.
The employers now had in hand a new source of cheap labor� the
victims of racist proscription, to use as a weapon against the
workers' movement. Indeed, this went hand in hand with the Jim
Crow policies of the trade union leaders, who had been largely
responsible for keeping Blacks out of basic industry in the first
place.
These labor bureaucrats premised their racism on the doctrine
of •a natura) Black inferiority. The theory of an instinctive
animosity between the races was a powerful instrument for an anti­
union, anti-working class, divide and rule policy. The use of
racial differences was found to be a much more effective dividing
instrument than the use of cultural and language differences
between various white ethnic groups and the native born. As we
know, ethnic conflicts proved transient as the various European
nationalities became assimilated into the general population.
Blacks, on the other hand, remain to this day permanently
unassimilable under the present system.
Such were conditions in the days when I undertook my search
for answers to the question of Black oppression and the road to
liberation. Living conditions were pretty rough then, and I had
gone back to my old trade of waiting tables in order to make some
sort of living.
But I was restless, moody, short-tempered-qualities ill-suited
to the trade. Naturally, I had trouble holding a job. My trouble
was not with the guests so much as with my immediate superiors;
captains, head waiters and dining car stewards, most of whom
were white. In Jess than a month after the Chicago riot, I lost my
job on the Michigan_ Central as a result of a run-in with an
 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 89

inspector.
The dining car inspectors were a particularly vicious breed.
Their job was to see that discipline was maintained and service
kept up to par. These inspectors, whom we called company spies,
would board the train unexpectedly anywhere along the route,
hoping to catch a member of the crew violating some regulation or
not giving what they considered.proper service. They would then
reprimand the guilty party personally, or if the offense was
sufficiently serious, would turn him in to the main office to be laid
off or fired. Usually the inspector's word was law from which there
was no appeal. The dining car crew had no unions in those days.
This particular inspector (his name was McCormick) had taken
a dislike to me. He had made that clear on other occasions. The
feeling was mutual. Perhaps he sensed my independent attitude.
He probably felt I was not sufficiently impressed by him and did
not care about my job. He was right on both counts.
He boarded the Chicago-bound train one morning in Detroit.
We were serving breakfast. It was just one of those days when
everything went wrong. People were lined up at each end of the
diner, waiting to be served. Service was slow. The guests were
squawking and I was in a mean mood myself. I was cutting bread
in the pantry when McCormick peered in and shouted, "Say, Hall,
that silver is in terrible condition."
The silver! What the heil is this man talking about dirty silver
when I've got all these people out there clamoring for their
breakfast. �
"l've been noticing you lately," he continued. "It looks as
though you don't want to work. If you don't like your job why in
heil don't you quit?"
I took that as downright provocation. "Damn you and your
job!" I exploded, advancing on him.
He turned pale and ran out of the pantry. A friend of mine in the
crew grabbed me by the wrist.
"What the hell's the matter with you, Hall? Are you crazy?" .It
was only then that I realized that I had been wa ving the bread knife
at the inspector.
In a few minutes, the brakeman and the conductor came into the
90 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

pantry. McCormick brought up the rear.

"That's the one," he said pointing at me.
Addressing me, the conductor said, "The inspector here says
you threatened him with a knife. Is that true?"
I denied it, stating that I had been cutting bread when the
argument started and had a knife in my band. I wasn't threatening
him with it. My friend (who had grabbed my wrist) substantiated
my story.
"Well," said the conductor, "you'd better get your things and
ride to Chicago in the coach. We don't want any more trouble here,
and the inspector has said he doesn't want you in the dining car."
I went up forward in the coach. I got off the train in Chicago at
Sixty-third and Stony Island. I didn't go to the downtown station,
thinking that the cops might be waiting there.
So much for my job with the Michigan Central.
I went back to working sporadically in restaurants, hotels and
on trains. I didn't stay anywhere very long. The first job that I
regarded as steady was the Illinois Athletic Club, where I remained
for several months. I was beginning to settle down a little and
participate in the social life of the community, attending dances,
parties and visiting cabarets. The Royal Gardens, a night club on
Thirty-first Street, was one of my favorite hangouts. King Oliver
and Louis Armstrong were often featured there. At the Panama,
on Thirty-fifth Street between State and Wabash, we went to see
our favorite comedians-Butter Beans and Susie.
It was on one of these occasions that I met my first wife, Hazel.
She belonged to Chicago's Black social elite, such as it was. Her
father had died and her family was on the downgrade. Her mother
was left with four children, three girls and a boy, of whom Hazel
was the oldest. The other children were still teenagers, and Hazel
and her mother had supported them by doing domestic work and
catering for wealthy whites. I was twenty-one and she was twenty­
five.
Hazel was attractive, a high school graduate. She spoke good
English and, as Mother said, "had good manners." She worked for
Montgomery Ward, then owned by the philanthropic Rosenwald
family, the first big company to hire Blacks as office clerks. She
 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 91

had a nice singing voice and used to sing around at parties. Her
friends were among the Black upper strata and the family belonged
to the Episcopal Church on Thirty-eighth and Wabash which at
that time was the church of the colored elite. We were married in
1920. I was all decked out in a rented �wallowtail coat, striped
pants, spats and a derby. The ceremony was impressive. Photos
appeared in the Chicago De/ender.
In a short time, the romance wore off. Hazel's ambition to get
ahead in the world, "to be somebody," clashed with my love of
freedom. I soon had visions of myself, a quarter century hence­
making mortgage payments on a fancy house, installments on
furniture, and trapped in a drab, lower middle-class existence,
surrounded by a large and quarrelsome family.
The worst of it was having to put up with being kicked arou,nd
on the job and taking all that crap from headwaiters and captains.
I had been working at the Athletic Club for several months befare I
got married. Then nobody had bothered me. When I asked for
time off to get married, the white headwaiter and the captain
seemed delighted. "Sure Hall, that's fine. Congratulations. Take a
couple of weeks off."
U pon my return, I immediately felt a change in their attitude.
N ow that I was married, they felt they had me where they wanted
me. They became more and more demanding. One day at lunch I
had some difficulty getting my orders out of the kitchen, and the
guests were complaining-not an unusual occurrence in any
restaurant. Instead of helping me out and calming down the
guests, or seeing what the hang-up was in the kitchen, the captain
started shouting at me in front of the guests. "What's the matter
with you, Hall? Why don't you bring these people's orders?"
"Can't you see that I'm tied up in the kitchen?" I said. "Why
don't you go out and see the chef instead of bollering ·at me!"
All puffed up, he yelled out, "Don't give me any of your lip or 1'11
snatch that badge off you!"
I jerked my badge off, threw both badge and side towel into his
face, and shouted, "Take your badge and shove it!"
I was moving on him when a friend of mine, Johnson, a waiter at
the next station, jumped between us. I turned away, walked down
92 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

the steps, through the kitchen and into the dressing room. Johnson
followed me into the dressing room a few minutes later. "Hurry up
and get out of here. They're calling the cops." I changed and Ieft.
My marriage went down the drain along with the job. That was
a period of post-war crisis. Jobs were hard to find, and especially
so for me since I had been blacklisted from several places because
of my temper. I was no longer the same man that Hazel married,
and the truth of the matter was that I wanted it that way. Her hang­
ups were typical of Black aspirants for social status-strivers, we
called them-who never really doubted the validity of the
prejudice from which they suffered. Hazel slavishly accepted white
middle class values. I, on the other band, was looking around
trying to figure out how best to maladjust.

MY REBELLION

For me, the break-up of our marriage in the spring of 1920

destroyed my last ties with the old conventional way of life. I was
completely disenchanted with the middle class crowd into which
Hazel was trying to draw me. But more important, I not only
rejected the status quo, I was determined to do something about
it-to make my rebellion count.
I sought answers to a number of questions: What was the nature
of the forces behind Black subjugation? Who were its main
beneficiaries? Why was racism being entrenched in the north in
this period'! How did it differ from the South? Could the situation
be altered and, if so, what were the forces for change and the
program?
I renewed my search for a way to go, pressed by a driving need
for a world view which would provide a rational explanation of
society and a clue to securing Black freedom and dignity. My
search was to continue during what must have been the most
virulent and widespread racist campaign in U.S. history. The
forces of racist bigotry unleashed during the riots of the "Red
Summer" of 1919 were still on the march through the twenties:
Indeed, they had intensified and extended their campaign.
 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 93

The whole country seemed gripped in a frenzy of racist hate.

Anti-Black propaganda was carried in the press, in magazine
articles, literature and in theater. D. W. Griffith's obscene movie,
The Birth of a Nation, which glorified the Ku Klux Klan and
pictured Blacks as depraved animals, was shown tq millions. 5
Thomas Dickson's two novels, The Klansman (upon which
Griffith's picture was based) and The Leopard's Spots (an earlier
book on the theme of the white man's burden) were best sellers.
Racist demagogues of the stripe of "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman of
South Carolina, Vardeman of Mississippi, and "Cotton" Ed Smith
of South Carolina, were in demand on northern lecture platforms.
Closely behind the trumpeters of race-hate rode their cavalry. A
revived Ku Klux Klan now extended to the north and made its
appearance in twenty-seven states. 6 This organization, embracing
millions, headed the list of a whole rash of super-patriotic groups
who were anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-foreign-born and anti­
Black. The apostles of white, Anglo-Saxon and N ordic supremacy
included in their galaxy of ethnic outca�ts Asians (the "yellow
peril"), Latin Americans and other foreign-born from southern
and eastern Europe. Their hate propaganda pitted Protestants
against Catholics, Christians against J ews, native against foreign­
born, and all against the Blacks, upon whom was fixed the stigma
of inherent and eternal inferiority.
It seemed as though the prophets of the "lost cause" were out to
reverse their military defeat at Appomattox by the cultural
subversion of the north. That they were receiving encouragement
by powerful northern interests was self-evident. Tin Pan Alley
added_its contribution to the attack with a spate of Mammy songs,
and along the same vein, "That's Why Darkies Were Bom":
Someone had to pick the cotton,
Someone had to plant the corn,
Someone had to slave and be able to sing,
That's why darkies were born.
Though the balance is wrong,
Still your faith must be strong,
Accept your destiny brothers, listen to me.
94 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

A main objective of the racist assault was the academic

establishment. The old crude forms of racist propaganda proved
inadequate in an age of advancing science. The hucksters of race
hate conducted raids upon the sciences, especially upon the new
disciplines-anthropology, ethnology and psychology-in an
attempt to establish a scientific foundation for the race myth.
The new "science of race" evolved and flourished during the
period. Spadework for this grotesque growth had been done in the
middle of the last century by the Frenchman, Count Arthur D.
Gobineau, in his work, The lnequality of the Human Races
(1851-1853). It was carried on by his disciple, the Englishman
turned German, Houston Chamberlain, who asserted that racial
mixture was a natural crime. In the U.S., early efforts in this field
were the works of Knott and Glidden. Also, there was Ripley's
Races of Mankind.
€arrying on in this pseudoscientific tradition during the war
and postwar years were the popular theorists Lathrop Stoddard,
The Rising Tide of Color: Against White World Supremacy (1923)
and Madison Grant, The Passing of a Great Race: The Racial
Basis of European History (1916). The cornerstone of this
pseudoscientific structure was Social Darwinism which was an
attempt to subvert Darwin's theory of evolution and arbitrarily
apply natural selection in plant and animal society to human
society. Acording to the Social Darwinists, led by Herbert
Spencer, the British sociologist, history was a continuous struggle
for exist.ence between races. In this struggle, the N ordic, Anglo­
Saxon, or Aryan civilizations naturally survived as the fittest.
The racists had a field day in history, long the area in which the
heroes of the "lost cause" had their greatest, most effective
concentration. They had held chairs in some of the nation's most
prestigious universities-Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Harvard,
etc. Among such historians was William Archibald Dunning, who
during his long tenure at Columbia miseducated generations of
students by his distortions of the Reconstruction, Civil War and
slave periods. 7
In the academic world this pseudoscience of racism held sway
with only a few open challengers. The latter seemed to be isolated
 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 95

voices in the wilderness, as the counter-offensive was slow in

getting underway. In anthropology there was Franz Boaz's anti­
racist thrust, Mind of Primitive Man. This was written in 1911,
and not widely known at the time. The works of his students and
colleagues-most notably Melville Hershovitz; The Myth of the
Negro Past, Jane Weltfish, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead and
Otto Klineburg-were not to appear until the next decade.
In history, the movement for revision was then decades away. It
only became a trend with the Black Revolt of the sixties.
Black scholars had pioneered the reexamination: W.E.B. DuBois,
his tour de force, Black Reconstruction, and the epilogue,
"Propaganda of History," which contained a bitter indictment of
the white historical establishment, was not to appear until the
mid-thirties. J.A. Rogers, popular Black historian, had not yet
a ppeared on the scene. Y oung Carter Woodson, who had founded
his Association for the Study ofNegro History in 1915, only began
to publish the Journal of Negro History in 1916. His own
important historical works were yet to cøme.
Thus, from its tap-roots in the Southern plantation system, the
anti-Black virus had spread throughout the country, shaping the
pattern of Black-white relationships in the industrial urban north
as well. The dogma of the inherent inferiority of Blacks had
permeated the national consciousness to become an integral part
of the American way of life. Racist dogma, first a rationale for
chatte) slavery and then plantation peonage, was now carried over
to the north as justification for a new system of de facto
segregation.
BJack subjugation, city-style Jim Crow, became fixed by the
twenties, and continues up to the present day. lts components
were the residential segregation . of the ghetto with its inferior
education, slums and the second class status of Black workers in
the labor force where they were relegated to the bottom rung of the
occupational !adder and prevented by discrimination from mov­
ing into better skills and higher paid jobs.
Although its purpose was not clear to me then, I later realized
that the virulent racism of the period served to justify and bulwark
the structure of Black powerlessness which was developing in
96 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

every northern city where we had become a sizable portion of the

work force.
At the time the racist deluge simply revealed great gaps in my
own education and knowledge. I knew that the propaganda was a
tissue of lies, but I felt the need for disproving them on the basis of
scientific faet. I rejecte� racism-the lie of the existence in nature
of superior and inferior races-and its concomitant fiction of
intuitive hostility between races. For one thing, it ran counter to
my own background of experience in Omaha.
Religion as an explanation for the riddles of the universe I had
rejected long before. I knew that our predicament was not the
result of some divine disposition and therefore that racial oppres­
sion was neither a spiritual or natural phenomenon. It was created
by man, and therefore must be changed by man. How? Well, that
was the question to be explored. I had only a smattering of
knowledge of natural and social sciences, much of which I had
gathered through reading the lectures of Robert G. lngersoll. It
was through him that I discovered Charles Darwin and his theory
of evolution through natura) selection.
Armed with a dictionary and a priori knowledge gleaned from
lngersoll's popularizations, I was able to make my way through
Origin of the Species. Darwin showed the origin of the species to
be a result of the process of evolution and not the mysterious aet of
a divine creation. Here at last was a scientific refutation of
religious dogma. I had at last found a basis for my atheism which
had before been based mainly upon practical knowledge.
Continuing my search, I found myself attracted to other social
iconoclasts or image-destroyers, and to their attacks upon estab­
lished beliefs. I remember staying up all night reading Max
Nordau's Conventional Lies of Our Civilization, being thrilled by
his castigation of middle class hypocrisy, prejudices and philis­
tinism. Moving on to the contemporary scene, I discovered H.L.
Mencken, "The Sage of Baltimore," and his "smart set" crowd.
For a short while, I was an avid reader of the Mercury which he
helped to establish in 1920 as a forum for his views. I was
particularly delighted by his critical potshots at some of the most
sacred cultural cows of what he called "the American Babbitry,"
 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 97

"boobocracy," "anthropoid majority"-Menckenian sobriquets

for middle class commoners. Mencken enjoyed a brief popularity
among young Black radicals of the day who saw in his searing
diatribes against W ASP cultural idols ammunition with which to
blast the claims of white supremacists. The novelty soon wore off
as it became clear that Mencken's type of iconoclasm posed no real
challenge to the prevailing social structure. In faet, it was
reactionary. He sought to replace destroyed idols with even more
reactionary ones, as I soon found out.
Mencken's philosophical mentor was none other than the
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, prophet of the super­
man, of the aristocratic minority destined to rule over the
unenlightened hoardes of Untermenschen-the "perenially and
inherently unequal majority of mankind." Most Blacks then,
including myself, who flirted with Mencken never accepted him
fully. The one exception was George Schuyler of the Pittsburgh
Courier, who took Mencken's snobbery and reactionary politics
and made a career of them which has lasted for forty years.
What confused me most were the contentions of the Social
Darwinists, who claimed to be the authentic continuators of
Darwin's theories. Darwin had not dealt with the question of race
per se. But it had seemed to me that his theory of evolution
precluded the myth of race. How could Darwin's theory which had
helped me finally and irrevoca bly throw aside the veil of mysticism
and put the understanding of the descent of man within my
grasp-how could this be used as an endorsement of racism?
Perhaps I had been wrong? W as I reading into Darwin more than
what he implied?
It was my brother Otto who finally cleared me up on this point.
He and I were running in different circles, but we would meet from
time to time and exchange notes. Otto pointed out that Social
Darwinists had distorted Darwin by mechanically transferring the
laws of existence among plants and animals to the field of social
and human relations. Human society had its own laws, he asserted.
Ah, what were those laws? That was the subject that I wanted to
explore.
"Y ou ought to quit reading those bourgeois authors and start
98 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

reading Marx and Engels," Otto told me, suggesting also that I
read Henry Lewis Morgan's Ancient Society and the works of
Redpath.
About this time I got ajob as a clerk at the Chicago Post Office.
I heard that jobs were available and that veterans were given
preference. Foliowing the advice of friends, I approached S.L.
Jackson of the Wabash Avenue YMCA, who at that time was a
Black Republican stalwart with connections in the Madden
political machine. 8 Jackson gave me a note to some Post Office
official in charge of employment. I passed the civil service
examination, in which veterans were given a ten percent advan­
tage, and was employed as a substitute clerk.
The Post Office job in those days carried considerable prestige.
It was almost the only clericaljob open to Blacks. Postal workers,
along with waiters, Pullman porters and tradesmen, were tradi­
tiol1,fllly considered a part of the Black middle class. A number of
prominent community leaders came from this group. Many
officers of the old Eighth Illinois were postal employees, a good
percentage of them mail-carriers.
The Post Office became a refuge for poor Black students and
unemployed university graduates. For some of the latter it was a
sort of way-station on the road to their professional careers.
Others remained, settling for regular Post Office careers. But even
here opportunities were limited. Blacks held only a few super­
visory positions, as advancement depended solely on the dis­
cretion of the white postmaster.
On the job I found the work extremely boring. It consisted of
standing before a case eight hours a night, sorting mail. All
substitutes were relegated to the night shift. It took years to get on
the day shift which was preempted by the veteran employees: On
the other band, I found the company of my new young fellow
workers very stimulating.
In those days the organization of Black postal employees was
the Phalanx Forum. Before the war, the organization had played
an important political and social role in the community. It was
dominated by the conservative crowd of social climbers and
political aspirants; who were the most active group among postal
 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 99

employees and had close ties with the local Republican machine.
-fheir leadership was completely ineffective with respect to the job
issues of Black rank-and-file employees, and it had little ar no
influence over the younger group af new employees, which
included many veterans and students. The gap between the old,
conservative crowd and the new, youthful element was sharp.
Among the latter a radical sentiment was growing.
I was immediately attracted to this group among whom I was to
find friends who seemed to be impelled by the same motivations as
myself-to find new answers to the problems afflicting our people.
Most of those with whom I fraternized considered the postal job as
temporary, a step to other careers. Our interest at the time,
therefore, was not so much with the immediate economic ar on­
the-job needs of Black postal workers, but with the "race problem"
generally. The drive for unionization of postal employees was to
come later. 9
The issue to which we addressed ourselves was the current
campaign af white racist propaganda: how to counter it on the
basis of scientific truth. We saw the network of racist lies as clearly
aimed at justifying Black subjugation and destroying our dignity
as a people. On this question we had long, endless discussions on
the job while sorting mail, at rest, during lunch breaks and on
Sundays when some of us would meet. I soon identified with what
I considered the more vocal segment. Among our group of
aspirant intellectuals there was a medical student, a couple af law
students, a dentist (whom we all called "Doc"), students of
education and some intellectually oriented wo.rkers like myself. On
one Sunday when we had gathered, it was suggested, I think by J ae
Mabley, that we organize ourselves as an informal discussion
group, and that our purpose would be to answer the racist lies on
the basis of scientific truth. The idea was instantly agreed upon.
The discussion circle was loosely organized, not more than a
dozen participants in all, and hent on finding answers. The moving
spirits of the group were John Heath, Joe Mabley and "Doc."
Heath was a tall, light-complexioned man with high cheek­
bones. He was a graduate student in the field of education, and a
man whose sterling character and keen intellect we all respected.
100 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Then there was Joe Mabley, a brilliant, small Black man. He had
large velvety eyes and was a college dropout. He was married and
had a family-two or three children-and had settled down to a
regular Post Office job. He and Doc were the only regular postal
workers in our group-the rest of us being substitutes. Doc had set
up an office on the Southside and was trying hard to build up a
clientele while working night shifts.
Originally we had planned to meet every Sunday at noon as the
most convenient time for the fellows on our shift. The meeting
places were to alternate between the homes or apartments of the
members. When we got to procedure, the group would choose a
topic of discussion and ask for volunteers or assign a member to
make introductory reports. He would then have a week to prepare
the report. Our original plans included the eventual organization
of a forum in which the issues of the day could be debated, and the
holding of social affairs. All of this proved to be too ambitious. We
found it impractical to have weekly meetings and finally agreed
that twice a month was more feasible. The forum idea never got off
the ground.
Among us I think we had most of the answers on the question of
race, that is, to all but the big lie, the one that was most convincing
to the white masses and is the cornerstone on which the whole
structure stood or fell: the assertion that Blacks have no history.
A leading formulator of the lie at that time was John Burgess,
professor of political science and history at Columbia University:
The claim that there is nothing in the color of the skin from
the point of view of political ethics is a great sophism. A black
skin means membership in a race of men which has never of
itself succeeded in subjecting passion to reason, has never,
therefore, created any civilization of any kind. 10

We wanted to refute the slanders on the basis of scientific truth.

For this, we needed more ammunition and better weapons,
particularly in the field of history. It was about this time that I met
George Wells Parker, a brilliant young Black graduate student
from Omaha's Creighton University. I was introduced to him by
my brother Otto, who had known him in Omaha. He was in
 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 101

Chicago to visit relatives and to conduct research for his disserta­

tion. His major was history, I believe. We found him a virtual
storehouse of knowledge on the race question, especially Black
history. His major objective in life was apparently to refute the
prevalent racist lies and to build Black dignity and pride. He
possessed wide knowledge and seemed to have read everything.
Parker called our attention to the writings of the great
anthropologist Franz Boas; the Egyptologist Virchow; to Max
Mueller (philologist who formulated the Aryan myth and then
rejected it); to the Frenchman Jean Finot; to Sir Harry Johnstone
(British authority on African history); and to the Italian Giuseppe
Serg and his theory of the Mediterranean races, a refutation of the
Aryan mythology. Proponents of this myth claimed all civiliza­
tions-Indian, Near East, Egyptians-as Aryan. One wonders
why the Chinese were left out, but then that would have been too
palpable a fraud! It was Parker who called our attention to
Herodotus (ancient Greek historian) who had described the
Egyptians of his time (around 400 B.C.) as "Black and with woolly
hair."
Otto and I introduced Parker to friends and acquaintances, and
I, of course, to our discussion circle. He spoke before numerous
groups. Everywhere there was hunger for his knowledge. We even
brought him before the Bugs Club Forum in Washington Park,
where he led a discussion on the race question.
This brilliant young man returned to Omaha to resume his
studies. The next winter he was dead. W e heard it was the result of
a mental breakdown. Thus was a brilliant career cut short and a
potentially great scholar lost. Surviving, I believe, was only one
brief paper and some notes.

GARVEY'S BACK TO AFRICA MOVEMENT

But time and tide did not stand still to wait for our answers to
the social problems of the day, or for the results of our intellectual
researches. While we sought arguments with which to counter the
racist thrust, the masses were forging their own weapons. Their
102 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

growing resistance was finally to erupt on the political scene in the

greatest mass movement of Blacks since Reconstruction.
Great masses of Blacks found the answer in the Back to Africa
program of the West Indian Marcus Garvey. Under his aegis this
movement was eventually diverted from the enemy at home into
utopian Zionistic channels of peaceful return to Africa and the
establishment of a Black state in the ancestral land.
The organizational course of the movement was Garvey's
Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). He first
launched this organization in Jamaica, British West Indies, in
1914. Coming to the USA, he founded its first section in New York
City in I 9 I 7. The organization grew rapidly during the war and the
immediate post-war period. At its height in the early twenties, it
claimed a membership of half a million. While estimates of the
organization's membership vary-from half a million to a mil­
lion-it was the largest organization in. the history of U .S. Blacks.
There can be no doubt that its influence extended to millions who
identified wholly or partially with its programs.
What in Garvey's program attracted these masses?
Garvey was a charismatic leader and in that tradition best
articulated the sentiments and yearnings of the masses of Black
people. In his UNIA he also created the vehicle for their
organization. Equally important, he was a master at under­
standing how to use pageantry, ritual and ceremony to provide the
Black peasantry with psychological relief from the daily burdens
of their oppression. His apparatus included such high sounding
titles as potentate, supreme deputy potentate, knights of the Nile,
knights of distinguished service, the order of Ethiopia, the
dukes of Nigeria and Uganda. There were Black gods and Black
angels and a flag of black, red and green: "Black for the race, Red
for their blood and Green for their hopes."
The movement's program was fully outlined in the historie
Declaration of R ights of the Negro Peoples of the World, adoptcd
at the first convention of the organization in New York City
August 13, 1920. In the manner of the Nation of Islam and its
publication Muhammad Speaks (Bilalian News), the program of
Garvey combined a realistic assessment of the conditions facing
 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 103

Blacks with a fantasy and mystification about the solution. Along

with the Back to Africa slogan, the document contained a
devastating indictment of the plight of the Black peoples in the
United States. Expressing the militancy of its delegates, it called
for opposition to the inequality of wages between Blacks and
whites, it protested their exclusion from unions, their deprivation
of land, taxation without representation, unjust military service,
and Jim Crow laws.
Anticipating the Black Power Revolt of the sixties, the docu­
ment called for "complete control of our social institutions
without the interference of any other race or races." Reflecting the
rising worldwide anti-colonial movement of the period, it called
for self-determination of peoples and repudiated the loosely
formed League ofN ations, declaring its decisions "null and void as
far as the Blacks were concerned because it seeks to deprive them
of their independence." This latter point was in reference to the
assignment of mandates to European powers over African terri­
tories wrested from the Germans.
Through this atmosphere of militancy, expressing the desire of
the masses to defend their rights at home, ran the incongruent
theme of Back to Africa. Declared Garvey:
Being satisfied to drink of the dregs from the cup of human
progress will not demonstrate our fitness as a people to exist
alongside others, but when of our own initiative we strike out
to build industries, governments, and ultimately empires (sic),
then and only then, will we as a race prove to our Creator and
to man in general that we are fit to survive and capable of
shaping our own destiny.
Wake up, Africa! Let us work toward the one glorious end of
a free, redeemed, and mighty nation. Let Africa be a bright
star among the constellation of nations. 11
Who were Garvey's followers?
Garvey's Zionistic message was beamed mainly to the sub­
merged Black peasantry, especially its uprooted vanguard, the new
migrants in such industrial centers as New York City, Cleveland,
Detroit, Chicago and St. Louis. These masses made up the
rank and file of the movement. They were embittered and dis-
104 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

illusioned by racist terror and unemployment, and saw in Gar­

vey's program of Back to Africa the fulfillment of their yearn­
ings for land and freedom to be guaranteed by a government
of their own.
On the other hand, Garveyism was the trend of a section of the
ghetto lower middle classes, small businessmen, shopkeepers,
property holders who were pushed to the wall, ruined or threaten­
ed with ruin by the ravages of the post-war crisis. Also attracted to
Garveyism were the frustrated and unemployed Black intelligent­
sia: professionals, doctors, lawyers with impoverished clientele,
storefront preachers who had followed their flocks to the promised
land of the north, and poverty stricken students.
Garveyism reflected the desperation of these strata before the
ruthless encroachments of predatory white corporate interests
upon their already meager markets. It reflected an attempt by
them to escape from the sharpening racist oppression, the terror of
race riots, the lynchings, economic and social frustrations. It was
from these strata that the movement drew its leadership cadres.
The immediate pecuniary interests of this element were ex­
pressed in the form of ghetto enterprises, the organization of a
whole network of cooperative enterprises, including grocery
stores, laund ries, restaurants, hotels and printing plants. The most
ambitious was the Black Star Steamship Line. Several ships were
purchased and trade relations were established with groups in the
West lndies and Africa, including the Republic of Liberia.
The New York City division comprised a large segment of the
intensely nationalistic West Indian immigrants. West lndians were
prominent in the leadership, in Garvey's close coterie, and in the
organization's inner councils. There can be no doubt of the
considerable influence of this element on the organization. But the
attempt on the part of some writers to brand the movement as a
foreign import with no indigenous roots is superficial and without
foundation in faet. It is clear that Garveyism had both asocial and
economic base in Black society of the twenties. Nor was Garvey's
nationalism a new trend among Blacks-nationalist currents had
repeatedly emerged, going back even before the Civil War. 12
A key role in the movement was also played by deeply
 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 105

disillusioned Black veterans who had fought an illusory battle to

"make the world safe for democracy" only to return to continued
and even harsher slavery. Veterans :were involved in the setting up
of the skeleton army for the future African state, and in such
paramilitary organizations as the Universal African Legion, the
Universal Black Cross Nurses, the African Motor Corps and the
Black Eagle Flying Corps. Many Black radicals-even same
socialistically inclined-were swept into the Garvey mavement,
attracted by its militancy.
Despite his hostility toward local communists, Garvey seemed
to regard the Soviet experience with same favor-at least in the
early years of his mavement. This probably reflected the senti­
ments of many of his followers. As late as 1924, in an editorial in
the Negro World, he publicly mourned the passing of Lenin, the
founder of the Soviet Union, calling him "probably the world's
greatest man between 1917 and ... 1924." On that occasion, he sent
a cable to Moscow "expressing the sorrow and condolence of the
400,000,000 Negroes of the world."13
The Garvey movement revealed the wide rift between the
policies of the traditional upper class of the N AACP and
associates, and the life needs of the sorely oppressed people. It
represented a mass rejection of the policies and programs of this
leadership, which during the war had built up false hopes and now
offered no tangible proposals for meeting the rampant anti-Black
violence and joblessness of the post-war period. This mood was
expressed by Garvey, who denounced the whole upper class
leadership, claiming that they were motivated solely by the drive
for assimilation and banked their hopes for equality on the
support of whites-all classes of whom, he contended, were the
Black man's enemy. The policy of this leadership, he maintiained,
was a policy of compromise.
It was in these conditions that Garvey, as the spokesman for the
new ghetto petty bourgeoisie, seized leadership of the incipient
Black revolt and diverted it into the blind alley of utopian
escap1sm.
My contact with the movement was limited. I had never seen
Garvey. I had missed his appearance in 1919 at the Eighth
106 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Regiment Armory. I never visited the organization's Liberty Hall

headquarters. In Chicago, the movement seemed to spring up
overnight. I first took serious notice of it in I 920. I listened to its
orators on street corners, watched its spectacular parades through
the Southside streets. The black, red and green flag of the
movement was carried at the head of the parade. The parades were
lively and snappy; marching were the African Legion and the
Universal Black Cross Nurses in their spotJess white uniforms and
white veils. All marched in step with a band. It was quite
impressive, but to me it was unreal and had little or no relevance
to the actual problems that confronted Blacks.
From the first, the Garvey movement met heavy opposition in
Chicago. The powerful Chicago De/ender, edited by Robert S.
Abbott, took the lead. If not the world's greatest weekly as its
masthead proclaimed, it had great influence among Chicago and
Southern Blacks, due to its role in promoting the migration to the
north. It was widely read in the South where a daily newspaper of
Athens, Georgia, called it "the greatest disturbing element that has
yet entered Georgia."14 The De/ender was relentless in its attack,
throwing scorn and contempt on the movement and Garvey
himself.
In addition to The Defender's attacks, the so-called Abyssinia
Affair in the summer of 1920 served to discredit the movement.
The Star Order of Ethiopia and Ethiopian Missionaries to
Abyssinia was an extremist split off from Chicago's UNIA branch.
The leaders of the group held a parade and rally on Thirty-fifth
and lndiana. Speakers clad in loud African costume called upon
the crowd to return to their African ancestral land.
To show their scorn for the U.S., they burned an American flag,
and when white policemen sought to intervene, the Abyssinians
shot and killed two white men and wounded a third. This incident
was blown up in the white press as an armed rebellion of Blacks. lt
was condemned on all sides in the Black community and by its
leaders, including the editors of The De/ender, who helped
authorities in capturing the Abyssinian dissidents.
Despite its repudiation by the official Garvey organization, the
Abyssinian affair served to muddy the Garvey image in Chicago. I
 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 107

was working on the New York Central at the time and heard a
graphic account of the affair from my aunts when I arrived in town
the next day. They lived right around the corner on Indiana
Avenue.
Despite the hostile Black press and the Abyssinian affair, the
UNIA grew. At its height, it claimed a Chicago membership of
9,000 devoted followers. This is probably exaggerated, but there is
no doubt that the sympathizers numbered in the tens ofthousands.
Our Sunday discussion group underestimated the significance
of the Garvey movement and the strength it was later to reveal.
We regarded it as a transient phenomenon. We applauded some of
the cultural aspects of the movement-Garvey's emphasis on race
pride, dignity, self-reliance, his exultation of things Black. This
was all to th� good, we felt. However, we rejected in its entirety the
Back to Africa program as fantastic, unreal and a dangerous
diversion which could only lead to desertion of the struggle for our
rights in the USA. This was our country, we strongly felt, and
Blacks should not waive their just claims to equality and justice in
the land to whose wealth and greatness we and our forefathers had
made such great contributions.
Finally, we could not go along with Garvey's idea about
inherent racial antagonisms between Black and white. This to us
seemed equivalent to ceding the racist enemy one of his main
points. While it is true that I personally often wavered in the
direction of race against race, I was not prepared to accept the idea
as a philosophy. It did not jibe with my experience with whites.
While rejecting Garvey's program, our ideas for a viable
alternative were still vague and unformed. The most important
effect the Garvey movement had on us was that it put into clear
focus the questions to which we sought answers.
Who were the enemies of the Black freedom struggle? While
Garvey claimed the entire white race was the enemy, it did not
escape us that he was inconsistent, being soft on white capitalists.
His main target was clearly white labor and the trade union
movement. According to Garvey:
It seems strange and a paradox, but the only convenient
friend the Negro worker or laborer has, in America, at the
108 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

present time, is the white capitalist. The capitalist being

selfish-seeking only the !argest profit out of labor-is willing
and glad to use Negro labor wherever possible on a scale
"reasonably" below the standard white union wage .... but, if
the Negro unionizes himself to the level o fthewhiteworker...
the choice and preference of employment is given to thewhite
worker ....
lf the Negro tak es my advice he will organize by himself and
always keep his scale of wage a little lower than the whites
until he is able to become, through proper leadership, his own
employer; by doing so he will keep the goodwill ofthe white
employer and live a little longer under the present scheme of
things. 15
There 1s no doubt that Garvey was voicing the sentiments of the
vast mass of new migrant workers. And it was not that we had any
compunction about strikebreaking in industries from which
Blacks were barred. In faet, that had been one of the ways Blacks
broke into industries such as stockyards and steel. We were also
keenly aware of the Jim Crow policies of the existing trade union
leadership and of the anti-Black prejudices rampant among white
workers. But in casting Blacks permanently into the role of
strikebreakers, Garvey was helping to further divide an already
polarized situation and playing into the bands of businessmen,
bankers, factory owners and the reactionary leadership of the
trade unions.
My own experience with unions in the waiters' trade was bad.
Old waiters would tel1 us how in the first part of the century they
had listened to the siren call of white union leaders. They had gone
out on strike, ostensibly to better their conditions, only to find
their jobs immediately taken by whites. This had been quite a
serious blow because at that time, Black waiters had had jobs in
most of the hest hotels and in a number of fine restaurants. It is
therefore understandable that in 1920, we Black waiters felt not the
slightest pang af conscience in taking over the jobs of white waiters
on strike at the Marygold Gardens (the old Bismark Gardens) on
the N orthside, one of the swankiest night spots in Chicago. It was
also probably the best waiter's job in town; in faet, so good that
 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 109

same of the German captains who remained on the job used to

drive to and from work in Cadillacs. The strike was broken after
several months, and Blacks were turned out.
Strikebreaking to me was not a philosophy or principle as
Garvey contended, but an expedient forced upon Blacks by the
Jim Crow policies of the bosses and the unions.
Even as Garvey was putting forward such views, times were
beginning to change. Large numbers of Blacks had been brought
into industry during the war and had joined unions, especially in
steel and the packing houses. A new industrial unionism was
developing and raising the slogan of Black and white labor unity.
My sister Eppa's experiences in 1919 at Swift Packing Company
were a case in point. She was ane of the first Black women to join
the union during the organizing drive of the Stockyards Labor
Council, which was headed by two communists-William Z.
Foster and Jack Johnstone. The drive was supported by John
Fitzpatrick, chairman of the Chicago Federation of Labor and a
bitter foe of the Jim Crow machine of Samuel Gompers' AFL.
Despite inevitable racial tensions fostered by the employers, Eppa
had seen the basic unity of interest between all workers and felt
strongly that the union was the best place to fight for the interests
of Black workers.
In looking back at our study of the Garvey mavement, it must be
evaluated in light of the faet that it was our first confrontation with
nationalism as a mass mavement. Our mistake, which I was to find
out later through my own experience and study of nationalist
movements, resulted from the failure to understand the contra­
dictory nature of the nationalism of oppressed peoples. This
contradiction or dualism was inherent in the inter-class character
of these movements once they assume a popular mass form.
They camprise various classes and social groupings with
conflicting interests, tendencies and motives, all gathered under
the unifying banner of national liberation, each with its own
concept of that goal and how it should be attained. These conflicts,
at first submerged, surface as the mavement develops.
They are expressed in two main currents (tendencies) within the
mavement. First of all, there is the nationalism which reflects the
110 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

interests of the basic masses-workers and peasants-determined

to fight for liberation against the oppressor of the nation. Then
there is the nationalism of the Black bourgeoisie who, while at time
in conflict with the white oppressors, tend toward compromise and
accommodation to protect their own weak position.
From the very beginning this dualism was reflected in the
Garvey movement. A highly vocal and aggressively dominant
current within the movement was the drive of the small business,
professional and intellectual elements for a Black controlled
economy. They sought fulfillment of this goal through withdrawal
to Africa where they envisioned establishment of their own state,
their right to exploit their own masses free from the overwhelming
competition of dominant white capital. (A historical example of
this can be seen in Liberia.) They thought they could accomplish
this, presumably with the acquiescence of the American white
rulers, and even the active support of some.
On the other band, there was a grass-roots nationalism of the
masses, the uprooted, disposses_sed soil-tillers of the South; their
poverty-ridden counterparts in the slum ghettoes of the cities.
These masses saw in the Black nationalist state fulfillment of their
age-old yea�nings for land, equality and freedom through power in
their own hands to guarantee and protect these freedoms. It was
this indigenous, potentially revolutionary nationalism that Garvey
diverted with his Back to Africa slogan.
We failed to recognize the objective conflict of interests betweeri
these class components of the movement, equating the social and
political aims of the ghetto nationalists, the bourgeoisie, to that of
the masses-condemning the whole as reactionary, escapist and
utopian.
These were the internal contradictions upon which the move­
ment was to flounder and finally collapse. They were brought to a
head by the subsiding of the post-war economic depression, the
ushering in of the "boom," and subsequent easing of the plight of
Blacks, the partial adjustment of migrants w their new environ­
ment and their partial absorption into industry.
The main contradiction inherent in the Garvey movement from
its very beginning had been the conflict between the needs of the
 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 111

masses to defend and advance their rights in the USA and the
fantastic Back to Africa schemes of the Garvey leadership.
Garvey's emphasis on these fantastic schemes reflected his reso­
lution of the conflict in favor af business interests and against the
interests af the masses. The resources and energy of the organi­
zation were increasingly diverted to support racial business enter­
prises such as the Black Star Line and the Negro Factories
Corporation. The concentration an selling stock for the Black Star
Steamship Line by the UNIA leadership from 1921 an neglected
the immediate needs af the masses and began to erode the base af
support.
Furthermore, Garvey's response to the crisis in the mavement
exposed the dangerously reactionary logic of a program based
upon complete separation of the races and its acceptance of the
white racist doctrine af natural racial incompatibility. Pursuing
the logic of this idea against the backdrop af the organization's
decline inevitably drove Garvey into an alliance af expediency
with the most rabid segregationists and race bigots af the period.
Thus, in 1922, Garvey sought the support of Edward Young
Clark, the imperial giant of the Ku Klux Klan. This "meeting of the
minds" between Garvey and the Klan was not fortuitous. It was an
open secret that it took place an the basis af Garvey's agreement to
soft-pedal the struggle for equality in the U .S. in return for help in
the settlement af Blacks in Africa. This ideological kinship arose
from the mutual acceptance af the racist dogma af natural
incompatibility af races, race purity and so forth.
In 1924 Garvey went so far seeking support for his Back to
Africa program as to invite John Powell, organizer af the Anglo­
Saxon Clubs, and other prominent racists to speak at UNIA
headquarters. Garvey also publicly praised the KKK. According
to W.E.B. DuBois, the Klan issued circulars defending Garvey and
declared that the opposition to him was from the Catholic
Church. 16 In the late thirties, Senator Bilbo af Mississippi
introduced a bill to deport thirteen million Blacks to Africa and
received the support of the remnants af the Garvey organization.
The final curtain was to drop an the Garvey episode with the
failure of the Black Star Line. The mavement was torn by
112 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

factionalism and splits, with some of the leadership and remaining

rank and file demanding that the domestic fight for equal rights be
emphasized over the Back to Africa scheme of Garvey. The
internal struggle drove many out of the organization and others
into a multitude of splinter groups, each a variation of Garveyism
itself. Taking advantage of this disarray, the government moved
m.
In 1925, Garvey was framed on charges of using the mail to
defraud in connection with the sale of stocks for the Black Star
Line and was sent to the Atlanta federal prison for two years. He
was deported to the West Indies upon release from prison. This
debacle marked the end of Garveyism as an important mass
movement, although the offshoots continued to exist in numbers
of smaller groups advocating Garvey's theory.
At the time, I had taken Garvey's peculiar brand as representing
nationalism in general and had simply rejected the whole ideology
as åforeign import with no roots in the conditions of U.S. Blacks.
Seeing only the negative features of nationalism in the UNIA, I
was blind to the progressive and potentially revolutionary aspects
which were to prove so important in my own later development.
Thus, the great movement that Garvey built passed into history.
But nationalism, as a mass trend, persisted in the Black freedom
struggle. Existing side by side with the assimilationist trend, it was
eclipsed by the latter in so-called normal times while flaring up in
times of stress and crisis.
The Garvey movement was the U.S. counterpart of the vast
upsurge of national and colonial liberation struggles which swept
the world during the war and post-war period. In this period,
masses of Blacks had come to consider themselves as an oppressed
nation. Garvey's ability to capture leadership of this nationalist
upsurge by default was the result of the immaturity of the
revolutionary forces, Black and white. The collapse of the Garvey
movement proved conclusively that the petty bourgeois ghetto
nationalist current, left to itself, led only to a hopeless blind alley.
Unfortunately the forces which could give Black nationalism
revolutionary content and direction were only in the process of
formation.
 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 113

The Black working class and its spokesmen had not yet arrived
on the scene as an independent force in the Black community and,
therefore, was not capable of challenging either the assimilationist
leadership of the NAACP or the ghetto nationalism of Garvey. Its
counterparts among radical, class-conscious white labor were
waging an uphill fight against the Jim Crow-minded AFL
bureaucracy led by the Gompers machine. These radical sections
of white labor were not yet clear as to the significance of the Black
freedom struggle as a revolutionary force in its own right and
regarded it simply as a part of the general labor question.
Coalescence of these two forces was then a decade away, destined
not to take place until the crisis of the thirties.
The preceding analysis is hindsight. I didn't realize the signifi­
cance of Garvey's movement until a few years later, when, as a
student in Moscow, I was assigned to a commission to prepare a
resolution on the Negro question in the USA for the Sixth
Congress of the Communist International in 1928. It was in the
course of these discussions that I came to the recognition of
nationalism as an authentic and potentially revolutionary trend in
the movement.
The assimilationist programs of the NAACP had been easy to
reject. Garvey was somewhat more difficult. But while the Garvey
mavement was forcing me to a consideration of nationalism
(which at the time I also rejected) I could not help but notice the
other political developments of the period.
Most conspicuous was the concerted and vicious attack being
carried out against white radicals and the trade union mavement.
The same forces appeared to be behind the Palmer raids of 1919
and 1920, behind the wave of racism and behind the violent union
and strike busting which took place. The foreigners who were
being deported, the radicals who were imprisoned and the workers
throughout the country who were attacked by Pinkerton "private
armies," were white as well as Black. In Chicago, the strikes at the
stockyards and the steel mills in the area particularly attracted my
attention.
For me, the Garvey movement, the racists' assault and the
attacks on labor and the radical movement sharpened my political
114 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

perceptions. The racial fog lifted and the face and location of the
enemy was clearly outlined. I began to see that the main
beneficiaries of Black subjugation also profi,ted from the social
oppression of poor whites, native and foreign-born.
The enemy was those who controlled and manipulated the
levers of power; they were the super-rich, white moneyed interests
who owned the nation's factories and banks, and thus controlled
its wealth. They were known by many names: the corporate elite;
the industrial, financial (and robber) barons; etc. Chicago was the
home base of a significant segment of this ruling class. Here the
chain of command was clear: on the political side, it extended from
city hall down to the lowliest wardheeler and precinct captain and
was tied in at all levels with organized crime. On the economic side,
it was represented by such employer organizations as the Chicago
Cham her of Commerce, by trade associations and by top manage­
mept in the giant industrial plants, railroads, hig commercial
establishments, banks, utilities and insurance firms. Their chain of
command extended down to the foremen and department heads,
and on-the-job supervisors. These levers of power also controlled
education, the media, the arts and all law enforcement agencies,
both military and police. At the bottom of this pyramid and
bearing its weight were the working people who toiled in the steel
mills, the packing plants, the railway yards, and the thousands of
other sweatshops. Lowliest among these were the Blacks, pushed
to the very bottom by the "divide and rule" policy of the corporate
giants and their henchmen, and the complimentary Jim Crow
policies and practices of the AFL trade union bureaucracy.

PASSAGES

Our postal discussion circle, which had held together scarcely

three months, was breaking up. Heath, our chairman and
recognized leader, was leaving. He had played the greatest role in
keeping the group together. Now he had taken a job at some
college in Virginia, his native state.
Differences had already developed in the group, and with Heath
 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 115

gone, the possibilities for reconciling them seemed slim. These

differences, as I recall, were not of a political or ideological nature.
They were seldom expressed in the open, but were reflected in the
opposition of some members to proposals for enlarging the group
and moving it into the outside political arena. This opposition
evidently reflected the desire of some members to retain the group
as a narrow discussion circle with membership restricted by tacit
understanding to those whom they considered their intellectual
peers. It seemed to me they sought to reduce it to a sQrt of elitist
mutual admiration society. As a result of this sectarian attitude,
the group hardly grew beyond its original membership of a dozen
or so.
There was no doubt, though, that our association had been
mutually beneficial. All of us had grown in political understanding
and awareness. But up to the time of Heath's departure, we had
advanced no program for putting our newly acquired political
understanding into practice. Our original plans for the organiza­
tion of a forum to debate the issues of the day never got off the
ground. We had not developed a program for involvement in the
struggles of the community, nor, for that matter, in the immediate
on-the-job problems ofBlack postal employees. We never even got
around to deciding on a name for the group. One suggestion, that
we call ourselves the "New Negro Forum," was never acted upon.
Heath, Mabley, Doc and myself were beginning to feel the pull
from the outside, the need for a broader political arena of activity,
to play a more active role in the community. We were the ones who
most often attended radical forums and lectures and kept abrcast
of what was going on in the Southside community. We often went
to the Bugs Club in Washington Park (Chicago's equivalent of
London's Hyde Park), and the Dill Pickle Club on the Northside
which was run by the anarchist Jack Jones.
Heath had gone. Mabley refused the chairmanship, pleading
that he was tied down by his family and could not take on
additional responsibilities. Doc refused to accept the honor; he
was similarly tied down by his job and dental practice. But the real
reason for their refusal, which they were to confide to me later, was
that they had lost confidence in the group. Without Heath, they
116 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

saw no future role for it. Like myself, they were attracted to the
broader movement. I also declined, giving as my excuse that I was
quitting the Post Office in a few days and was going back to my old
job on the railroad. A chairman pro-tern was chosen; I don't
remember who.
I continued my reading along the lines which Otto had
suggested. Among the books I read were Henry Morgan's Ancient
Society (which Engels had used as the basis for Origins of the
Family), Gustavus Meyer's History of the Great American
Fortunes, John Reed's Ten Days That Shook the World and Jack
London's The Iran Heel.
I also kept abreast of world events, reading about Lenin and
Trotsky in revolutionary Russia. I followed the post-war colonial
rebellions of Sun Yat-sen's China, Gandhi in India, Ataturk in
Turkey, the rebellion of the Riff tribes in Morocco led by Abdul
Krim. There were rumblings in black Africa-strikes and demon­
strations against colonial oppression. One heard such names as
Kadelli and Gumede of the South African National Congress, and
of Sandino in Nicaragua who fought the U.S. Marines for many
years.
My feet were getting itchy. I was fed up with the Post Office and
the excruciatingly monotonous nature of the work. At the same
time, the night shift cramped my social life as well as my growing
need for broader political activity. I quit the job without regret.
Soon after, I started work as a waiter on the Santa Fe's Chief,
the company's crack train running to Los Angeles. It was an eight­
day run: three days to the coast, with a two-day layover in Los
Angeles and three days back. Our crew would make three trips a
month, and a layover one trip (eight days) in Chicago. This
schedule gave me approximately twelve free days a month in
Chicago-time enough for both political and social life. It was a
hard job, but good money for those days and exciting after the
drab routine of the Post Office.
Los Angeles, "Sweet Los," as we used to call it. The Santa Fe
boys, all "big spenders," were very popular with the girls. A bevy
would show up to meet us at the station every trip.
I was to remain on that run three years, which up to that time
 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 117

was the longest I had ever remained on one job. Upon my return
from the first trip, I called Mabley and he informed me that he
thought the discussion circle had dissolved. Only one or two guys
showed up at the next scheduled meeting, and the pro-tern
chairman himself was absent. It was dead.
My political development continued nevertheless. The runs on
the Santa Fe gave ample time for discussion with my fellow crew
members. Most of them, though somewhat older, were as aware as
those at the Post Office with whom I had worked. I also continued
to read, now studying The Communist Manifesto, Engels' Origins
of the Family, Private Property and the State, and Marx's Value,
Price and Profit.
The first stage of my political search was near an end. In the
years since I had mustered out of the Army, I had come from being
a disgruntled Black ex-soldier to being a self-conscioos revolution­
ary looking for an organization with which to make revolution.
For three years I had listened in lecture halls, at rallies and in
Washington Park to a spate of orators each claiming to meet the
challenge of the times. They included the great "people's lawyer"
Clarence Darrow; Judge Fisher of the reform movement; the
socialist leader Victor Berger and sundry other members of his
party; the anarchist Ben Reichman; Ben Fletcher, the Black IWW
orator and organizer; and assorted Garveyites. Although some
had their points-for example, the fighting spirit and sincerity of
the IWW impressed me-1 rejected them all.
In the spring of 1922, I approached my brother Otto, whom I
knew had joined the Workers (Communist) Party shortly after its
inception in 1921. I told him that I wanted to join the Party.
The faet that Otto was in the Party and had advised me from
time to time on my reading had undoubtedly influenced my
decision. I had a generally favorable impression of the Black
communists I knew; men like Otto, the Owens brothers and
Edward Doty. I was also impressed by whites like Jim Early, Sam
Hammersmark, Robert Minor and his wife, Lydia Gibson. What
added great weight to my favorable impression of the communists,
however, was their political identity with the successful Bolshevik
Revolution.
118 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

At the time it happened, I had been taken totally unaware of its

significance. I first heard of it during an incident that occurred in
France in August 1918. My regiment, while marching into
positions on the Soissons sector, had paused for a rest. On one side
of the road there was a high barbed wire fence and behind it
loitered groups of soldiers in strange uniforms. Upon closer
observation, it became clear that they were prisoners. They spoke
in a strange tongue, but we understood from their gestures that
they were asking for cigarettes. A number of us immediately
responded, offering them same from our packs.
When we asked who they were, one of them replied in halting
English that they were Russian Cossacks. He explained that their
division, which had been fighting on the western front, had been
withdrawn from the lines, disarmed and placed in quarantine.
They were considered unreliable, he said, because of the revolution
in R.ussia. At the time, I was not even sure of the meaning of the
word revolution-some kind of civil disorder I conjectured.
Giving the matter no further thought, we resumed our march. It
was not until I had returned from France that I began reading
about the Russian Revolution. From then on, I followed its
course, and despite the distorted view in the U .S. press, its
significance slowly dawned on me.
Here, I felt, was a tangible accomplishment and real power.
Along with other Black radicals, I was impressed-just as a later
generation came to look at China, Cuba and Vietnam as models of
successful struggle against tyranny, colonialism and oppression.
Thus, I was particularly attracted to the communists. True, the
Party was largely white in its racial composition, with only a
handful of Black members. I felt, nevertheless, that it comprised
the best and most sincerely revolutionary and internationally
minded elements among white radicals.and therefore formed the
basis for the revolutionary unity of Blacks and whites. This was so,
I believed, because it was a part of a world revolutionary
mavement uniting Chinese, Africans and Latin Americans with
Europeans and N orth Americans through the Third Communist
International.
The Bolsheviks had destroyed the czarist rule, established the
 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS 119

first workers' state, and breached the world system of capitalism

over a territory comprising more than one-sixth of the earth's
surface. Most impressive as far as Blacks were concerned was that
the revolution had laid the basis for salving the national and racial
questions on the basis of complete freedom for the numerous
nations, colonial peoples and minorities formerly oppressed by the
czarist empire. Moscow had now become the focus of the colonial
revolution. In the turbulence of those days, there seemed every
reason to think that the energy unleashed in Russia would carry
the revolution throughout the world.
In the U.S., the deluge of lies and distortions by the media, the
red baiting, the Palmer raids, had not been able to hide this
monumental achievement of the Russian Bolsheviks. The unin­
formed Black man in the street could reason that a phenomenon
that evoked such fear and hatred on the part of the white
supremacist rulers "couldn't be all bad." As for me, the socialist
victory confirmed my belief in the Bolshevik variety of socialism as
a way out for U.S. Blacks.
I found the theory behind this achievement all there in Lenin's
State and Revolution. He developed and applied the theories of
Marx and Engels on the role of the state and the dictatorship of the
proletariat. This work was the single most important hook I had
read in the entire three years of my political search and was
decisive in leading me to the Communist Party. In this work, Lenin
clarified the nature of the state and the means by which to
overthrow it. His approach seemed practical and realistic; it was
no longer just abstract theory.
Using Origins of the Family as a departure point, Lenin
demystified and desanctified the myth of the state in capitalist
society as an impartial monitor of human affairs. Rather, he
exposed the state in capitalist society-and its apparatus of
military, police, courts and prisons-as an instrument of ruling
class domination, a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
It thus followed that the job of forcibly replacing the state power
of the dominant class with that of the proletariat was the
paramount and indispensable task of socialist revolution. As far as
I could see, the Soviet example appeared to offer a completely
120 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

clear solution to the problems facing American workers, both

Black and white. I saw the elimination of racism and the
achievement of complete equality for Blacks as an inevitable by­
produet of a socialist revolution in the United States. It was at this
point that I became fully resolved to make my own personal
commitment to the fight for a socialist United States.
The first part of my odyssey was over.
 Chapter 4

An Organization
of Revolutionaries

Otto was pleased when I first told him of my desire to join the
Party in the summer of 1922. He said that he had known that I had
been ready to join for some time, but he suggested that I should
wait a while beforejoining. When I asked why, he told me about an
unpleasant situation that had arisen in the Party's Southside
branch.
Most of the few Black members were concentrated in this
English-speaking branch, but it seemed that a number of recent
Black recruits had dropped out. They resented the paternalistic
attitude displayed toward them by some of the white comrades
who, Otto said, treated Blacks like children and seemed to think
that the whites had all the answers. It was only a temporary
situation, he assured me. The matter had been taken up before the
Party District Committee; if it was not resolved there, they would
take it to the Central Committee.
"And if you don't get satisfaction there?" I queried.
"Well, then there's the Communist International!" he teplied
emphatically. "lt's as much our Party as it is theirs."
I was properly impressed by his sincerity and by the idea that we
could appeal our case to the "supreme court" of international
communism, which included such luminaries as the great Lenin.
The Blacks who had remained in the Party had decided not to
bring any new members into the branch until the matter was
satisfactorily settled. I was rather surprised to hear all of this.
122 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Clearly, membership in the Party did not automatically free whites

from white supremacist ideas. Nor, for that matter, did it free
Blacks from their distrust of whites. Throughout my lifetime, I
found that interracial solidarity-even in the Communist Party­
required a continuous ideological struggle.
Otto suggested that until the matter was cleared up I should join
the African Blood Brotherhood. The ABB was a secret, all-Black,
revolutionary organization to which some of the Black Party
members belonged-including Otto. I later learned that the matter
of white paternalism was eventually resolved to the satisfaction of
the Black comrades. I don't recall the details; I think that Arne
Swabeck (the district organizer) or Robert Minor from the Central
Committee finally came down and lectured the branch on the evils
of race prejudice and threatened disciplinary action to the point of
expulsion of comrades guilty of bringing bourgeois social attitudes
into..the Party.
In the meantime, I took Otto's advice and joined the African
Blood Brotherhood. He took me to see Edward Doty, then
commander of the Brotherhood's Chicago Post. Vouched for by
Otto and Doty, I was taken to a meeting of the membership
committee and went through the induction ceremonies. This
consisted of an African fraternization ritual requiring the mixing
of blood between the applicant and one of the regular members.
The organization took its name from this ritual. Doty performed
the ceremony; he pricked our index fingers with a needle (I hoped
it was sterilized!) and when drops of blood appeared, he rubbed
them together.
Now a Blood Brother, I proceeded to take the Oath of Loyalty
which contained a-clause warning that divulging of any of the
secrets of the organization was punishable by death. I was deeply
impressed by all this; the atmosphere of great secrecy appealed to
my romantic sense. There were two degrees of membership; one
was automatically conferred uponjoining and the second, which I
took a few days later, involved the performance of some service for
the organization. In my case, as I recall, it was a trivial task-the
selling of a dozen or so copies of its magazine, The Crusader.
At the time that I joined the African Blood Brotherhood, I knew
 AN ORGANIZATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES 123

little about the organization other than the faet that it was in some
way associated with the Communist Party. I do remember having
read a copy or two of The Crusader before I joined the group.
Some of the history of the ABB I got from Otto and other post
members, but most of it I found out much later when I met and
worked with Cyril P. Briggs, the original founder of the group. The
African Blood Brotherhood was founded in New York City in
1919 by a group of Black radicals under the leadership of Briggs. A
West lndian (as were most of the founders), he was a former editor
of the Amsterdam News, a Black New York newspaper. He quit in
disagreement over policy with the owner, who attempted to censor
his anti-war editorials. Briggs's own magazine. The Crusader, was
established in 1919. The Brotherhood was organized around the
magazine with Briggs as its executive head presiding over a
supreme council.
The group was originally conceived as the African Blood
Brotherhood "for African liberation and redemption" and was
later broadened to "for immediate protection and ultimate
liberation of Negroes everywhere." As it was a secret organization,
it never sought broad membership. National headquarters were in
New York. lts size never exceeded 3,000. But its influence was
many times greater than this; the Crusader at one time claimed a
circulation of 33,000. 1 There was also The Crusader News Service
which was distributed to two hundred Black newspapers.
Briggs, his associates-Richard B. Moore, Grace Campbell and
others-and The Crusader were among the vanguard forces for
the New Negro movement, an ideological current which reflected
the new mood of militancy and social awareness of young Blacks
of the post-war period. In New York, the New Negro movement
also included the radical magazine, The Messenger, edited by
Chandler Owen and A. Philip Randolph, and The Emancipator,
edited by W.A. Domingo. Many of the groups were members of
the Socialist Party or close to it politically. They espoused
"economic radicalism," an over-simplified interpretation of Marx­
ism which, nevertheless, enabled them to see the economic and
social roots of racial subjugation. Historically, theirs was the first
serious attempt by Blacks to adopt the Marxist world view and the
124 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

theory of class struggle to the problems of Black Americans.

Within this broad grouping, however, there were differences
which emerged later. Briggs was definitely a revolutionary nation­
alist; that is, he saw the solution of the "race problem" in the
establishment of independent Black nation-states in Africa, the
Caribbean and the United States. In America, he felt this could be
achieved only through revolutionizing the whole country. This
meant he saw revolutionary white workers as allies. These were
elements of a program which he perceived as an alternative to
Garvey's plan of mass exodus.
A self-governing Black state on U. S. soil was a novel idea for
which Briggs sent up trial balloons in the form of editorials in the
Amsterdam News in 1917, of which he was then editor. Shortly
after the entrance of the United States into World War I, he wrote
an editorial entitled "Security of Life for Poles and Serbs-Why
N ot•for Colored Americans?"2
Briggs, however, had no definite idea for the location of the
future "colored autonomous state," suggesting at various times
Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California or Nevada; Later, after
President Wilson had put forth his fourteen points in January
1918, Briggs equated the plight of Blacks in the United States to
nations occupied by Germany and demanded:
With what moral authority or justice can President Wilson
demand that eight million Belgians be freed when for his
entire first term and to the present moment of his second term
he has not lifted a finger for justice and liberty for over TEN
MILLION colored people, a nation within a nation, a
nationality oppressed and jim-crowed, yet worthy as any
other people of a square deal or failing that, a separate
political existence ?3
He continued this theme in The Crusader. One year after the
founding of the Brotherhood, Briggs shifted from the idea of a
Black state on U. S. soil to the advocacy of a Black state in Africa,
South America or the Caribbean, where those Blacks who wanted
to could migrate. In this, he was undoubtedly on the defensive,
giving ground to the overwhelming Garvey deluge then sweeping
the national Black community. In 1921, Briggs was to link the
 AN ORGANIZATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES 125

struggle for equal rights of U.S. Blacks with the establishment of a

Black state in Africa and elsewhere:
Just as the Negro in the United States can never hope to win
equal rights with his white neighbors until Africa is liberated
and a strong Negro state ( or states) erected on that continent,
so, too, we can never liberate Africa unless, and until, the
American Section of the Negro Race is made strong enough
to play the part for a free Africa that the Irish in America now
play for a free Ireland. 4
The Brotherhood rejected Garvey's racial separatism. They
knew that Blacks needed allies and tied the struggle for equal
rights to that of the progressive section of white labor. In the
1918-1919 elections, the Brotherhood supported the Socialist Party
candidates. The Crusader and the ABB were ardent supporters of
the Russian Revolution; they saw it as an opportunity for Blacks
to identify with a powerful international revolutionary movement. 5
It enabled them to overcome the isolation inherent in their
position as a minority people in the midst of a powerful and hostile
white oppressor nation. Thus, The Crusader called for an alliance
with the Bolsheviks against race prejudice. In 1921, the magazine
made its clearest formulation, linking the struggles of Blacks and
other oppressed nations with socialism:
The surest and quickest way, then, in our opinion, to achieve
the salvation of the Negro is to combine the two most likely
and feasible propositions, viz.: salvation for all Negroes
through the establishment of a strong, stable, independent
Negro State (along the. lines of our own race genius) in Africa
and elsewhere: and salvation for all Negroes (as well as other
oppressed people) through the establishment of a Universal
Socialist Co-operative commonwealth. 6
The split in the world socialist movement as a result of the First
World War led to the formation of the Third (Communist)
International in 1919. This split was reflected in the New Negro
movement as well. Randolph and Owens, the whole Messenger
crowd, remained with the social democrats of the Second Interna­
tional who were in opposition to the Bolshevik revolution.
Members of The Crusader group-Briggs, Moore and others-
126 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

gravitated toward the Third International and eventually joined its

American affiliate, the Communist Party. They were followed in
the next year or two by Otto Hall, Lovett F ort-Whiteman and
others.
The decline of the African Blood Brotherhood in the early
twenties and its eventual demise coincided with the growing
participation of its leadership in the activities of the Communist
Party. By 1923-24, the Brotherhood had ceased to exist as an
autonomous, organized expression of the national revolutionary
trend. lts leading members became communists or close sympa­
thizers and its posts served as one of the Party's recruiting grounds
for Blacks.
I first met Briggs upon my return from Russia in 1930. We were
to strike up a lasting friendship-one that went beyond the
comradeship of the Party and which extended over more than
three decades, until his death in 1967. Throughout those years, we
were associated on numerous projects and found ourselves on the
same side of many political issues.
When I first met Briggs, he conformed to the impression that I
had been given of him: a tall, impressive-looking man-so light in
complexion that he was aften mistaken for white. He had a large
head and bushy black eyebrows. He was a man possessed of great
physical and moral courage, which I was to observe on many
occasions. Briggs also had a fiery temper, which was usually
controlled in the case of comrades or friends.
He had one outstanding physical defect-he was a heavy
stutterer. He stuttered so much that it aften took him several
seconds to get out the first word of a sentence. When he took the
floor at meetings we would all listen attentively; no one would
interrupt him because we knew he always had something impor­
tant and pertinent to say. While he spoke we would cast our eyes
down and look away from him to avoid making him feel self­
conscious, though he never seemed to be.
We noticed that he stuttered less when he was angry. One such
occasion was when Garvey rejected Briggs's offer of cooperation.
The wily Garvey saw through the maneuver for what it was-an
attempt by Briggs to gain a position from which he could better
 AN ORGANIZATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES 127

attack him. Garvey lashed out at Briggs, calling him a "white man
trying to pass himself off as a Negro."
Friends told me that this attack sent Briggs into such a rage that
he mounted a soapbox at Harlem's 135th Street and Lenox
Avenue and assailed Garvey for two hours without a stutter,
branding him a charlatan and a fraud. Not content with this
verbal lashing of his enemy, Briggs hauled Garvey into court on
the charge of defamation of character. He won the case, forcing
Garvey to make a public apology and pay a fine of one dollar.
Briggs's real forte, however, was as a keen polemicist, a veritable
master of invective.His speech handicap was a pity, because aside
from the stutter he had all the qualities of a good orator. Closely
associated with Briggs was Richard B. Moore, a fine orator who
did much public speaking for the ABB.
What were the reasons for the decline of the ABB and its
eventual absorption by the Communist Party? Why did Briggs fail
to develop the program for Black self-determination in the USA?
In the fifties, I had a series of talks with Briggs and asked his
opinion on these questions.
His overall appraisal of the role of the Brotherhood was that it
was a forerunner of the contemporary national revolutionary
trend and a very positive thing. "Of course, we didn't stop Garvey,"
he said, but "we were beginning to develop a revolutionary
alternative. We did put a crimp in his sails," Briggs added.
For a while, the ABB had been a rallying center for left
opposition to Garvey. lts membership included class-conscious
Black workers and revolutionary intellectuals and drew member­
ship from both disillusioned Garveyites and radicals who never
took to Garvey's program in the first place. The main reason for
de-emphasizing the idea of Black nationhood in the United States,
Briggs stated, was the unfavorable relationship of forces then
existing.
Garvey, with his Back to Africa program, had preempted the
leadership of the mass movement and corralled most of the
militants. His hold over the masses was strengthened by the anti­
Black violence of the Red Summer of 1919. This gave further
credence to Garvey's contention that the U.S. was a white man's
128 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

country where Blacks could never achieve equality. Indeed, for

these masses, his program for a Black state in Africa to which
American Blacks could migrate seemed far less utopian than the
idea of a Black state on U .S. soil.
As for the South, Briggs did not feel that such a region of
entrenched racism could be projected realistically as a territorial
focus of a Black nationalist state. It would not have been so
accepted by the masses who were in flight from the area. For
himself, he reasoned, the very idea of self-determination in the
United States presupposed the support of white revolutionaries.
That meant a revolutionary crisis in the country as a whole, and in
that day no such prospect was in sight. In faet, white revo­
lutionary forces were then small and weak, the target of the vicious
anti-red drives of the government and employers.
In other words, he felt that Black self-determination in the
Uni�ed States was an idea whose time had not yet come. The
communists didn't have all the answers, and neither did we, Briggs
indicated. Whites, as well as a number of Black radicals, undoubt-:­
edly underestimated the national element; socialism alone was
seen as the solution. Briggs was impressed, however, by the
sincerity and revolutionary ardor of the communists and by the
faet that they were a detachment of Lenin's Third Communist
International. He felt that the future of the revolution in the
United States and of Black liberation lay in multinational
communist leadership.
Though the ABB ceased to exist as an organized, independent
expression of the national revolutionary current, the tendency
itself remained, awaiting the further maturing of its main driving
force, the Black proletariat. By the end of the decade, the national
revolutionary sentiment was to find expression in the program of
the Communist Party.
By the time I joined the Brotherhood's Chicago post in the
summer of 1922, The Crusader had dropped much of its original
national revolutionary orientation. Although I was then unaware
of it, Briggs and the supreme council were presiding over the
absorption of the organization into the Communist Party.
In Chicago, the decline of the organization was slower than
 AN ORGANIZATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES 129

elsewhere. Perhaps this was because it had a strong base among

Black building-tradesmen, plumbers, electricians and bricklayers.
Edward Doty, a plumber by trade, was simultaneously the ABB
post commander and a leader and founder of the American
Consolidated Trades Council (ACTC). The council was a federa­
tion of independent Black unions and groups in the building trades
industry who had formed their own unions for the double purpose
of protecting Black workers on the job and counteracting the
discriminatory policies of the white AFL craft unions dominant in
the field.
Doty, a tall, muscular man, was bom in Mobile, Alabama, and
had come north in 1912 at the age of seventeen. According to him,
most of the Black steamfitters and plumbers had learned their
trades in the stockyards during the industrial boom and labor
shortage that accompanied World War I. Some, however, had
gotten their training at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Active in
the Brotherhood along with Doty were such outstanding leaders of
the Black workers' struggle as Herman Dorsey (an electrician) and
Alexander Dunlap (a plumber).
Besides the tradesmen, other members ofthe ABB post included
a number of older radicals such as Alonzo Isabel, Norval Allen,
Gordon Owens, H.V. Phillips, Otto Hall and several others.
Together with Doty, they made up the communist core of the
Brotherhood.
My experiences in the ABB marked my first association with
Black communists. I had met some of them before, at forums and
lectures; I had heard Owens speak at the Bugs Club and Dill Pickle
forums, but I had never worked together with any of them before. 7
They were mostly workers from the stockyards and other indus­
tries. One or two, like myself, were from the service trades. Like
Otto, several of them had previously been in the Garvey move­
ment. There was no doubt that they represented a politically
advanced section of the Black working class. They were the types
who today would be called "political activists," the people who
kept abreast of the issues in the Southside community and
participated in local struggles.
I was interested to learn their backgrounds and how they had
130 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

come to the revolutionary movement. I found that some of them

had been among Chicago's first Marxist-oriented Black radicals
and had been associated with the Free Thought Society. This
society was formed immediately after the war and held regular
forums. I believe its leader and founder was a young man named
Tibbs. He was one of the earliest of Chicago's Black radicals. A
victim of police harassment and persecution, Tibbs was arrested
during the Palmer raids in 1919 and spent several years in jail on a
fake charge of stealing automobile tires. This continual perse­
cution reduced his political effectiveness, which was as the
authorities intended.
Members of the Free Thought Society Forum, I learned, had
cooperated with the New Negro group of economic radicals
centered around the radical weekly, The Whip, edited by Joseph
Bibb, A.C. MacNeal (who later became secretary of the Chicago
NA,ACP), and William C. Linton. The members of this group,
unlike their New York counterparts, were not avowed socialists.
They were, nevertheless, influenced by socialist ideas and regarded
the "race problem" as basically economic.
In 1920, members of the Free Thought Society took an active
part in the campaign of the Independent Non-Partisan League,
sponsored by The Whip and its editors. This coalition ran a full
slate of candidates in the Republican primary of that year, in
which they challenged the old guard Republicans of the second
ward Republican organization as well as the so-called New
People's Movement of Oscar DePriest. 8
The election platform called for abolition of all discrimination,
for public ownership of utilities, civil service reform, women's
suffrage, children's :welfare service and "organization of labor into
one union." While they were not successful in turning back the
Republican old guard, the campaign resulted in appreciable gains
for some of the league's candidates.
At that time, the main efforts of the ABB were directed at
mobilizing community support for the Black ACTC tradesmen.
While retaining a secret character, its members participated as
individuals in campaigns on local issues. They collaborated with
the Trade Union Education League (TUEL) of which Doty was a
 AN ORGANIZATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES 131

member, in its drive to organize the stockyards. The TUEL

supported the demands of the ACTC. At that time, it was led by
William Z. Foster and Jack Johnstone. Later to become theTrade
Union U nity League, it was a gathering of the revolutionary and
progressive forces within trade unions to fight against the
reactionary labor bureaucracy and their collaborationist policies
and Jim Crowism.
Other members of the Brotherhood participated in the cam­
paign against high rents that was waged in the Southside
community. This was a fight in which a white Party member, Bob
Minor, and his wife, Lydia Gibson, played leading roles.
I found my experience in the Brotherhood both stimulating and
rewarding. In addition to learning a lot from the communists with
whom I was associated, it was here I forged my first active
association with Black industrial workers. I found them literate,
articulate and class conscious, a proud and defiant group which
had been radicalized by the struggles against discriminatory
practices of the unions and employers. They understood the
meaning of solidarity and the need for militant organization to
obtain their objectives. In this, they were quite different from the
people with whom I had been associated at the post office, as well
as writers whom I so commonly found to be stamped with a hustler
mentality. Doty and his followers in the Trades Council were
pioneers in the struggle for the rights of Black workers, a struggle
which has continued over half a century and remains unfinished to
this day.
The older tradesmen finally fought their way into the unions,
the electricians in 1938 and the plumbers in 1947. In the early
fifties, Doty became the first Black officer in the plumbers' union.
But these gains were only token! The bars are still up against
Blacks and other minority workers seeking jobs in the ninety
billion dollar-a-year industry.

THE YOUNG COMMUNIST LEAGUE

My sojourn in the African Blood Brotherhood was brief-
132 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

about six months. I felt the need to move on. My original goal was
the Communist Party. While I was in the ABB, the problem of
white chauvinism in the Southside branch had been cleared up.
Joining the Party was no longer a problem, after all, the
Brotherhood had been but a stopover.
I was about to apply for admission when H. V. Phillips asked me
to j oin the Y oung W orkers ( Communist) League, the youth
division of the Communist Party. Phillips, I learned, was a
member of the district and national committees of the League.
When I told him I was just about to join the Party, he said: "That's
all right, but you're a young fellow and should be among the youth.
Besides, more of us Blacks are needed in the League."
I thought the matter over. "Why not? lt's all the same, they're all
communists."
The next day Phillips took me to meet John Harvey, a white
youth who was district organizer of the League. Harvey told me
that I had been highly recommended to them by Phillips and
others. He expressed delight at my decision to join and said that it
fit right in with their plans since they were anxious to move
forward with work among Black youth, but were handicapped by
the faet that they had only a few Black members.
I expressed doubt that I could be considered a youth at the age
of twenty-five.
They replied that there were a number of members my age and
older in the organization. All that was needed, they assured me,
was for one to have the "youth angle."
"What is that?" I asked.
"Oh, that simply means tp.e ability to understand youth and
their problems and to be able to communicate with them."
I was not sure I had all of these qualities, but the proposition
appealed to me. So I joined the YCL in the winter of 1923. The
League at that time was a close-knit fraternity of idealistic and
dedicated young people determined to build a new world for future
generations. When we sang the Y outh International at meetings,
we actually felt ourselves to be, as the song proclaimed, "the
youthful guardsmen of the proletariat."
The organization was small, with only several hundred mem-
 AN ORGANIZATION QF REVOLUTIONARIES 133

hers. As I recall, Phillips and myself were the only Blacks. I was
still working on the Santa Fe and on layovers I spent most of the
time getting acquainted with my new comrades, attending classes,
meetings and social gatherings. I was impressed by what seemed to
me to be a high level of political development and by their use of
Marxist terminology. It made me keenly aware of my own sketchy
knowledge of Marxism and the revolutionary movement and
spurred me to close the gap. A partial explanation for their
political sophistication, I felt, was the faet that a large number of
them, perhaps a majority, were "red diaper" babies-their parents
being old revolutionaries, either members of the Party or its
supporters. On the whole, they were a spirited, intelligent group,
and as far as I could discern exhibited not a trace of race prejudice.
Many went on to become leaders of the Party.
There was our district organizer, John Harvey, a lanky youth
and one of the few WASPs; Max Shachtman, a brilliant young
orator and editor of the League's theoretical organ, the Young
Worker, who was tater to become first a Trotskyist and then a
rabid, professional anti-communist. There was Valeria Meltz, an
able young leader, and her brother; their ethnic background was
Russian-American, as was that of Jim Sklar (Keller). His brothers
Gus and Boris were old stalwarts in the Russian Federation and
were well known. There was also Nat Kaplan (Ganley) and Gil
Green. Gil was about sixteen at the time; we used to call him "the
kid." He went on to become national chairman of the YCL and
later a national leader in the Party. I met a number of the League's
national leaders: Johnny Williamson, a Scottish-American and
national secretary, Herbert Zam, Sa01 Darcy, Marty Abern, Phil
Herbert and others, many of whom were to become national
leaders of the Party.
There was no scarcity of places for meetings or for social affairs.
We were on friendly terms with Jane Addams and her people at
Hutl House, where we sometimes met. Other times we used the
halls of various language groups. We participated in and suppor­
ted the activities of the Anti-Imperialist League, headed by Manny
Gomez, the Party's Latin American specialist. The main campaign
at the time was against the invasion of Nicaragua by the U.S.
134 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Marines.
I was particularly impressed by Bob Mazut, a young Russian
representative of the Young Communist International (YCI) to
the League. A small, dark-complected andsoft-spokenyoungman,
Mazut hailed from Soviet Georgia. His mild manner belied his
impressive background. Only twenty-five when I ruet him, he had
fought in the Revolution and Civil War, first as a Red Partisan and
then in the Red Army, in which he advanced to the rank of colonel.
He spoke what we called "political English," and we were always
amused by some of his expressions. For example, I remember how
we use<l to kid Mazut about his being sweet on a certain gir!
comrade. "She likes you very much," someone would say, "but
she's a little overawed by you."
He replied very seriously, "How can I liquidate her suspicions of
me?"
Ide took particular interest in me. I believe Phillips and I were
the first Blacks he had ever really known and for us he was the first
real Soviet communist we had met. I asked questions about Russia
and told him I wanted to go there and see it for myself. "You
undoubtedly will," he said in a matter-af-faet tone, as if the matter
were settled.
On one occasion he told me of a discussion he had had on the eve
of his departure from Russia. Zinoviev, then president of the
Communist International, had asked him to look closely into the
Afro-American question in the United States, and to see if he
could find any confirmation for his belief and that of other
Russian leaders that the right of self-determination was the
appropriate slogan for Black rebellion. Zinoviev added that he had
long believed that the question would become the "Achilles heel of
American imperialism." I told Mazut that I liked the part about
the "Achilles heel," but I didn't feel that the slogan of self­
determination was applicable for U.S. Blacks. It was my under­
standing that the principle had to do with nations, and Blacks were
not a national but a racial minority. To me, it smacked of Garvey's
separatism.
Mazut nevertheless raised the question of self-determination for
discussion in a meeting of the Chicago District Committee of the
 AN ORGANIZATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES 135

YCL. Desirous of getting the committee's reaction to the question,

he was literally shouted down by the white comrades. "Blacks are
Americans," they said. "They want equality, not separation."
Phillips and I, the only Black members of the committee, were
non-committal. And that was the end of that. They did not pursue
the matter further.
In arder to move forward in work with Black youth, we struck
upon the idea of organizing an interracial youth forum on the
Southside. The organizing committee consisted of Chi (Dum
Ping), a Chinese student at the U niversity of Chicago; a young
woman official of the colored YMCA; Phillips, a white League
member; and myself. During this period, I was still working on the
Santa Fe, but on my layovers I devoted all my time to the forum.
We had rented a small hall, decorated it and got out our
publicity-leaflets, posters and an· ad in the Chicago De/ender.
Our first speaker was to beJ ohn Harden, a Bl.ack radical orator. It
was our first effort at mass work among young Blacks and with our
youthful enthusiasm, we were certain of success. But the venture
proved to be abortive.
I can still remember our shock when we came to our meeting
place to find it wrecked. Furniture was smashed, posters ripped
from the walls. There was no doubt in our minds that this was the
work of the police who had unleashed their stool pigeons against
us. Some of our non-communist friends dropped out, and the
project collapsed. The idea of a forum was abandoned-tempo­
rarily, we hoped. A less ambitious plan was then agreed to.
lf we could enlarge our cadres by a few more Blacks, we
thought, we would have a better base from which to approach
mass work. It was therefore suggested that Phillips and I approach
some of our acquaintances and try to recruit them directly into the
League. I eliminated my waiter friends, all of whom were too old,
and approached one of my former colleagues, a postal worker,
who had been in our study circle and whom I considered a likely
prospect. I remember that he sat very quietly while I delivered a
long lecture on the League's program and activities and the need to
get support among Black youth.
Finally iriterrupting me, he blurted out, "I'm sorry, Hall, but I
136 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

find being Black trouble enough, but to be Black and red at the
same time, well that's just double trouble, and when you mix in the
whites, why that's triple trouble."
At first I was rather shocked by his off-hand rebuff, considering
it to be an expression of cynical opportunism. I felt that he had
backslid, even from his position at the post office, but he continued
in a more serious tone. Apparently he felt a deep distrust for whites
and their motives. He regarded the YCL as just another organiza­
tion of white "do-gooders" and saw me as their captive Negro.
When I interrupted to say something about socialism, he cut me
short. He said that he too was for socialism as a final solution, but
that was a lang way off and he would not put it beyond the whites
in the United States to distort socialism in a manner in which they
could remain top dags. In any case, he believed Blacks would
have to be on guard. In the meantime, he believed Blacks should
retain their own organizations under their own leadership.
Alliances, yes-but we ourselves must decide the terms and
conditions, he said.
Our exchange had gotten off on the wrong foot. I was deeply
chagrined by his charge that I was a captive of the whites and that
the League was a white organization. For me, that meant that he
felt that I was a "white folks' nigger." As I recall, I retorted by
calling him a Black racialist who saw everything in terms of Black
and white.
"Why not?" he replied. "Being a Negro, how else should I see
things?"
After this flare-up, our tempers cooled off and we continued our
discussion in calmer tones. But I was definitely on the defensive,
trying to explain why I was in the League and that it was not an
organization of white "do-gooders" as he had charged. It was a
revolutionary, interracial vanguard organization, I asserted.
Sure, we only had a few Blacks now, but our numbers would grow,
I argued.
He was still skeptical and repeated that he was for socialism,
but a special road toward this goal he felt was necessary for Black
Americans, under their own leadership and organization.
"Do you mean a Black party?" I queried.
 AN ORGANIZATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES 137

"Why not?" he rejoined. "It might be necessary as a safeguard

for our interests."
I had no answers to his position. There was a logic to it which I
hadn't thought about.
W e finally parted on friendly terms, promising to keep in touch.
I left, realizing that I'd come out the worst in our exchange. I felt
that I had failed in my first effort to recruit a good Black man to the
League and that we still had some study to do with regards to
Black nationalism.
My friend had been, as I recalled, a bitter critic of Garvey, and I
therefore assumed that he was hostile to Black nationalism. But
now it seemed that he expressed some of Garvey's racial sep­
aratism. Thinking the matter over, I finally came to the conclusion
that the main reason for my inability to counter his arguments was
that I sensed that they contained a good measure of truth. What
was most disturbing was the sense that his position was Jess
isolated from the masses of Blacks than was my own.
Up to that point, I had failed to understand the contradictory
nature of Black nationalism. I had rejected it totally as a
reactionary bourgeois philosophy which, in the conditions of the
U.S., had found its logical expression in Garvey's Back to Africa
program. It was therefore a diversion from the struggle for
economic, social and political equality-the true goal of Blacks in
the United States. The fight for equality, I felt, was revolutionary
in that it was unattainable within the framework of U .S. capitalist
society. N ationalism, moreover, was divisive and played into the
hands of the reactionary racists. This, of course, did not exclude
the acceptance of some of its features, such as race pride and self­
reliance, which were not inconsistent with, but an essential element
in, the fight for equality.
While rejecting nationalism, I also rejected the bourgeois­
assimilationist position of the NAACP and its associates, and their
blind acceptance of white middle class values and culture. What
confused me were attempts to amalgamate what I felt were two
mutually contradictory elements-socialism and the class struggle
on the one hand, and nationalism on the other. Or was the
contradiction more apparent than real, I wondered. My friend's
138 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

nationalism did not go to the point of advocacy of a separate Black

nation. He demanded only autonomy in leadership and organiza­
tion of the Black freedom movement. Was this inconsistent with
the concept of equality and class unity? Had not Blacks the right to
formulate their conditions for unity? For me, this was the first time
I had encountered these questions.
I attempted to reflect on my short experience in the YCL. Was
there not a basis for Black distrust of even white revolutionaries?
The situation in the League was not as idyllic as I had first thought.
There was a certain underestimation of the importance of the
Black struggle against discrimination and for equal rights among
both the youth and the adults of the communist movement.
Behind that, I sensed there was a feeling that the Black struggle was
not itself really revolutionary, but was sort of a drag on the "pure"
class struggle.
.fhis was no doubt a legacy of the old Socialist Party. Even such
a revolutionary as Debs had said: "We have nothing special to
offer the Negro, and we cannot make separate appeals to all the
races. The Socialist Party is the party of the working-class,
regardless of color." 9 And regarding the Afro-American question:
"Social equality, forsooth ... is pure fraud and serves to mask the
real issue, which is not social equality, but economicfreedom." 10
"The Socialist platform has not a word in reference to 'social
equality.' " 11 Evidently, there were a number of theoretical matters
still to be cleared up on the question of the struggle for Black
equality and freedom.
I joined the Party itself in the spring of 1925, recruited by Robert
Minor, with the consent of the League. I had quit the Santa Fe the
summer before, and, totally committed to the comlnunist cause, I
then decided to devote more time to the work and to even­
tually becoming a professional revolutionary. I took extra jobs
on weekends and worked banquets and an occasional extra trip
on the road. I was living at home with my Mother, Father and
sister, who had an infant child, David. All were employed, with my
Mother accepting occasional catering jobs.
Minor, whom I had known for some time, was a reconstructed
white Southerner from Texas, a direct descendant of Sam
 AN ORGANIZATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES 139

Houston (first Governor of the Lone Star State). He was a former

anarchist and one of the great political cartoonists of his day. His
powerful cartoons were carried in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
and tater on in the old Masses (a cultural magazine of the left) and
in the Daily Worker. Among his many talents, he was ajournalist
of no smalt ability. Having travelled widely in Europe as a news
correspondent during the First World War, Minor had visited
Russia during the revolutionary period and had met and spoken
with Lenin.
With these impressive credentials, he was now a member of the
Party's Central Committee and responsible for its Negro work.
This was understood as an interim assignment, eventually to be
taken over by a Black comrade as soon as one could be developed
to fill the position. The person then being groomed for thejob was
Lovett Fort-Whiteman, who was then in Russia taking a crash
course in communist leadership. He had been an associate of
Briggs on The Crusader and also worked with Randolph and
Owens on The Messenger. Later, as I recall, his selection was the
cause for some disgruntlement among the Black comrades.
Why was Fort-Whiteman chosen in preference to such well­
known and capable Blacks as Richard B. Moore, Otto Huiswood
or Cyril P. Briggs, all of whom had revolutionary records superior
to Fort-Whiteman's? At that time, there were no Blacks on the
Central Committee, and even when Fort-Whiteman returned from
Russia in 1925 to take charge of Afro-American work, Minor
remained responsible to the Central Committee. While not as
flamboyant as Fort-Whiteman, these Black leaders had records
comparable to, or better than, those of many whites on the Central
Committee.
Be that as it may, of all the white comrades, Minor was best
fitted for the assignment because of his wide knowledge of and
close interest in the question. His intense hatred of his Southern
racist background came through in some of the most powerful
cartoons of the day. He had wide acquaintances among Black
middle class intellectuals. Bob and his wife Lydia had turned their
Southside apartment into a virtual salon where Black and white
friends would gather to discuss the issues of the day. There I met
140 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

various Black notables, including Dean Pickens, national field

secretary of the NAACP, and Abraham Harris, then secretary of
the Minneapolis Urban League. Harris would later become
Chairman of the Economics Department of Howard University,
and then a full professor of the same subject at the University of
Chicago.

THE FOURTH CONVENTION OF THE CPUSA

It was the period immediately before the Fourth National

Convention of the Communist Party. The factional fight was at its
height, with the Party split between two warring camps: the
Ruthenberg-Pepper group vs. the Foster-Bittelman group. The
atmosphere was rife with charges and counter-charges of "right
OJ>i>Ortunism" and "left sectarianism." This factionalism had
spilled over into the League, which reflected the alignments then
current within the Party.
I had stood aloof from these factions, as I did not clearly
understand the issues. The question of Blacks did not seem to be
directly involved. I assumed it was a clash mainly between
personalities and narrow group interests, and did not reflect
political principles. Each side accused the other of responsibility
for the "Farmer-Labor fiasco" which left the Party isolated in its
first major attempt to form a united front. 12 I could see no
differences among the factions on the question of bolshevization
of the Party.
The Comintern had recently called upon the Party to bolshevize
its ranks. Among other things, this called for the reorganization of
the Party on the basis of shop and street units, and the elimination
of the foreign language clubs as federated organizations within the
Party. These clubs remained close to the Party, however, and
followed its leadership.
I was inclined to favor the Ruthenberg-Pepper group because
most of the Party's Black members-Doty, Elizabeth Griffin,
Alonzo Isabel, Otto and my sister Eppa-were in that group. This,
I suspected, was partly due to the influence of Bob Minor and
 AN ORGANIZATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES 141

Lydia Gibson-their work on the Southside in the tenants'

struggle of 1924, their support of Doty's Consolidated Trades
Council, and their consistent advocacy in the Party of the
importance of work among Blacks. (Most of this occurred after I
had left the ABB and joined the YCL.)
Upon joining the Party, I immediately became part of the
Ruthenberg group. Under Minor's tutelage, I was to undergo
intensive indoctrination. According to the Ruthenberg faction,
Foster, Bittelman, JackJohnstone and their allies (Cannon, Dunne
and Shachtman) were opportunist, narrow-minded trade union­
ists lacking in Marxist theory and hence in the ability to lead a
Marxist party. They said that Foster's group, which possessed a
majority of the delegates, was out to steamroll the convention and
toss Ruthenberg, Pepper and Lovestone out of the leadership.
For most of us, the clincher was that the Foster group lacked the
confidence of the Communist International. This latter charge, it
seemed to me, was confirmed by the decisions of the Fourth Party
Convention the following summer. I was a delegate to this
convention from the YCL. I was to witness the intervention of the
Cl in the person of its on-the-spot representative, Comrade Green
(Gusev), an old Bolshevik friend and co-worker of Lenin and
Stalin. For obvious security reasons, only the leaders of both
factions had direct contact with him. His job was to suppress
factionalism and to unite the Party on the basis of the Comintern
line. I must say that he tackled this task with an expertise that was
remarkable to behold.
First, he set up what was called a Parity Committee, composed
of an equal number of top leaders of both factions, with himself as
a neutral chairman. Since the two factions were evenly represented
on the committee, his was the det!'lding vote. I remember that there
was widespread speculation among the delegates as to which
faction he would support. We didn't have long to wait.
The convention had been in session about a week. The
atmosphere was charged, passions inflamed, a split seemed
imminent. Indeed, our caucus leaders had difficulty in preventing
a walkout by some of the more hot-headed members. A message
finally arrived in the form of a cable from the Cl (which
142 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

undoubtedly was sent at Gusev's urging). The cable was presented

to the Parity Committee by Gusev. It demanded that "under no
circumstances" should the Foster majority "be allowed to suppress
the Ruthenberg group... because," it went on to say, "the Ruthen­
berg group is more loyal to the decisions of the Communist
International and stands closer to its views. It has the majority or
strong minority in most districts and the Foster group uses
excessively mechanical and ultra-factional methods." It further
demanded that the Ruthenberg group "get not less than forty
percent of the Central Executive Committee" and insisted as "an
ultimatum" to the majority "that Ruthenberg retains post of
Secretary...categorically insist upon Lovestone's Central Exec­
utive Committee membership... demand retention by Ruthenberg
group of co-editorship on central organ." 13
The results were greeted with great jubilation by our group.
Foster refused to accept the majority of the incoming Central
Committee under these circumstances (in which his loyalty was
questioned) and ceded leadership to the Ruthenberg group. The
result was that the Ruthenberg-Pepper group retained key posi­
tions on the new Central Committee-Ruthenberg as general
secretary, Lovestone as organizational secretary, Bedacht as agit­
prop h�ad.
Despite factionalism, the convention marked a step forward in
the work among Blacks. Although its decisions threw no new light
on the question, the platform adopted did contain the most
elaborate statement the Party had thus far made.
It subscribed to full equality in the relationship between Black
and white workers. It advocated the right to vote, abolition of Jim
Crowism in law and custom, including segregation and inter­
marriage laws. The main thrust0of the program, however, was
directed towards building Black and white labor unity on the job
and in the union. Toward this end the platform asserted that:
Our Party must work among the unorganized Negro workers
destroying whatever prejudice may exist against trade unions,
which has been cultivated by white capitalists ... (and) the
Negro petty-bourgeoisie... Our Party must make itself the
foremost spokesman for the real abolition of all discrimina-
 AN ORGANIZATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES 143

tion of the as yet largely unorganized Negro workers in the

same union with the white workers on the same basis of
equality of membership, equality of right to employment in
all branches of work and equality of pay. 14
The Party called for the inclusion of Black workers in the
existing unions. It came out against racial separatism and dual
· unionism, but it declared its intention to organize Blacks into
separate unions wherever they were barred from existing organiza­
tions and to use the separation as a battering ram against Black
exclusion. Emphasizing the relationship between these partial
demands and ultimate goals, the platform declared that the
accomplishment of the above aims was not an end in itself and that
on the contrary, it was the struggle for their accomplishment that
was even more important:
In the course of the struggle with such demands we will
demonstrate ... 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. 15
It must be remembered that by this time the attempts to
infiltrate the Garvey movement had proven unsuccessful and that
the African Blood Brotherhood, the sole revolutionary Black
organization in the field, had been dissolved. To meet the need for
an organizational vehicle to put our program into effect, the Party
and the Trade Union Educational League sponsored the American
Negro Labor Congress (ANLC). 16
In the meantime, Lovett Fort-Whiteman, our man in Moscow,
returned to head up the Negro work and to prepare the launching
of the ANLC. H. V. Phillips, Edwards, Doty and I were assigned to
the organizing committee for the congress, drafting and circulat­
ing the call, and approaching organizations for delegates. As I
remember, most of the Blacks in the Party were assigned to work
on the congress. Otto was not involved in these activities, as
immediately after the Fourth Party Convention, he had left for
Moscow with the first batch of Black students.
Fort-Whiteman was truly a fantastic figure. A brown-skinned
man of medium height, Fort-Whiteman's high cheekbones gave
144 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

him somewhat of an Oriental look. He had affected a Russian style

of dress, sporting a robochka (a man's long belted shirt) which
came almost to his knees, ornamental helt, high boots and a fur
hat. Here was a veritable Black Cossack who could be seen
sauntering along the streets of Southside Chicago. Fort-White­
man was a graduate of Tuskegee and, as I understood, had had
some training as an actor. He had been a drama critic for The
Messenger and for The Crusader. There was no doubt that he was
a showman; he always seemed to be acting out a part he had chosen
for himself.
Upon his return from the Soviet Union, he held a number of
press conferences in which he delineated plans for the American
Negro Labor Congress, and as a Black communist fresh from
Russia, he made good news copy.
Fort-Whiteman had taken responsibility for lining up enter­
ta,inment for the opening night of the congress. Characteristically,
with his Russian affectations, he arranged for a program of
Russian ballet and theater. The rest of us didn't question what he
was doing, and the incongruity of the program didn't occur to us
until the opening night.
The meeting took place in a hall on Indiana Avenue near Thirty­
first Street, in the midst of the Black ghetto. When I arrived it was
packed-perhaps 500 people or so. Inside, I was suddenly
attracted by a commotion at the door. As a member of the steering
committee, I walked over to see what was the matter. Something
was amiss with the "Russian ballet" which was about to enter the
hall. A young blonde woman in the "ballet" had been shocked by
the complexion of most of the audience, which she had apparently
expected to be of another hue. Loudly, in a broad Texas accent,
she exclaimed, "Ah'm not goin' ta dance for these niggahs!"
Somebody shouted, "Throw the cracker bitches out!" and the
"Russian" dance group hurriedly left the hall.
The Russian actors remained to perform a one-act Pushkin
play. They, at least, were genuine Russians from the Russian
Federation. But alas, it was in Russian. Of itself, the play was
undoubtedly interesting, but its relevance to a Black workers'
congress was, to say the least, unclear. Although Pushkin was a
 AN ORGANIZATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES 145

Black man, he wrote as a Russian, and the characters portrayed

were Russian. More significant, however, and perhaps an indica­
tion of our sectarian approach, was the faet that no Black artist
appeared on the program.
Fort-Whiteman made the keynote speech outlining the pur­
poses and tasks of the congress. He was a passable orator and
received a good response. Otto Huiswood, an associate of Briggs
and one of the first Blacks to join the Party, also spoke. Richard
B. Moore brought the house down with an impassioned speech
which reached its peroration in Claude McKay's poem, "If We
Must Die." I was spellbound by Moore; I had never heard such
oratory.
That night, Phillips and I left the hall in high spirits. In faet, I
was literally walking on air. At last, I felt, we were about to get
somewhere in our work among Blacks. Phillips, a bit more sober
than I, remarked, "Let's wait and see the report of the credentials
committee."
His caution was justified, for the big letdown came the following
morning. The first working session of the congress convened with
about forty Black and white delegates, mainly communists and
close sympathizers. The crowd of 500 at the opening night rally
had been mainly community people. I think it was Phillips who
remarked that there was hardly a face in the working session that
he didn't recognize; most participants, sadly, were from the
Chicago area.
The organizing committee had prepared draft resolutions for
the congress to consider. As we had anticipated a much larger
turnout, we had made plans for a credentials committee, resolu­
tions committee, etc. But in light of the small attendance, these
resolutions and preparations took on an Alice-in-Woncferland
quality. For example, according to the constitution, the group's
purpose was to "unify the efforts...of all organizations of Negro
workers and farmers as well as organizations composed of both
Negro and white workers and farmers."17
Despite our efforts and work, the ANLC never got off the
ground. Few local units were formed, resolutions and plans were
ncver carried into action. Only its official paper, the Negro
146 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Champion, subsidized by the Party, continued for several years.

Among the post-mortems undertaken on the organization was
the one made by James Ford in his hook, The Negro and the
Dernocratic Front. He commented that "for the period of its
existence, it (the ANLC) was almost completely isolated from the
basic masses of the Negro people." 18 Disappointment and dis­
illusionment followed and personal differences surfaced among
our group. The faet was that the congress had failed, and with it,
the first efforts to build a left-led united front among Blacks.
There was a natura} tendency to find scapegoats for the failure.
Moore and Huiswood, the able delegates from New York, seemed
to have come to Chicago with a chip on their shoulders. They made
no attempt to hide their contempt for Fort-Whiteman, whom they
had known in New York. They openly alluded to him as "Minor's
man Friday." At the time, I was a bit shocked at what I felt was an
atl'empt to malign these comrades. This was especially true of Bob
Minor, whom I regarded with respect and affection. He was sort of
a father figure to me.
Fort-Whiteman, on the other hand, was still an unknown
quantity. My feelings about him were rather mixed. I was both
repelled and fascinated by the excessive flamboyance of the man.
But much later, I recalled overhearing a conversation between him
and Minor during the preparations for the congress. Minor
informed Fort-Whiteman that Ben Fletcher, the well-known
Black IWW Leader, had expressed a desire to participate in the
congress. It was evident that Bob was pleased by the response of
such an important Black labor leader. Fletcher, as an IWW
organizer, had played a leading role in the successful organization
of Philadelphia longshoremen. His attendance would undoubt­
edly have attracted other Blacks in the labor movement.
Fort-Whiteman, however, vehemently opposed the idea and
exclaimed, "I don't want to work with him; I know him. He's the
kind of fellow who'll try to take over the whole show." That ended
the discussion; Fletcher was not invited.
I didn't know Fletcher at the time, but as I reflected back on the
incident some time later, it was clear to me that had he been
allowed to participate, Fort-Whiteman would have been over-
 AN ORGANIZATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES 147

shadowed. I was too new to pass'judgment on Fort-Whiteman's

qualifications, but I did wonder why he was chosen over such
stalwarts as Moore and H uiswood. H uiswood, as a delegate to the
Fourth Congress of the Comintern in 1922, was the first Black
American to attend a congress of that body. (Claude McKay was
also a special fraternal delegate to that congress.) Tågether with
other delegates, H uiswood visited Lenin and became the first
Black man to meet the great Bolshevik. He later became the first
Black to serve as a candidate member of the Executive Committee
of the Communist International.
On the whole, I was very optimistic during my early years in the
Party-confident we were building the kind of party that would
eventually triumph over capitalism.
 Chapter 5

A Student in Moscow

Otto's delegation of Black students to the Soviet Union caused

q�ite a stir in the States. The FBI kept an eye on their activities
and, in late summer 1925, their departure was sensationalized in
the New York Times. 1 The article attributed a statement to Lovett
Fort-Whiteman to the effect that he had sent ten Blacks to the
Soviet Union to study bolshevism and prepare for careers in the
communist "diplomatic service." The article concluded with a
statement calling for action against such "subversive activity."
A t the time, we all felt that any Black applying for a passport
would be subjected to close scrutiny. Therefore, when I learned
that I too would soon be studying in Moscow, I applied for a
first names of my Mother (Harriet) and Father (Haywood). This
name was to stick with me the rest of my life.
Several weeks after I received my passport, I heard the FBI had
been making inquiries about me. By that time, I had become
known as one of the founders of the ANLC. Therefore, as the time
for my departure drew near, I hid out at the home of comrades on
Chicago's Westside until arrangements were made. I went to the
national office of the Communist Party, then in Chicago, and was
informed by Ruthenberg or Lovestone that I should get ready to
leave. Political credentials, typed on silk, were sewn into the lining
of my coat sleeve. In order to avoid going through the port ofNew
York, I left by way of Canada.
 A STUDENT IN MOSCOW 149

In the manner of the old U nderground Railroad, I was passed

on from one set of comrades to thenext: from Detroit, Rudy Baker,
the district organizer, forwarded me on to the Canadian Party
headquarters in Toronto where Jim MacDonald and Tim Buck
were in charge. They sent me on to Montreal where comrades
housed me and booked passage for me to Hamburg, Germany.
Boarding ship in Quebec in the late spring of 1926, I sailed on the
Canadian Pacific liner, the old Empress of Scotland. From
Hamburg, I took a train to Berlin, arriving on a Saturday
afternoon.
I had the address of Hazel H arrison the wife of a Chicago friend
of mine who was a concert pianist studying in Berlin, where she
had had her professional debut. (Years later, she was to head the
Music Department at Howard University.) At that time, she was
living at a boarding house near the K urfilrstendamm and I stopped
there for the remainder of the weekend.
This was the first time I had been in Berlin. Germany was then
emerging from post-war crisis, during which currency inflation
had reached astronomical heights, resulting in the virtual ex­
propriation of a large section af the middle class. It was common
to see shabbily dressed men still trying to keep up appearances by
wearing starched white collars under their patched clothing.
The owners of the boarding house, two middle-aged widows
who were friends of Hazel's, showed me a trunk filled with paper
notes-old German marks which were now worthless. This had
probably represented a life's savings.
Hazel and her two friends took me out to the Tiergarten-the
famous Berlin Zoo. I was attracted by the sight of three lian cubs
that had been mothered by a German police dog. The cubs were
getting hig, and it was clear that the "mother" was no longer able to
control them. We watched for some time, fascinated. I turned
around and realized that there was a crowd around us. At first I
thought they were looking at the cubs, but then it became clear that
Hazel and I were the center of attention. Blacks were rare in Berlin
in those days-there were only half a dozen or so, mostly from the
former German colonies of the Cameroons.
Monday morning I took a cab to the headquarters of the
150 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

German Party, at Karl Marx House on Rosenthallerstrasse. It

was a dour, fortress-like structure, with high walls surrounding the
main building which was set in the middle. I entered into the
anteroom just inside the walls, in which there were a number of
sturdy looking young men lounging around. When I came in, they
jumped up and stood eyeing me suspicously.
They were unarmed, but I knew their weapons were within
arms' reach. This was a symbol of the times for il was not long after
the Beer Hall Putsch of Hitler's brownshirts in Munich, and the
battle for the streets of Berlin had already begun. I presented my
credentials to a man named Walters, who was undoubtedly the
head of security.
It was on this occasion that I first met Ernst Thaelmann, a
former Hamburg longshoreman and then leader of the German
Communist Party. He was passing through the gate and Walters
s.topped him and introduced us. Thaelmann spoke fairly good
English (probably acquired in his work as a seaman) and we
chatted-a while. He asked after Foster, Ruthenberg and others.
Wishing me good luck, he passed on his way.
Walters gave me some spending money and arranged for me to
stay with some German comrades, a young couple who had an
elaborate apartment. The husband ran a haberdashery store on
Friedrichstrasse and was a commander in the Rote Front (the red
front)-the para-military organization which the communists had
organized for defense of workers against the fascists.
One day while walking down the Kurfi.irstendamm, I saw a
cabaret billboard advertising the Black jazz band of Leland and
Drayton and their Charleston dancers. It was a well-known band
back in the States. I had little money, but I couldn't resist the
temptation to stop in and hear them. I sat down at a table and
ordered a beer. To my dismay, the waiter said they didn't sell beer,
just wine. So I took the wine card and chose the cheapest bottle I
could find.
A number of band members and dancers came over to my table
and asked where I was going. When I told them I was a student
going to Moscow, they said they had just returned from a
six-month tour in Russia. They were the first Blackjazz group that
 A STUDENT IN MOSCOW 151

had gone to the Soviet Union. I asked if they had met Otto and the
ol her Black students there. Y es, they had met them all and they
had had good times together. So we all sat down to exchange news.
As we talked, I began to worry about the bill, and said I was low
on money. "Oh, don't worry about that," someone said and
ordered more wine. But when it came time to pay for the drinks, I
�ot stuck with the whole tab and had to walk several miles across
town to get home.
After a month in Berlin, my visa came through. I was on my way
to Stettin, a city on the Baltic Sea which bordered Poland and
where I boarded a small Soviet ship. After three days of some of
I he roughest seas I have ever ex perienced, we landed in Leningrad.
It was April 1926, and we were already in the season of the "white
nights," when daylight lasted until late into the evening.
As we entered the Gulf of Finland the foliowing morning, we
passed the naval fortress of Kronstadt about twenty miles out from
I ,eningrad (the site of the anti-Soviet mutiny of 1920). The ship
rinally docked in Leningrad. Upon landing, I presented my visa
and passport to the authorities. Addressing me in English, a man
in civilian dress said, "Oh, you're going to the Comintern school in
Moscow?"
"Y es," I replied.
He immediately took me in charge and got my baggage through
customs. I assumed he was a member of the security police. We left
the customs building and got into an old beat-up Packard. As we
drove away from the docks, he informed me that the Moscow train
would not leave until eight that evening. He put me up at a hotel
where I could rest and go out to see the city.
Leningrad (old St. Petersburg) was built by Czar Peter the
Great in the sixteenth century and now renamed for the architect
of the new socialist society. As I walked down the now famous
Nevsky Prospekt, I thought of John Reed's Ten Days That Shook
the World, trying to recapture some of the dramatic scenes in that
classic. 2 I passed the Peter and Paul Fortress and then the Winter
Palace-once the home of the czars and now a museum of the
people. The storming of the Winter Palace in 1917 had been the
crucial event in the taking of St. Petersburg by the Bolsheviks.
152 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

The people I saw passing me on the street were plainly dressed.

Many of the men wore the traditional robochka and high boots;
others were in European dress. Most people were dressed neatly,
though shabbily, and all appeared to be well-fed. They were bright
and cheerful. It seemed they went about with a purpose-a sharp
contrast to the atmosphere of hopelessness that had pervaded
Berlin. People in Leningrad looked at me-and I looked at them.
By this time, 1 had become used to being stared at and took it as
friendly curiosity. After all, a Black man was seldom seen in those
parts.
After several hours, I returned to my hotel. My friend from the
security police showed up promptly at seven with my train ticket
and took me to the station to put me on the train to Moscow. Filled
with excitement and anticipation, I got little sleep on the train and
awoke early to see the Russian landscape flowing by my window­
piae forests, groves of birch trees and swamps. I was in the midst of
the great Russian steppes.
When we arrived in Moscow at Yaroslavsky Station, some of
my traveling companions hailed a droshky and told the driver to
take me to the Comintern.
Moscow at last! We drove from the station into the vast
sprawling city-once the capital of old Russia and now of the new.
It was a bright, sunny morning and the sun glistened off the golden
church dornes in the "city of a thousand churches." It seemed a
maze of narrow, cobblestone streets, intersected by broad boule­
vards. While Leningrad had been a distinctly European city,
Moscow seemed a mixture of the Asiatic and the European-a
bizarre and Strange combination to me, but a cheerful one.
Moscow was more Russian than the cosmopolitan Leningrad.
Crowds swarmed in the streets in many different styles of dress.
We arrived at the Comintern, which was housed in an old
eighteenth century structure on Ulitsa Kornintern near the Krem­
lin, across the square from Staraya Konyushnya (the old stables of
the czar). I paid the driver and entered the building. The guard at
the door checked my credentials and directed me upstairs to a
small office on the third floor. After producing my bonafides, I
was told to take a seat, to wait for my comrades who would soon be
 A STUDENT IN MOSCOW 153

coming for me.

About half an hour later, Otto and another Black man entered
the room. I was overjoyed at the sight of him and his friend, who
turned out to be a fellow student, Harold Williams. We embraced
Russian style, and I began to feel more at home in this strange
land.
Otto asked about the family. An ex pression of sadness crossed
his face, however, when I asked him about the rest of the Black
students. He then informed me of Jane Golden's serious illness.
She was at that moment in a uremic coma from a kidney ailment
and was not expected to live. Her husband was at her side at the
hospital. (Though both were from Chicago, I had not met them
before.)
The situation had saddened the whole Black student body, and
for that matter, the whole school. In the course of her brief
sojourn, Jane had become very popular. Otto described her in
glowing terms-a real morale booster, whose spirit had helped all
of them through the period of initial adjustment.
I was impressed. Here was a Black woman, not a member of the
Communist Party, who had so easily become accustomed to the
new Soviet socialist society. It seemed to me that there must be
thousands of Black women like her in the U.S.
After we had greeted each other, we caught a droshky over to
the school in order that I might register officially. In the.course of
the ride, the driver lashed his horse and cursed at him. I asked Otto
what he was saying, and he gave a running translation: "Get up
there, you son-of-a-bitch. I feed you oats while I myself eat black
bread ! Your sire was no good, you bastard, your momma was no
good too!" This verbal and physical abuse, Otto told me, was
typical of most Russian droshky drivers.
We finally arrived at the school administration which was
housed in another old seventeenth century structure, built before
the Revolution. It had been a finishing school for daughters of the
aristocracy. Before that, it had been a boys' school where, rumor
has it, the great Pushkin had studied.
Otto introduced me to the university rector with what sounded
to my untrained ear like fluent Russian. We then went to the office
154 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

of the chancellor, where I was duly registered. I was now a student

at the Universitet Trydyashchiysya Vostoka Imeni Stalina (the
University of the Toilers of the East Named for Stalin)-Russian
acronym K UTV A. Otto and I then walked to the dormitory a few
blocks away where I met the other two Black students, Bankole
and Farmer.
We all immediately took a streetcar to the hospital which was
located on the other side of the Moscow River. There we were met
by Golden and some other students who informed us that Jane
Golden had just passed away that morning. Golden seemed to be
in a state of shock and the doctors had given him some sedatives.
We went into the hospital morgue to view her body. Bankole broke
down in uncontrollable tears. I learned afterwards that Jane had
been a close friend-a kind of mother to him during the period of
his adjustment to this new land.
y./e took Golden home to the dormitory. The school collective
and its leaders immediately took over the funeral arrangements.
The body lay in state in the school auditorium for twenty-four
hours, during which time the students thronged past.
The funeral was held the foliowing day and the whole school
turned out. The cortege seemed a mile long as it flowed past
Tverskaya towards the cemetery. The students would not allow the
casket to be placed upon the cart, but organizing themselves in
relays every fifty yards, insisted on carrying it the distance of
several miles on their shoulders.
A good portion of the American colony in Moscow was
assembled at the cemetery. The chairman of the school collective, a
young Georgian, delivered a stirring eulogy at the graveside. One
of the students who was standing next to me made a running
translation sotto voce which went something like this:
The first among her race to come to the land of socialism .. .in
search of freedom for her oppressed peoples, former slaves...
to find out how the Soviets had done it. We were happy to
receive her and her comrades ... condolences to her bereaved
husband, our Comrade Golden, and to the rest of the Negro
students... the whole university has suffered a great loss. Rest
in peace, Jane Golden. Y ou were with us only a short time, but
all of us have benefitted from your presence and comradeship.
 A STUDENT IN MOSCOW 155

Turning to Golden, he said:

We Soviet people and comrades of oppressed colonial and
dependent countries must carry on" W e pledge our undying
support to the cause of your people's freedom. Long live the
freedom fight of our Negro brothers in America! Long live the
Soviet Union and its Communist Party, beacon light of the
struggle for freedom of all oppressed peoples.
Golden had borne himself well at the graveside, but we didn't
want him to return to his room in the students' dormitory, which
would only remind him of his grievous loss. So we went to the
apartment of MacCloud, an old Wobbly friend of ours from
Philadelphia, who had attended the funeral and who lived in the
Zarechnaya District, across the river. He was a close friend of Big
Bill Haywood and had followed the great working class leader to
the Soviet Union. There we tried to drown our sorrows in good old
Russian vodka, which was in plentiful supply.
Jane Golden's funeral and the school collective's response to her
death made a profound impression on me. Through these events,
crammed into the first three days of my stay in the Soviet Union, I
came to know something about my fellow students and the new
socialist society into which I had entered.

THE BOLSHEVIKS FIGHT FOR EQUALITY OF NATIONS

K UTV A was a unique university. At the time I entered, its

student body represented more than seventy nationalities and
ethnic groups. It was founded by the Bolsheviks for the special
purpose of training cadre from the many national and ethnic
groups within the Soviet Union-the former colonial dependen­
cies of the czarist empire-and also to train cadres from colonies
and subject nations outside the Soviet Union.
The school was divided into two sections-inner and outer. At
the inner section there were Turkmenians, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Bash­
kirs, Yakuts, Chuvashes, Kazaks, Kalmucks, Buryat-Mongols
and Inner and Outer Mongolians from Soviet Asia. From the
Caucasus there were Azerbaidzhanis, Armenians, Georgians,
156 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Abkhazians and many other national and ethnic groups I had

never heard of before. There were Tartars from the Crimea and the
Volga region.
The national and ethnic diversity found within the Soviet Union
is hard to imagine. The Revolution had opened up many areas, for
example through the Trans-Caucasus Road, and as late as 1928,
the existence of new groups was still being "discovered." These
nationalities were all former colonial dependencies of the czars
and were referred to as the "Soviet East," "peoples of the East,"
and "borderland countries." The inner section comprised the main
and largest part of the student body in the university.
W e Blacks were of course part of the outer section at the school.
It included Indians, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, Persians,
Egyptians, Arabs and Palestinian Jews from the Middle East,
Arabs from North Africa, Algerians, Moroccans, Chinese and
several J apanese (hardly a colonial people, but as revolutionaries,
identified with the East).
The Chinese, several hundred strong, comprised the }argest
group of the outer section. This was o bviously because China,
bordering on the USSR, was in the first stage of its own anti­
imperialist revolution, a revolution receiving direct material and
political support from the Soviet Union. While K UTV A trained
the communist cadres from China, there was also the Sun Yat-sen
University, just outside of Moscow, which trained cadres for the
Kuomintang.
Among its students was the daughter of the famous Christian
general, Chang Tso-lin. Several Chinese, including Chiang Kai­
shek's son, studied in Soviet military schools during this period. A
number of the Chinese students from K UTV A were massacred by
Chiang's troops at the Manchurian border when they returned to
China shortly after Chiang's bloody betrayal of the revolution in
1927. Otto told me that a former girlfriend of his was among this
group.
As I remember, there were no Latin Americans at K UTV A
during the time I was there, and the sole black African was
Bankole. The student body was continually expanding, however,
and later included many students from these and other areas.
 A STUDENT IN MOSCOW 157

We students studied the classic works of Marx, Engels, Lenin

and Stalin. But unlike the past schooling we had known, this whole
body of theory was related to practice. Theory was not regarded as
dogma, but as a guide to action.
In May I 925, Stalin had delivered an historie speech at the
school, outlining K UTV A's purpose and its main task. His lecture
was the subject of continuous discussion and study. 3 It was our
introduction to the Marxist theory on the national question and its
development by Lenin and Stalin.
How did the Bolsheviks transform a territory embracing one­
sixth of the earth's surface-known as the "prison-house of
nations" under the Czar-into a family of nations, a free union of
peoples? What was the policy pursued by the Soviets which
enabled them to forge together more than a hundred different
stages of social development into such extraordinary unity of
effort for the building of a multinational socialist state-the kind
of unity that enabled them to win the civil war within and to defeat
the intervention of seventeen nations, including the U nited States,
from without.
The starting point for us was to understand that the formation
of peoples into nations is an objective law of social development
around which the Bolsheviks, particularly Lenin and Stalin, had
developed a whole body of theory. Accotding to this theory, a
nation is an historically constituted stable community of people,
based on four main characteristics: a common territory, a
common economic life, a common language and a common
psychological makeup (national character) manifested in common
features in a national culture. Since the development of imperial­
ism, the liberation of the oppressed nations has become a question
whose final resolution would only come through proletarian
revolution. 4
The guiding principle of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union on the national question was to bring about the unity ofthe
laboring masses of the various nationalities for the purpose of
waging a joint struggle-first to overthrow czarism and imperial­
ism, and then to build the new society under a working class
dictatorship. The accomplishment of the latter required the
158 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

establishment of equality before the law for all nationalities-with

no special privileges for any one people-and the right of the
colonies and subject nations to separate.
This principle was incorporated into the law of the land in the
Declaration of Rights of the People of Russia, passed a few days
after the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks. Of course, the
declaration of itself did not eliminate national inequality, which as
Stalin had observed, "rested on economic inequality, historically
formed." To eliminate this historically based economic and
cultural inequality imposed by the czarist regimes upon the former
oppressed nations, it was required that the more developed nations
assist these formerly oppressed nations and peoples to catch up
with the Great Russians in economic and cultural development.
In pursuance of this aim, the new government was organized on
a bicameral basis. One body was chosen on the basis of population
alone; the other, the Council of N ationalities, consisted of
representatives from each of the national territorial units-the
autonomous Soviet republics, autonomous regions and national
areas. Any policy in regard to the affairs of these formerly
oppressed nations could be carried through only with the approval
of the Council of N ationalities. The Communist Party, through its
members, was involved in both bodies and worked to see that its
policy of full equality and the right of self-determination was
implemented.
As this theory was put into practice, we learned that national
cultures could be expressed with a proletarian (socialist) content
and that there was no antagonistic contradiction, under socialism,
between national cultures and proletarian internationalism. U n­
der the Soviets, the languages and other national characteristics of
the many nationalities were developed and strengthened with the
aim of drawing the formerly oppressed nationalities into full
participation in the new society. Thus, the Bolsheviks upheld the
principle of "proletarian in content, national in form." Through
this policy, they hoped to draw all nationalities together, acquaint­
ing each with the achievements of the others, leading to a truly
universal culture, a joint produet of all humanity.
This is in sharp contrast to imperialism's policy of forcibly
 A STUDENT IN MOSCOW 159

arresting and distorting the free development of nations in order to

maintain their economic and cultural backwardness as an essential
condition for the extraction of superprofits. Thus, the oppressed
nations can achieve liberation only through the path of revolu­
tionary struggle to overthrow imperialism and in alliance with the
working class of the oppressor nations. Stalin, proceeding from
the experience and practice of the Soviet Union, emphasized the
need for the formation and consolidation of a united revolutionary
front between the working class of the West and the rising
revolutionary movements of the colonies-a united front based on
a struggle against a common enemy. The precondition for
forming such unity is that the proletariat of the oppressor nations
gives:
direct and determined support to the liberation movement of
the oppressed peoples against the imperialism of its "own
country," for "no nation can be free if it oppresses other
nations." (Engels) .... This support implies the advocacy, de­
fense and implementation ofthe slogan ofthe right ofnations
to secession, to independent existence as states.s

Without this cooperation of peoples based on mutual confi­

dence and fraternal interrelations, it will be impossible to establish
the material basis for the victory of socialism.
The test of all this theory was being proven in practice in the
Soviet Union. The experience of the Bolsheviks demonstrably
proved to us that socialism offered the most favorable conditions
for the full development of oppressed nations and peoples.
At the time of the Revolution, there were many nationalities
within the horders of the Soviet Union in which the char­
acteristics of nationhood had not yet fully matured, and in
faet had been suppressed by the czars. It was the Soviet sys­
tem itself which became a powerful factor in the consolidation
of these nationalities into nations, as socialist industry and
collective farming created the economic basis for this consol­
idation.
I observed this firsthand in the Crimea and the Caucasus during
my visits there in the summers of 1927 and 1928. The languages
160 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

and culture which had been stifled under the czarist regime were
now being developed. The language of the Crimean people was a
Turko-Tartar language, but befare the Revolution, almost all
education, such as there was, was in the Russian language. Now
there were schools established which used the native language.
Otto and other students made similar observations when they
traveled to different areas of the Soviet Union.
In the meantime, I was having my own problems with the
Russian language. On first hearing it, the language had sounded
most strange to me. I could hardly understand a word and
wondered if I would ever be able to master it. As the youngest
Black American, I applied myself seriously to its study. The first
hurdle was the Cyrillic alphabet-its uniquely different characters
intimidated me. But the crash course at K UTV A, lasting about an
hour and a half per day, soon broke down this initial barrier.
a In addition, I studied on my own for a couple of hours each day.

I would set out to memorize twenty new words a day. Then at

night, I would write them out on a sheet of paper and pin them
above the mirror in my room. I would then go over them again in
the morning while shaving, and during the day I would make sure
to use them in conversation with the Russians.
English grammar had always seemed irrelevant to me, but I
soon came to appreciate the logic of Russian grammar. In faet, I
learned most of my English grammar through the study of
Russian. lts rules were consistent and understandable. The
language soon ceased to be mysterious and revealed itself as being
beautifully and simply constructed. In six months I was able to
read Pravda with the help of a dictionary.

KUTVA: STRUCTURE AND STUDIES

The school structure was fairly complicated, but, as I saw it,

thoroughly democratic. There was the collective, the general body
which included everybody in the school-from the rector, faculty,
students, clerical and maintenance workers to the scrubwoman.
The leading body of the collective was the bureau-composed of
 A STUDENT IN MOSCOW 161

representatives elected by the various groups in the university.

There was also a Communist Party organization which played the
leadership role at all levels.
Originally established by the Council of Nationalities, K UTV A
was now a Party school, administered by the Educational
Department (AGITPROP) of the Central Committee of the
CPSU. There was a direct representative of the Party, called a
"Party strengtbener," in the school administration. Together with
the rector and a representative of the students, he was part of the
"troika" which constituted the top leadership of the school.
Students had the rights of citizens, voting and participating in
local elections. The school discussed and dealt with all the issues
which Soviet workers and peasants discussed at their work places.
As with all students who pursued courses in higher education in
the Soviet Union, we at KUTVA received full room and board,
clothes and a small stipend for spending money. There was, of
course, no tuition. We used to attend workers' cultural clubs and
do volunteer work, like working Saturdays to help build the
Moscow subways. Education for us was not an ivory tower, but a
true integration into the Soviet society, where we received
firsthand knowledge from our experiences.
The curriculum (which was a three-year course) was based on
Marxism-Leninism; that is, the teachings of Marx and Engels as
developed by Lenin. It included dialectical and historical material­
ism, the Marxist world concept; the Marxist theory of class
struggle as the motive force of human events; the economic
doctrines of Marx: value and surplus value, as a key to under­
standing history by revealing the economic law of motion of
modem capitalist societies; Lenin's analysis of imperialism, the
highest stage of capitalism; theory and tactics of the prol!!tarian
revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat and its Soviet state
form; the problems of socialist construction; Lenin's theory on the
peasant question-the alliance of workers and peasants as the base
for Soviet power; the national and colonial questions; and the role
of the party as vanguard of the proletariat. We also studied the
specific history of the CPSU.
Our favorite teacher was Endre Sik, who taught courses on
162 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Leninism and the history of the Soviet Party. Sik was a striking
young man. His distinguishing feature was a large shock of white
hair, unusual for a man so young-he was probably in his thirties.
He was soft-spoken and modest. We all loved Sik; he was an
outgoing person who radiated warmth.
Sik was a Hungarian, a political refugee living in Russia. He had
been a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First
World War. Captured by the Russians, he was converted to
Bolshevism while in a Russian prison camp. On his release, he had
gone back to Hungary and participated in the short-lived (133
days) Hungarian Soviet government of 1919 of Bela Kun. With the
defeat of the Bela Kun government, Sik-along with hundreds of
other revolutionaries-fled to the Soviet Union. Hungarian exiles
made up one of Moscow's }argest foreign colonies. In Moscow, Sik
pursued an academic career. He was a graduate of the Institute of
R.ed Professors and like many Hungarian intellectuals, he was
multilingual.
For all his good nature, Sik seemed tired and harassed. He was
teaching in many schools, in addition to activity in the Hungarian
community. Seven years after the defeat of the Htingarian Soviet,
the exiled revolutionaries were bitterly divided and factionalized,
laying blame on each other for the failure of the revolution.
Sik became deeply interested in the question of Blacks in the
United States and undertook a serious study of the question. He
read all the books available and also asked the Black students at
K UTV A to join with him. Unfortunately for our personal
relationship, Sik and I were to find ourselves on opposite sides
of the fence in the discussion of Black Americans which took place
at the Sixth Congress of the Communist International in June
1928.
Our teacher of Marxist economics was a young man by the
name of Rubenstein, a Russian economist in the Gosplan
(Governmental Planning Commission). The star pupil in that class
turned out to be our modest friend Golden. Golden, who had
known nothing about Marxism befare coming to the Soviet
Union, was able to grasp the intricacies of Marx's Capita/ and
Va/ue, Price and Profit seemingly without effort.
 A STUDENT IN MOSCOW 163

A class that stands out in my memory was one on how to make a

revolution, to seize power once the situation was ripe. This course
consisted of a series of lectures by a young Red Army officer. He
had been a heroic figure in the M oscow uprising of 1917 and the
subsequent seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in that city. A tall,
handsome young man of bourgeois background, he had been a
lieutenant in the army of the Kerensky government. Like many
other soldiers, he had been won over by the Bolsheviks on the basis
of their demands, which reflected the needs of the people: peace,
bread and land. To him, the Moscow uprising against Kerensky,
led by the Bolsheviks, was a model for the coming seizure of power
in the big cities of the capitalist world.
He had a large map of Moscow on the wall and would use it to
illustrate how it had been done. The call for the uprising, he said,
had come to the Moscow Communist Party by telephone from
Leningrad, where the revolutionary workers, sailors and army
under the leadership of Lenin had overthrown the Kerensky
government and seized power in that city.
In Moscow, the Party organization, already prepared, issued a
call to the people for an uprising. His regiment, stationed on the
outskirts of the city, together with red guards (workers' militia),
responded and began to march towards the center of the city. The
White Guardists were concentrated in the Arbot and in the
Kremlin. Here he pointed out, in Russian and other European
cities, the working class districts were centered around factories on
the outskirts of the city and Moscow was circled by workers
suburbs. Together with defected units of other regiments and with
red guards, they marched towards Moscow's central area, whence
fighting spread throughout the city-even into the trans-Moscow
district. The reds finally wiped out the White Guardist strong­
holds, and the Kremlin, which had changed hands two times
before in the fighting, finally surrendered.
Moscow was ours!

CLASSMATES AT KUTV A
Because of the language problem, we students from outside the
164 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Soviet Union were subdivided into three main language groups:

English, French and Chinese. English and French were the
dominant languages of the many colonial areas represented at the
university. Spanish was later added when Latin American students
began to arrive. In addition to ourselves, the English-speaking
group included East Indians, Koreans, Japanese and lndonesians.
I had many close friends in this latter group.
One of the most interesting and brilliant was an Indian student
by the name of Sakorov. (They all took Russian names because of
the severe repression which they faced back home.) A former
machinist in a Detroit auto plant, Sakorov had been sent to the
school by the American Party.
Originally from Bombay, Sakorov had gone to sea on a British
ship at the age of twelve and had been subjected to very oppressive
conditions his whole career at sea. He eventually jumped ship in
B..,altimore and wound up working in an auto plant in Detroit. Of
all the group of students, he was the closest to us Blacks. He knew
first band the plight of Blacks in the United States, and as a dark
skinned lndian, he had experienced much of the same type of
racial abuse while there. After he left the school, he returned to
India, where he became one of the founders of the Indian
Communist Party.
Later, more Indian students were to come, including one sixteen
year old-a tall, lanky boy who took the name of Volkov. He had
been bom in California; his parents were Sikhs who had migrated
to the U.S. and worked as agricultural workers in the Imperial
Valley of California. They were part of a foreign contingent of the
Ghadr Party, a revolutionary nationalist party of Sikhs which had
been organized in 1916. The Party would pick out young men to be
future leaders; Volkov was chosen and sent to Japan for education
and stayed there a year. Then he was sent to study in the Soviet
Union, perhaps by the Japanese Party. He spoke Japanese and
English.
Among the Indian students was a group of about half a dozen
Sikhs, former professional soldiers, survivors of the Hong Kong
massacre of 1926. On the pretext of quelling an '"imminent
mutiny," the British colonel of the regiment stationed in Hong
 A STUDENT IN MOSCOW 165

Kong had called the unarmed Sikh soldiers into the regimental
square and turned machine guns on them. (All regiments in the
lndian Army included a British machine gun company as a
safeguard against mutiny.) Several hundred were killed or wound­
ed. As I understood it, the massacre was engineered to quell the
protests over conditions which were being raised by members of
the Ghadr Party and its supporters.
The group who arrived in Moscow were among the few who
escaped over the walls; they had fled to Shanghai where they were
taken in charge by M.N. Roy, an lndian and then Comintern
representative to China. Roy sent them to Moscow. These
students, some of them older grey-bearded men, had spent their
whole lives in the British lndian Army. They represente9 a special
problem for the school, because most of them had had very little
education of any kind. They were not brought into our class, but
were put into a special group under the tutelage of Volkov,
Sakorov and other of the regular Indian students.
It was my good fortune to meet many of these Indian students
again in 1942, when I was in Bombay as a merchant seaman. Most
of them were leading figures in the Indian revolutionary move­
ment. Sakorov had been a defendant in one of the Merut trials,
having been charged with "conspiracy against the king." Since his
return to India, he had spent eleven years in prison. Nada, another
former schoolmate, was president of the Indian Friends of the
Soviet Union and very active among the students and youth.
There were several Koreans and Japanese at the school, and two
lndonesians. I remember Dirja particularly well. A Dutch­
educated Indonesian intellectual, he was an old revolutionary who
had spent many years in prison. There was another Indonesian, a
young man (whose name I cannot recall), who later emerged as a
communist leader and was killed in the Indonesian revolt of 1946.
Kemal Pasha (a party name conferred on him by Sakorov) was
a grey-eyed Moroccan from the Riffian tribe of Abdul Krim. I met
Kemal Pasha again in Paris during the Spanish Civil War. There
were also two whites in the group-J une KroIl, then the wife of an
American communist leader, Carl Reeves; and Max Ralff, a
young English lad of Russian-Jewish parentage.
166 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

BLACKS IN MOSCOW

We students were a fairly congenial lot and in particular I got

to know the other Black students quite well. Golden was a
handsome, jet-Black man; a former Tuskegee student and a dining
car waiter. He was not a member of theCommunist Party, but was
a good friend of Lovett Fort-Whiteman, head of the Party's
Afro-American work.
Golden told me that his coming to the Soviet Union had been
accidental. He had run into Fort-Whiteman, a fellow student at
Tuskegee, on the streets of Chicago. Fort-Whiteman had just
retumed from Russia and was dressed in a Russian blouse and
boots.
As Golden related it:_ "I asked Fort-Whiteman what the hell he
w�s wearing. Had he come off the stage and forgotten to change
clothes? He informed me that these were Russian clothes and that
he had just returned from that country."
Golden at first thought it was a put-on, but became interested as
Fort-Whiteman talked about his experiences. "Then out of the
bluc, he asks me if I want to go to Russia as a student. At first, I
thought he was kidding, but man, I would have done anything to
get off those dining cars! I was finally convinced that he was
serious. 'But I'm married,' I told him. 'What about my wife?' 'Why,
bring her along too!' he replied. He took me to his office at the
American Negro Labor Congress, an impressive set-up with a
secretary, and I was convinced. Fort-Whiteman gave me moneyto
get passports, and the next thingl knew, a couple of weeks later we
were on the boat with Otto and the others on the way to Russia.
And here I am now."
He had a keen sense of humor and kidded the rest of us a lot,
particularly Otto. His Southern accent carried o.ver into Russian,
and we teased him about being the only person who spoke Russian
with a Mississippi accent.
Then there was Bankole, an African who spent most of his time
with the Black Americans. He was an Ashanti, from the Gold
Coast (now Ghana) and his family was part of the African elite.
 A STUDENT IN MOSCOW 167

The son of a wealthy barrister, his family had sent him to London
University to study journalism. From there, he .had gone to
Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh.
He had been on the road to becoming a perennial student and
had planned to continue at McGill University in Montreal, but
was recruited to the Young Communist League in Pittsburgh. In
the States, he was confronted with a racism more blatant than any
he had met before. I gathered that this had struck him sharply and
had been largely responsible for his move to the left.
My brother Otto had become sort of a character in the school.
He was popular among the students, who immediately translated
his pseudonym "John Jones" into the Russian "Ivan Ivanovich."
Otto had absolutely no tolerance for red tape, and he had become a
mortal enemy of the apparatchiki (petty bureaucrats) in the
school. He had built a reputation for making their lives miserable,
and when they saw him coming, they would huddle in a corner:
"Here comes Ivan lvanovich. Ostorozhno (watch out)! Bolshoi
skandal budyet (this guy will make a big scandal)!"
Harold Williams of Chicago was a West Indian and former
seaman in the British merchant marine. He had adopted the name
of Dessalines, one of the three leaders of the Haitian revolution of
the 1790s. Williams had little formal education and some difficulty
in grasping theory, but was instinctively a class-conscious guy.
Finally, there was Mahoney, whose name in the USSR was Jim
Farmer. Farmer was a steelworker from East Liverpool, Ohio, a
Communist Party member and had played a leading role in local
struggles in the steel mills.
There were only eight of us Blacks in a city of 4,500,000 people.
In addition to the six students, there were also two Black American
women who had long residence (since before the Revolution) in
Moscow.
I only knew one of the women, Emma Harris. We first met on
the occasion of the death of Jane Golden. Emma was a warm,
outgoing and earthy middle-aged woman, originally from Georgia.
It was evident that she had once been quite handsome-of the type
that in the old days we called a "teasin' brown." Emma had first
come to Moscow as a member of a Black song and dance group, a
168 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

lowly hoofer in the world of cheap vaudeville. Having been

deserted by its manager, the group was left stranded in Moscow.
While the others had evidently made their way back to the
States, Emma had decided to stay. She had liked the country.
Here, being Black wasn't a liability, but on the contrary, a definite
asset. With her drive and ambition to be "somebody," Emma
parlayed this asset into a profitable position. She married a
Russian who installed her, it seems, as a madam of a house of
prostitution. It was no ordinary house, she once explained to me.
"Our clients were the wealthy and nobility." To the former hoofer,
this was status.
Such was Emma's situation in November 1917, when the
Russian Bolsheviks and Red Guards moved in from the proletar­
ian suburbs of Moscow to capture the bourgeois inner city and the
Kremlin. During some mopping-up operations, Emma's house
'Was raided by the Cheka (the security police). A bunch of White
Guardists had holed up there and the whole group was arrested,
including Emma. They were taken to the Lubyanka Prison and
some of the more notorious White Guardists were summarily
executed.
Emma remained in a cell for a few days. Finally she was called
up before a Cheka official. He told her that they were looking into
her case. Many of the people who had been arrested at her place
were counter-revolutionaries and conspirators against the new
Soviet state, and some had been shot. Emma disclaimed know­
ledge of any conspiracy and stated that she was engaged in
"legitimate" business and had nothing to do with the politics of her
clients.
'"Y ou know the only reason we didn't shoot you was because you
are a Negro woman," the official said. To her surprise, he added,
"Y ou are free to go now. I advise you to try to find some useful
work. Keep out of trouble."
When we met Emma, she had become a textile worker. She lived
with a young Russian woman-also a textile worker, whom I
suspected was a reformed prostitute-in a two-room apartment in
an old working class district near Krasnaya Vorota (Red Gate).
Soon after the first Black students arrived, she sought them out
 A STUDENT IN MOSCOW 169

11 nd greeted them like lang lost kinfolk.

At least once a month, we students would pool part of the small
slipends we received and give Emma money to shop for and
prcpare same old home cooking for us. On these occasions, she
would regale us with stories from her past life. At times one could
dctcct a fleeting expression of sadness, of nostalgia, for her old
days of affluence. One could see that she had never become fully
ndjusted to the new life under the Soviets. While not openly
hostile, it was clear that she was not an ardent partisan of the new
regime. Knowing our sentiments, she avoided political discussion
und kept her views to herself. Our feelings toward her were
warmest when we first arrived, but as we developed more ties with
I he Russians, we went by to see her less often. But we did continue
lo visit her periodically; she was a sort of mother figure for us, and
wc all felt sorry for her. She was getting old and aften expressed a
dcsire to return to the States. She was finally able to return home
after World War II.
Needless to say, Blacks attracted the curiosity of the Musco­
vites. Children followed us in the streets. If we paused to greet a
friend, we found ourselves instantly surrounded by curious
crowds-unabashedly staring at us. Once, while strolling down
Tverskaya, Otto and I stopped to greet a white American friend
and immediately found ourselves surrounded by curious Russians.
It was a friendly curiosity which we took in stride. A young
Russian woman stepped forward and began to upbraid and lecture
the crowd.
"Why are you staring at these people? They're human beings the
same as us. Do you want them to think that we're savages? Eta ne
kulturnya! (That is uncultured!)" The last was an epithet and in
those days a high insult.
"Eta ne po-Sovietski! (lt's not the Soviet way!)" she scolded
them.
At that point, someone in the crowd calmly responded: "Well,
citizeness, it's a free country, isn't it?"
We were not offended, but amused. We understood all this for
what it was.
There was one occasion when Otto, Farmer, Bankole and I were
170 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

walking down Tverskaya. Bankole, of course, stood out-attrac­

ting more attention than the rest of us with his English cut Savile
Row suit, monocle and cane-a black edition of a British
aristocrat. We found ourselves being followed by a group of
Russian children, who shouted: "Jass Band.... Jass Band!"
Otto, Farmer and I were amused at the incident and took it in
stride. Bankole, however, shaking with rage at the implication,
jerked around to confront them. His monocle fell off as he
shouted: "Net Jass Band! Net Jass Band!" As he spoke, he hit his
cane on the ground for emphasis.
Evidently, to these kids, a jazz band was not just a group of
musicians, but a race or tribe of people to which we must belong.
They obviously thought we were with Leland and Drayton, the
musicians I had met in Berlin. They had been a big hit with the
Muscovites.. We pulled Bankole away, "C'mon man, cut it out.
They don't mean anything."
In the Soviet Union, remnants of national and racial prejudices
from the old society were attacked by education and law. It was a
crime to give or receive direct or indirect privileges, or to exercise
discrimination because of race or nationality. Any manifestation
of racial or national superiority was punishable by law and was
regarded as a serious political offense, a social crime.
During my entire stay in the Soviet Union, I encountered only
one incident of racial hostility. It was on a Moscow streetcar.
Several of us Black students had boarded the car on our way to
spend an evening with our friend MacCloud. It was after rush hour
and the car was only about half filled with Russian passengers. As
usual, we were the objects of friendly curiosity. At one stop, a
drunken Russian staggered aboard. Seeing us, he muttered (but
loud enough for the whole car to hear) something about "Black
devils in our country."
A group of outraged Russian passengers thereupon seized him
and ordered the motorman to stop the car. It was a citizen's arrest,
the first I had ever witnessed. "How dare you, you scum, insult
people who are the guests of our country!"
What then occurred was an impromptu, on-the-spot meeting,
where they debated what to do with the man. I was to see many of
 A STUDENT IN MOSCOW 171

this kind of "meeting" during my stay in Russia.

It was decided to take the culprit to the police station which, the
conductor informed them, was a few blocks ahead. Upon arrival
there, they hustled the drunk out of the car and insisted that we
Blacks, as the injured parties, come along to make the charges.
At first we demurred, saying that the man was obviously drunk
and not responsible for his remarks. "No, citizens," said a young
man (who had done most of the talking), "drunk or not, we don't
allow this sort of thing in our country. You must come with us to
the militia (police) station and prefer charges against this man."
The car stopped in front of the station. The poor drunk was
hustled off and all the passengers came along. The defendant had
sobered up somewhat by this time and began apologizing before
we had even entered the building. We got to the commandant of
the station.
The drunk swore that he didn't mean what he'd said. "I was
drunk and angry about something else. I swear to you citizens that
I have no race prejudice against those Black gospoda (gentle­
men)."
W e actually felt sorry for the poor fellow and we accepted his
apology. We didn't want to press the matter.
"No," said the commandant, "we'll keep him overnight. Perhaps
this will be a lesson to him."

BIG BILL HAYWOOD

In addition to the students at K UTV A and the two Black

women, there was a sizeable American colony in Moscow during
my stay there. There were political representatives of the Com­
munist Party USA to the Comintern, the Profintern, the Cres­
tintern and to the departments, bureaus and secretaries of these
organizations-holding jobs as translators, stenographers and
researchers. 6
Soviet cultural and publishing organizations also employed
U.S. citizens, and in addition to the political groups, there were a
number of technical and skilled workers who came as specialists to
172 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

work for the new Soviet state. I gat to know a number of the
Americans during my stay, both official reps and others in the
colony.
Big Bill Haywood was perhaps the most famous of these. He
was organizer and founder of the IWW, and a great friend of all
Blacks in Moscow. At the time I met him he was in his late fifties
and quite ill, suffering from diabetes. Physically, he was only the
shell of the man he had once been. He called himself a political
refugee from American capitalism. As a sick man, he had fled the
U .S. to avoid a ten-year frame-up prison sentence which he knew
he would never have survived. Bill was blind in ane eye, over which
he wore a black patch. I had imagined the loss of his eye had
happened in a fight with company or police thugs and was rather
disappointed to learn that it was the result of a childhood accident.
In the Soviet Union he had participated in the organization of
tbe Kuzbas Colony. This project was to reopen and operate
industry in the K uznetsk Basin in the Urals, closed during the Civil
War period. The colony was located about a thousand miles from
Moscow in an area of enormous coal deposits, vital to socialist
industrialization. The district, with its mines and deserted chemi­
cal plants, had been established by the Soviet government as an
autonomous colony. Big Bill had brought a number of American
skilled workers, many of whom were old Wobblies, to reopen the
plants and mines.
Big Bill became a member of the CPUSA at its faunding
convention in 1921, and while in the Soviet Union he was a
member of the CPSU. Bill and his devoted wife, a Russian office
worker, lived in the Lux Hotel-a Comintern hostelry.
His room had become a center for the gathering of American
radicals, especially old Wobblies passing through or working in
the Soviet Union. Here they would gather on a Saturday night and
reminisce about old times and discuss current problems. Often a
bunch of us Black students were present. Sametimes these sessions
would carry on all night until Sunday morning. There were only a
few chairs in the room, and Bill would sit in a huge armchair
surrounded by people sitting on the floor. For us Blacks, listening
to Big Bill was like a course on the American labor mavement. He
 A STUDENT IN MOSCOW 173

was a bitter enemy of racism, which he saw as the mainstay of

capitalist domination over the U .S. working class, a continuous
brake on labor unity. This attitude was reflected in the preamble of
the IWW constitution, he told us. It read: "No working man or
woman shall be excluded from membership in unions because of
creed or color." This was borne out in practice.
The IWW was the first labor organization in modem times to
invade the South and break down racial barriers in that benighted
region. He recounted his experiences in the organizing drives
among Southern lumber workers in Louisiana and Texas. This
resulted in the organization of the Brotherhood of Timber
Workers in 1910, an independent union in the lumber camps of
Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas. At its height this union had
25,000 members, half of them Black.
Big Bill described how the IWW broke down discrimination at
the first convention of this union. He had come from the national
IWW office to speak to the convention. They were all white, he
said, and he inquired why no colored men were present. He was
told that the Louisiana state law prohibited meetings of Black and
white-the Negro brathers were meeting in another hall nearby.
Bill recalled that he then told them: "Damn the law! !t's the law of
the lumber bosses. lts objective is to defeat you and to keep you
divided and you're not going to get anywhere by obeying the
dictates of the bosses. Y ou've got to meet together." And the latter
is exactly what they did, he told us.
I remember that a few days after one of these gatherings we
telephoned to tell him that we were coming over, only to learn
from his wife that he had had a stroke and was in the Kremlin
hospital. She said that he was getting along OK, but couldn't see
visitors. After several weeks he returned home. Still weak, he
received many of his friends, and many of the delegates to the
Fourth Congress of the Profintern which was in Moscow at the
time. Big Bill had been a leading participant in this organization
since its inception.
Theo suddenly, he was back in the hospital, where he died May
18, 1928. The whole American colony turned out for the funeral.
There were "delegations from the Russian Communist Party, of
174 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

which he was a member, and from the various international

organizations in which he had played a role. The Fourth Congress
of the RILU adjourned its sessions, and representatives of trade
unions from all over the world attended the funeral.
I'm sure for all us Black students, our meeting and friendship
with this great man were among the most memorable experiences
of our stay in Moscow. A stalwart son of the American working
class, Bill's life and battles represented its best traditions. Te,
Blacks, he was a man who would not only stand up with you, but if
need be, go down with you. This was the iron test in the fight
against the common enemy, U.S. capitalism. Big Bill obviously
understood from his own experience the truth of the Marxian
maxim that in the U.S., "labor in the white skin can never be free as
long as in the Black it is branded."

iNA
I first met my second wife, Ekaterina-Ina-in December 1926.
We were both at a party at the home of Rose Bennett, a British
woman who had married M. Petrovsky(Bennett), the chairman of
the Anglo-American Commission of the Comintern and formerly
Cl representative to Great Britain.
Ina was one of a group of ballet students whom Rose had invited
to meet same of us K UTV A students. She was a small young
woman of nineteen or twenty, shy and retiring, and sat off
removed from the party. After that party, we met several times,
and she told me about herself.
She was bom in Vladikavkaz (in northern Caucasus), the
daughter of the mayor of the town. It was one of those towns that
was taken and re-taken during the Civil War, one time by the
whites, then by the reds. On one occasion when the town fell to the
reds, her father was accused of collaborating with the whites. The
reds came and arrested him and she never saw him again. Ina was
about eleven at the time; she later learned that her father had been
executed.
Her unde was a famous artist in Moscow and after her father's
 A STUDENT IN MOSCOW 175

cxecution they went there to live. Ina told me of her trip to

Moscow at the height of famine and a typhus epidemic; they rode
in freight cars several days through the Ukraine, and saw people
dying along the road. Her uncle took charge of them and got them
an apartment on Malaya Bronaya. He investigated the case of her
father and discovered that a mistake had been made, and her
father was posthumously exonerated. As a sort of compensation,
she and her mother were regarded as "social activists," and Ina
entered school to study ballet. She later transferred from the ballet
school to study English in preparation for work as a translator. We
lived together in the spring of 1927 and got married the foliowing
fall, after my return from the Crimea.
In January 1927, I was stunned by the news of the death of my
Mother. One morning, when I was at Ina's house, Otto burst in.
Overcome by emotion, he could hardly talk, but managed to blurt
out, "Mom's dead!" He had a letter from our sister Eppa, with a
clipping of Mother's obituary from the Chicago De/ender.
Under the headline "Funeral of Mrs. Harriet Hall," was her
picture and an article which described her, a domestic worker, as a
"noted club woman." She had been a member of the Black Eastern
Star and several other lodges and burial societies. The article
mentioned that she was survived by her husband, daughter and
two sons, the latter in Moscow.
I was overcome with grief and guilt at not being home. Deeply
shocked, I had always assumed that I would return to see Mother
again. Bom a slave, her world had been confined to the midwest
and upper South. She had once told me, "Son, I sure would like to
see the ocean," and I had glibly promised, "Oh, I'll take you there
someday, Momma." I felt that I had been her favorite; I was the
responsible one, and yet I hadn't been able to do what I had
promised. Worse yet, I wasn't even there when she died. It took me
some time to get over the shock.
 Chapter 6

Trotsky's Day in Court

Apart from our academic courses, we received our first tutelage
in Leninism and the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union in the heat of the inner-party struggle then raging between
-•Trotsky and the majority of the Central Committee led by Stalin.
We KUTVA students were not simply bystanders, but were active
participants in the struggle. Most of the students-and all of our
group from the U.S.-were ardent supporters of Stalin and the
Central Committee majority.
It had not always been thus. Otto told me that in 1924, a year
before he arrived, a majority of the students in the school had been
supporters of Trotsky. Trotsky was making a play for the Party
youth, in opposition to the older Bolshevik stalwarts. With his
usual demagogy, he claimed that the old leadership was betraying
the revolution and had embarked on a course of "Thermidorian
reaction." 1 In this situation, he said, the students and youth were
"the Party's truest barometer." 2
But by the time the Black American students arrived, the
temporary attraction to Trotsky had been reversed. The issues
involved in the struggle with Trotsky were discussed in the school.
They involved the destiny of socialism in the Soviet Union. Which
way were the Soviet people to go? What was to be the direction of
their economic development? Was it possible to build a socialist
economic system? These questions were not only theoretical ones,
but were issues of life and death. The economic life of the country
 TROTSKY'S DA Y IN COURT 177

would not stand still and wait while they were being debated.
The Soviet working class, under the leadership of Lenin and the
Bolsheviks, had vanquished capitalism over one-sixth of the globe;
shattered its economic power; expropriated the capitalists and
landlords; converted the factories, railroads and banks into public
property; and was beginning to build a state-owned socialist
industry. The Soviet government had begun to apply Lenin's
cooperative plans in agriculture and begun to fully develop a
socialist economic system. This colossal task had to be undertaken
by the workers in alliance with the masses of working peasantry.
From the October Revolution through 1921, the economic
system was characterized by War Communism. Basic industry was
nationalized, and all questions were subordinated to the one of
meeting the military needs engendered by the civil war and the
intervention of the capitalist countries.
But by 1921, the foreign powers who had attempted to
overthrow the Soviets had largely been driven from Russia's
horders. It was then necessary to orient the economy toward a
peace-time situation. The NEP (New Economic Policy) formu­
lated at the Tenth Party Congress in 1921 was the policy designed
to guide the transition from War Communism to the building of
socialism. It replaced a system of surplus appropriation with a tax
in kind which would be less of a burden on the peasantry. The
NEP was a temporary retreat from socialist forms: smaller
industries were leased to private capital to run; peasants were
allowed to sell their agricultural surplus on free markets; central
control over much of the economy was lessened. All of this was
necessary to have the economy function on a peace-time basis. It
was a measure designed to restore the exchange of commodities
between city and country which had been so greatly disrupted by
the civil war and intervention. 3 It was a temporary retreat from the
attack on all remnants of capitalism, a time for the socialist state to
stabilize its base area, to gather strength for another advance. A
year later at the Eleventh Party Congress, Lenin declared that the
retreat was ended and called on the Party to "prepare for an
offensive on private capital." 4
Lenin was incapacitated by a series of strokes in 1923 and could
178 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

no longer participate in the active leadership of the Party. It was

precisely at this time, taking advantage of Lenin's absence, that
Trotsky made his bid for leadership in the Party. Trotsky had
consistently opposed the NEP and its main engineer, Lenin­
attacking the measures designed to appease the peasantry and
maintain the coalition between the peasants and the workers.
From late 1922 on, Trotsky made a direct attack on the whole
Leninist theory of revolution and the dictatorship of the prole­
tariat. He denied the possibility (and necessity) of building
socialism in one country, and instead characterized that theory as
an abandonment of Marxist principles and a betrayal of the
revolutionary mavement. He postulated his own theory of "perma­
nent revolution," and contended that a genuine advance of
socialism in the USSR would become possible only as a result of a
socialist victory in the other industrially developed states.
While throwing around a good deal of left-sounding rhetoric,
Trotsky's theories were thoroughly defeatist and class-collabo­
rationist. For instance, in the postscript to Program for Peace,
written in 1922, he contended that "as long as the bourgeoisie
remains in power in the other European countries, we shall be
compelled, in our struggle against economic isolation, to strive for
agreement with the capitalist world; at the same time it may be
said with certainty that these agreements may at best help us to
mitigate some of our economic ills, to take one or another step
forward, but real progress of a socialist economy in Russia will
become possible only after the victory of the proletariat in the
major European countries." 5
At the base of this defeatism was Trotsky's view that the
peasantry would be hostile to socialism, since the proletariat
would "have to make extremely deep inroads not only into
feudal but also into bourgeois property relations." Thus Trotksy
contended that the working class would:
... come into hosti/e collision not only with all the bourgeois
groupings which supported the proletariat during the first
stages of its revolutionary struggle, but also with the broad
masses of the peasantry with whose assistance it came into
power. Tue contradictions in the position of a workers'
 TROTSKY'S DAY IN COURT 179

government in a backward country with an overwhelmingly

peasant population could be solved only .. .in the arena of the
world proletarian revolution. 6

Therefore, it would not be possible to build socialism in a

backward, peasant country like Russia. The mass of peasants
would exhaust their revolutionary potential even before the
revolution had completed its bourgeois democratic tasks-the
breakup of the feudal landed estates and the redistribution of the
land among the peasantry. This line, which underestimated the
role of the peasantry, had been put forward by Trotsky as early as
l 915 in his article "The Struggle for Power." There he claimed that
imperialism was causing the revolutionary role of the peasantry to
decline and downgraded the importance of the slogan "Confiscate
the Landed Estates." 7
As it was pointed out in our classes, Trotsky portrayed the
peasantry as an undifferentiated mass. He made no distinction
between the masses of peasants who worked their own land (the
muzhiks) and the exploiting strata who hired labor (the kulaks).
His conclusions openly contradicted the strategy of the Bolshe­
viks, developed by Lenin, of building the worker-peasant alliance
as the basis for the dictatorship of the proletariat. 8 Further, they
were at complete variance with any realistic economic or social
analysis.
Trotsky's entire position reflected a lack of faith in the strength
and resources ofthe Soviet people, the vast majority of whom were
peasants. Since it denied the revolutionary potential of the
peasantry, the success of the revolution could not come from
internat forces, but had to depend on the success of proletarian
revolutions in the advanced nations of Western Europe. In the
absence of such revolutions, the revolutionary process within the
Soviet Union itself would have to be held in abeyance, and the
proletariat, which had seized power with the help of the peasantry,
would have to hold state power in conflict,with all other classes.
Behind Trotsky's revolutionary rhetoric was a simplistic social­
democratic view which regarded the class struggle for socialism as
solely labor against capital. This concept of class struggle did not
180 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

regard the struggle of peasant against landlord, or peasant against

the Czar, as a constituent part of the struggle for socialism. This
was reflected as early as 1905, in Trotsky's slogan, "No Czar, but a
Workers' Government," which, as Stalin had said, was "the slogan
of revolution without the peasantry." 9
Given the state of the revolutionary forces at the time, the
position was dangerously defeatist. For instance, 1923 marked a
period of recession for the revolutionary wave in Europe; it was a
year of defeat for communist mqvements in Germany, ltaly,
Poland and Bulgaria. What then, Stalin asked, is left for our
revolution? Shall it "vegetate in its own contradictions and rot
away while waiting for the world revolution"? 1 0 To that question,
Trotsky had no answer. Stalin's reply was to build socialism in the
Soviet Union. The Soviet working class, allied with the peasantry,
had vanquished its own bourgeoisie politically and was fully
capable of doing the job economically and building up a socialist
'society.
Stalin's position did not mean the isolation of theSoviet Union.
The danger of capitalist restoration still existed and would
exist until the advent of classless society. The Soviet people
understood that they could not destroy this external <langer by
their own efforts, that it could only be finally destroyed as a result
of a victorious revolution in at least several of the countries of the
West. The triumph of socialism in the Soviet Union could not be
final as long as the external <langer existed. Therefore, the success
of the revolutionary forces in the capitalist West was a vital
concern of the Soviet people.
Trotsky's scheme of permanent revolution downgraded not
only the peasantry as a revolutionary force, but also the national
liberation movements of oppressed peoples within the old Czarist
Empire. Thus, in "The Struggle for Power," he wrote that
"imperialism does not contrapose the bourgeois nation to the old
regime, but the proletariat to the bourgeois nation." 11
While Trotsky de-emphasized the national colonial question in
the epoch of imperialism, Lenin, on the other band, stressed its
new importance. "Imperialism," said Lenin, means the progres­
sively mounting oppression of the nations of the world by a
 TROTSKY'S DAY IN COURT 181

handful of Great Powers; it means a period of wars between the

lutter to extend and consolidate the oppression of nations." 12
It was not until sometime later that I was able to fully grasp the
implications of Trotsky's concept of permanent revolution on the
international scene. The most dramatic example was in Spain
during the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39. The Trotskyist organi-
1.ation had infiltrated the anarchist movement in Catalonia and
i ncited revolt against the Loyalist government under the slogans of
"Socialist Republic" and "Workers' Government." The Loyalist
�overnment, headed by Juan Negrin, a liberal Republican, was a
coalition of all democratic parties. It included socialists, com­
munists, liberal Republicans and anarchists-all in alliance against
fascist counter-revolution led by Franco and backed by Hitler and
Mussolini. The attempted coup against the Loyalist Government
was typical of the Trotskyist attempts to short-circuit the bour­
geois-democratic stage of the revolutionary process. The result
was a "civil war within a civil war" and, had their strategy
succeeded, it would have split the democratic coalition-effec­
l ively giving aid to the fascists.
In the United States I was to witness how Trotsky's purist
concept of class struggle led logically to a denial of the struggle for
Black liberation as a special feature of the class struggle, revo­
lutionary in its own right. As a result, American Trotskyists found
themselves isolated from that movement during the great upsurge
of the thirties. But all this was to come later.13
At the time I was at K UTV A, Trotskyism had not yet emerged
as an important tendency on the international scene. I did not
foresee its future role as a disruptive force on the fringes of the
international revolutionary movement. At that point, I wasn't
clear myself on a number of these theoretical questions. It was
somewhat later when my understanding of the national and
colonial question-particularly the Afro-American question­
deepened, that the implications of Trotsky's theory of permanent
revolution became fully obvious to me.
We students felt that Trotsky's position denigrated the achieve­
ment of the Soviet Revolution. We didn't like his continual
harping about Russia's backwardness and its inability to build
182 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

socialism, or his theory of permanent revolution. The Soviet

Union was an inspiration for all of us, a view confirmed by our
experience in the country. Everything we could see defied
Trotsky's logic.
His writings were readily available throughout the school, and
the issues of the struggle were constantly on the agenda in our
collective. These were discussed in our classes, as they were in
factories, schools and peasant organizations throughout the
country.
About once a month the collective would meet and a report
would be given by Party representatives-sometimes local, some­
times from the rayon (region of the city) and Moscow district, and
sometimes from the Central Committee itself. They would report
on the latest developments in the ioner-party struggles-Trotsky's
and Lenin's views on the question of the peasantry; the NEP, how
it had proved its usefulness and how it was now being phased out;
Trotsky's position on War Communism and Party rules; the
dictatorship of the proletariat, and whether it could be a dictator­
ship in alliance with the peasantry or one over the peasantry. An
open discussion would be held after the report. By that time the
Trotskyists at KUTVA had dwindled to a small group of
bitter-enders..
The struggle raged over a period of five years (1922-27) during
which time the Trotsky bloc had access to the press and Trotsky's
works were widely circulated for everyone to read. Trotsky was
not defeated by bureaucratic decisions or Stalin's control of the
Party apparatus-as his partisans and Trotskyite historians claim.
He had his day in court and finally lost because his whole position
flew in the face of Soviet and world realities. He was doomed to
defeat because his views were incorrect and failed to conform to
objective conditions, as well as the needs and interests of the Soviet
people.
It was my great misfortune to be out of the dormitory when the
Black students were invited to attend a session of the Seventh
Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist Inter­
national, then meeting in the Kremlin in the late fall of 1926. I was
out in the street at the time and couldn't be found, so they went
 TROTSKY'S DAYIN COURT 183

without me. I missed a historie occasion, my only chance to have

seen Trotsky in action. I was bitterly disappointed. When I arrived
back at the dormitory, Sakorov, my Indian friend, told me where
they had gone. Returning in the early hours of the morning, they
found me waiting for them. They described the session and the
stellar performance of Trotsky.
Stalin made the report for the Russian delegation. Trotsky then
asked for two hours to defend his position; he was given one. He
spoke in Russian, and then personally translated and delivered his
speech in German and then in French. In all, he held the floor for
about three hours.
Otto said it was the greatest display of oratory he had ever
heard. But despite this, Trotsky and his allies (Zinoviev and
Kamenev) suffered a resounding defeat, obtaining only two votes
out of the whole body. The delegates from outside the Soviet
Union didn't accept Trotsky's view that socialism in one country
was a betrayal of the revolution. On the contrary, the success of the
Soviet Union in building socialism was an inspiration to the
international revolution.
Otto told me that this point was made again and again in the
course of the discussion. Ercoli (Togliatti), the young leader of the
Italian Party, summed it up well a few days later when he defended
the achievements of the Russian Party and revolution as "the
strongest impetus for the revolutionary forces of the world." 14
The American Party united across factional lines in support of
Stalin. The Trotsky opposition, already defeated within the Soviet
Union, was now shattered internationally. From there on out, it
was downhill for Trotsky. I witnessed Trotsky's opposition bloc
degenerate from an unprincipled faction within the Party to a
counter-revolutionary conspiracy against the Party and the Soviet
state. We learned of secret, illegal meetings held in the Silver
Woods outside Moscow, the establishment of factional printing
presses-all in violation of Party discipline. Their activities
reached a high point during the November 7, 1927 anniversary of
the Revolution.
At that Tenth Anniversary, Trotsky's followers attempted to
stage a counter-demonstration in opposition to the traditional
184 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

celebration. I remember vividly the scene of our school contingent

marching on its way to Red Square. As we passed the Hotel
Moscow, Trotskyist leaflets were showered down on us, and
orators appeared at the windows of the hotel shouting slogans of
"Down with Stalin."
They were answered with catcalls and booing from the crowds
in the streets below. We seized the leaflets and tore them up. This
attempt to rally the people against the Party was a total failure and
struck no responsive chord among the masses. It was equivalent to
rebellion and this demonstration was the last overt aet of the
Trotskyist opposition.
During the next month Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev were
expelled-along with seventy-five of their chief supporters. They,
along with the )esser fry, were sent in exile to Siberia in Central
Asia. Trotsky was sent to Alma Alta in Turkestan from where, in
1,.929, he was allowed to go abroad, first to Turkey and eventually
to Mexico.
Later, many of Trotsky's followers criticized themselves and
were accepted back into the Party. But among them was a hard
core of bitter-enders, who "criticized" themselves publicly only in
order to continue the struggle against Stalin's leadership from
within the Party. Their bitterness fed on itself and they emerged
later in the thirties as part of a conspiracy which wound up on the
side of Nazi Germany.
Throughout this whole struggle, we Black students at the school
had been ardent supporters of the position of Stalin and the
Central Committee. Most certainly we were Stalinists-whose
policies we saw as the continuation of Lenin's. Those today who
use the term "Stalinist" as an epithet evade the real question: that
is, were Stalin and the Central Committee correct? I believe history
has proven that they were correct.

RUTHENBERG'S DEATH
In March 1927, the American community in Moscow was
shocked by the news of the death ofRuthenberg, general secretary
 TROTSKY'S DAY IN COURT 185

of the CPUSA. His death came suddenly, from a ruptured

appendix. His last request had been that he be buried in the
K remlin walls in Moscow-a request acceded to by the Russian
<.'ommunist Party. His ashes were carried to Moscow by J. Louis
Engdahl, a member of the Central Committee of the U.S. Party.
The Moscow funeral was impressive. The procession entered
Red Square led by a detachment of Red Cavalry. The square was
crowded with thousands of Soviet workers, including the entire
work force of the Ruthenberg Factory, which had been named in
his honor.
We half dozen Black students, together with other members of
lhe American colony, marched into the square immediately
hehind the urn. We followed it until we stood directly in front of
the Len in Mausoleum. On top of the mausoleum was the speakers'
platform. There stood Bukharin, who had recently succeeded
Zinoviev as head of the Communist International: Bela Kun,
lcader of the abortive Hungarian Soviet of 1919; Sen Katayama,
the veteran Japanese Communist; and others.
Bukharin delivered the main eulogy, followed by several
speakers. Suddenly I noticed Bukharin whispering to Robert
Minor, who was standing beside him. Bukharin pointed down
lowards our group of Blacks who were gathered below the
mausoleum.
As Minor came down the steps toward us, I was a bit
apprehensive, anticipating his mission. Sure enough, addressing
rny brother Otto, he said, "Comrade Bukharin wants one of the
Negro comrades to say a few words."
Otto pointed at me and said, "Let Harry speak."
I felt trapped, not wanting to start an argument on such a
solemn occasion. I reluctantly agreed to speak and followed
Minor back up the steps of the mausoleum. Bela Kun, a polished
orator, was speaking; I was to follow. I tried to gather my
thoughts, but I was not much of a speaker and certainly not
prepared.
Generalities did not come easy to me, and besides, I hadn't really
known Ruthenberg. I had only met him formally on the occasion
of my departure for Moscow when he had shaken my band and
186 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

wished me luck. But what could I say about him, specifically in

relation to the Blacks?
I stood there amidst this array of internationally famous
revolutionary leaders, and as I looked down on the thousands of
faces in Red Square, panic suddenly seized me. Here was my turn
to speak, but I found myself unable to utter a coherent sentence.
I remember saying something about "our great lost leader." This
being my first experience in front of a mike, the words seemed to
come back and hit me in the face. Finally, after a minute or two of
floundering around I said, "That's all!" and turned away from the
mike in disgust and humiliation. The words "that's all" resounded
through the square laud and clear, to my further discomfiture.
And then came the moment for the translation. The translator
was a young Georgian named Tival, ane of Stalin's secretaries. He
was one of those people who speak half a dozen languages fluently.
Tival gat right into the job of translation, assuming an orator's
mance. He had a strong roaring voice, surprising for ane of such
diminutive stature.
Swinging his arms, apparently emphasizing points that I was
supposed to have made, I must admit that he made a pretty good
speech for me. Speaking two or three times longer than my two
minutes of rambling, he 'preceded each point by emphasizing,
"Tovarishch Haywood skazal" (Comrade Haywood said).
The next morning, I went to the school cafeteria for breakfast.
And there sat our little group of Black students. Golden had them
laughing at something. He saw me and waved the day's copy of
Pravda. The headline was "Pokhorony Tovarishcha Ruthenber­
ga" (Funeral of Comrade Ruthenberg).
Golden began reading with a straight face, but using that
peculiar language of his-Russian with a Mississippi accent. The
article quoted from the main speeches and went on to say,
Tovarishch Harry Haywood, Americanski Negr, tozhe bystupa/
(Negro American comrade Harry Haywood also stepped forward
with a speech)."
And Golden read one paragraph after another of the speech
Tival gave for me, each paragraph starting with "Tovarishch
Haywood skazal... Tovarishch Haywood skazal... Tovarishch
 TROTSKY'S DAY IN COURT 187

llaywood skazal."
Finally Golden looked up from that paper at me, and he said,
"Man, you know you ain't skazaled a goddamned thing!"
Back home in the U.S., the death of Ruthenberg had signalled
,mother flareup in the factional struggle within the Party. Foliow­
ing the intervention of the Cl at the Fourth Party Convention,
there was a period of uneasy peace between the factions. But now
a struggle for succession to Ruthenberg's position as general
secretary was raging hot and heavy.
Lovestone, who had been organizational secretary, was sup­
ported by the Ruthenberg stalwarts-Max Bedacht, Ben Gitlow
and John Pepper. Since Ruthenberg's death, Lovestone (as heir
apparent) had pre-empted the interim job of acting secretary. In
opposition, William W. Weinstone was the candidate supported
by the Foster-Cannon bloc which included Alexander Bittelman
and Jack Johnstone.
Weinstone had formerly been a member of the Ruthenberg
faction, but foliowing Ruthenberg's death, he sought the position
of general secretary himself. His move offered an opportunity for
the Foster-Cannon group to oppose Lovestone, whom they
bitterly detested, with a candidate they believed had more of a
chance of winning than did one of their old stalwarts.
We Blacks in Moscow were isolated from much of this struggle.
We were sort of observers from the sidelines, and with the
exception of Otto (who had entered the Party immediately after its
founding convention), we didn't have any of the old factional
loyalties or political axes to grind. We generally favored the
Ruthenberg leadership, although we could hardly be called ardent
supporters.
Ruthenberg's leadership had been endorsed by the Cl, which
gave his followers credence in our view. But Lovestone was
something else again. On this, even Otto agreed. Lovestone had a
reputation for being a factionalist par excellence, involved in the
dirty infighting that took place. He was regarded as a hatchet man
for the Ruthenberg group.
None of us in Moscow could discern any principled political
differences between the two groups on the question uppermost in
188 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

our minds-the question of Black liberation. Though we had not

yet fully succeeded in relating our newly acquired Marxist-Leninist
perspective to the question of Blacks in the U .S., we were sure­
and our studies had confirmed-that Blacks were a potentially
powerful revolutionary force in the struggle against U.S. capital.
Clearly the common enemy could not be defeated without a
revolutionary alliance of Blacks and the class-conscious elements of
the working class. It was crucial to us that Party policy be directed
towards consummating that alliance. We felt, however, that both
factions underestimated the revolutionary potential of Blacks and
we were determined not to allow ourselves to become a political
football between the two.
There had been no progress in this area since the folding of the
American Negro Labor Congress in 1925. The collapse of the
ANLC for us confirmed the Party's isolation from the Black
masses. According to James Ford, a young Black Party leader,
there were only about fifty Blacks in the Party at this time. 15
Something was definitely wrong. At the time, we were inclined
to attribute the Party's shortcomings simply to an underestimation
of the importance of Afro-American work. We were not, at that
point, able to discern any theoretical tendencies within the Party
which served to rationalize this underestimation. We felt it was due
simply to hangovers of racial prejudices of white Party members
and leaders.
In Moscow, we had been in constant communication with Black
comrades in the U.S. We had, in faet, set ourselves up as a sort of
unofficial lobby to keep the situation with respect to Blacks
continuously before the attention of the Russians and other
Comintern leaders. They, for the most part, were sympathetic to
our grievances.
In May 1927, Jay Lovestone (while still acting secretary of the
Party) showed up in Moscow at the CI's Eighth Plenum. During
his stay, he invited us Black students to his room at the Lux Hotel
to give us an informal report on the Party's work among Blacks.
He had heard, of course, of our discontent and wanted to mollify
us. He also knew that the question was coming up for serious
discussion at the Sixth Congress of the Communist International,
 TROTSKY'S DA Y IN COURT 189

which was to take place the following year. There was no doubt he
was out to mend his political fences.
I had my first close look at the man when we gathered in his
room. He tried to give us the impression of being very frank and
self-critical. He said the Party leadership, involved in factional
struggles, had neglected Black struggles, had neglected Afro­
American work, an "important phase" of the Party's activities. But
this factional phase had now at long last come to a closc and thc
Party (under his leadership) had now begun seriously to tackle the
job of overcoming this tremendous lag in the work.
He told us that Otto Huiswood had been placed on the Central
Committee and assigned as organizer for the Buffalo (western New
York) district. We thought it was about time! Richard B. Moore
had been placed as New England organizer for the International
Labor Defense. "I cite this," Lovestone said, "only as an earnest
example of the determination of the Central Committee to remedy
our default on this most important question."
Assuming a modest air, he turned to me and said, "Last but not
least, we have decided that you, Harry, as one of our bright young
Negroes, are to be transferred to the Lenin School. We've had our
eye on you, Harry, for some time."
I was delighted at this news. The Lenin School had been
established only the year before (1926) as a select training school
for the development of leading cadres of the parties in the
Communist International. But though I was delighted, I was also
suspicious of the man; his cold eyes belied the warmth and
modesty he tried to express. It seemed like a bid to buy me out.
Otto, however, seemed to have been impressed.
Though Lovestone was a teetotaler, he had a big bottle of vodka
in his room for us students. He had brought us presents-which
was true of most visitors from the States. It was understood that a
visitor would not return to the U.S. with extra things that the
students in Moscow could use. Most people, and Lovestone was
no exception, came prepared with things to give away. During the
course of the evening, Otto had seized a few pair of socks, and
Lovestone had given him a tin of pipe tobacco (and cigarettes for
us all). As we were leaving, Otto looked over Lovestone's shoes.
190 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

"Say, Jay," he said, "you and me wear the same size shoes, don't
we? Y ou got another pair with you?"
"Sure, Otto, sure," said Lovestone, and produced an extra pair.
On our way home, walking down Tverskaya Boulevard towards
the dormitory, we exchanged our impressions of the evening.
Golden started off: "Oh, he's full of crap. There's no sincerity in the
man."
Otto responded, "I think you're wrong, Golden, I think you're
wrong."
Golden said, "I saw his eyes. That's something you didn't see,
Otto. Y ou had too much vodka. Y ou know I've always told you to
go light on it-you know you can't handle the stuff. Y ou remember
what Vesey's lieutenant said when the slaves rebelled in Virginia:
'Beware of those wearing the old clothes of the master, for they will
betray you!' "
I never saw Otto so furious! He turned on Golden with his fists
clenched, but thought better of it. Golden was too hig. I laughed, .
and he turned towards me, but I was his brother. At that moment a
drunk Russian staggered into view and suddenly bumped into
him.
Otto let his fist go and knocked the poor man down. There was a
great commotion and a crowd ofRussians gathered around. Some
Chinese students from our school were across the street, and
thinking we were being attacked by "hooligans," rushed to our
defense. We helped the man to his feet and, in the confusion,
attempted to explain to the crowd what had happened. Otto said
he had thought the drunk was attacking him, and it was thus that
we managed to pass the thing off and return to our dorm.
Lovestone was a consummate factionalist, utterly uninhibited
by scruples or principles. He finally won out in the struggle to
succeedRuthenberg, but the mantle ofRuthenbergfit him poorly;
the cloven hoof was always visible. His victory was aided by the
ineptitude of the Foster-Cannon-Weinstone bloc, which made
several tactical blonders ( of which Lovestone took full advantage).
Lovestone's friendship with Bukharin was perhaps a factor in his
victory; Nikolai Bukharin had succeeded Zinoviev as the presi­
dent of the Comintern. He was an erstwhile ally of Stalin in the
 TROTSKY'S DAY IN COURT 191

struggle against the Trotskyist "Left" and was later to emerge as a

lcader of the right deviation within the Soviet Party and the
( 'ommunist International. As head of the Comintern, he already
had begun to line up forces for his next battle which was to break
out foliowing the Sixth Congress of the Cl in 1928. His man in the
ll.S. was none other than Jay Lovestone.
As I have indicated, we KUTVA students in Mosccow were
rcmoved from much of the bitterness of the post-Ruthenberg
struggle, and at the time, were not fully aware of its intensity. I was
to be filled in with a blow-by-blow account of what went on at
home by some of my classmates at the Lenin School, which I
cntered the foliowing autumn.

V ACA TION IN THE CRIMEA

The month of August, vacation time, drew near. Our group of

Hlack students split up and all of us (with the exception ofBankole)
lcft Moscow. Bankole was reluctant to leave his Russian girl friend
and remained in the city. Golden's girl friend, a pretty Kazakh­
stanian girl, took him home to meet her people in Kazakhstan, an
autonomous republic in southwest Asia, inhabited by a Turko­
M ongolian people.
As for myself, I askedfor and received permission to spend my
vacation in the Crimea. At the Chancellor's office, I was given
money, a railroad ticket and a document entitling me to stay one
month at a rest home in Yalta. I was on my own and for the first
time since my arrival fourteen months before, I was separated
from my fellow Black students. But I had no misgivings. By this
time, I had acquired a considerable knowledge of the country and
had overcome the main hurdles in the language and could speak
and read Russian with some fluency. In faet, I looked forward to
my journey with pleasurable expectations. I was not to be
disappointed.
The Autonomous Republic of Crimea is a square-shaped
peninsula jutting out into the Black Sea. At that time, it was one of
the two Tartar autonomous republics; the other was Tartaria, on
192 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

the Volga. I immediately fell in love with the oountry-its lush

subtropical climate and its people. The Tartars were a dark­
skinned Mongolic people, descendants of the Golden Horde of
Genghis Khan. When I arrived in Sevastopol, the !argest city and
seaport, I was struck by the dazzling brilliance of the sun against
the pastel-colored buildings, the deep blue of the sea and the
verdant Crimean mountains rising behind the city. Tall and stately
cypress trees lined the streets. It was a busy seaport; all types of
shipping could be found in the harbor from small fishing boats to
Black Sea passenger liners and ocean-going freighters of the Soviet
trading fleet.
As a history buff, I stopped over for a couple of days to take in
the historie sites of the city and its environs. There was the Pan­
arama, a life-like display graphically depicting the battle of
Sevastopol during the Crimean War, 1854-66. (The war was
fought mainly on the Crimean peninsula between Russian forces
on the one band; British, French and Turkish allies on the other.)­
In this oattle, the allies sought to knock out the strong Russian
naval base in Sevastopol through an invasion by land and
bombardment by sea. The Russians lost the war, but Sevastopol
remained Russian.
I drove out to Balaklava, a small village nestling on the sea a few
miles southeast of Sevastopol, the scene of the disastrous charge of
the British "Light Brigade," led by Lord Cardigan and immor­
talized by Tennyson in his poem. Looking at the scene brought
back memories of childhood school days when our class recited
Tennyson's poem aloud. I stood on Voronsov Heights over­
looking the Valley of Death into which rode the six hundred. I
walked over the grounds and viewed the graves of the victims of
this blunder of the British officer caste. Fourteen years later,
Sevastopol was to be the site of one of the most destructive and
bloody battles of World War Il.
My automobile ride to Yalta, about sixty kilometers further
along the coast, was not only exciting, but in some parts, a
frightening experience. It was mostly along a narrow road, cut out
of the side of mountains, on which two cars could barely pass. In
some places, one could look down to what appeared to me to be a
 TROTSKY'S DAY IN COURT 193

shcer drop af two ar three thousand feet into the sea below. The
l'11auffeurs driving powerful Packards, Cadillacs and Espano­
Swiss sped along the road with its many curves at breakneck speed.
The obvious faet that they were expert drivers was not enough to
allay my fears nor those of the other passengers.
N earing Yalta, we passed Lavadaya, a beautiful palace built by
an ltalian architect during the reign af Alexander the Third. It was
situated an a high cliff overlooking the sea. Later, it became the
summer home af Czar Nicholas Il. N ow, under the Soviets, it had
hcen converted into a rest home for local peasant leaders. The
palace later housed President Roosevelt and Premier Churchill
during the Yalta conference in 1945.
At last I arrived in Yalta, center of the great Crimean resort area
which extended along the coast and behind which rose the
C. 'rimean Mountains. Yalta was a town of rest homes and sanitaria,
mostly owned by Soviet trade unions. I was put up at a rest home
which mainly housed employees of the Moscow city adminis­
tration.
Immediately after registering, I put on my bathing trunks and
donned the gorgeous Ashanti robe which Bankole had lent me and
stepped out for a dip in the sea. I stepped out into the main street
which ran alongside the seashore and headed for the beach.
Although many af the Tartars of the area were dark-skinned,
Blacks were rarely seen, even in these southern climes.
As I passed along I could hear remarks like, "Kak khorosho
=agorelsya (How beautifully sunburnt he is)!" It was a remark I
was to hear often. It was good natured, and I sensed in it a trace of
cnvy.
The crowds were mainly vacationers from the north, who after
t he long, weary and cold sub-arctic winters of central Russia had
fled to this semi-tropical paradise to soak up a little sunshine. Here
lhey formed a cult of sun-worshippers hent on acquiring a suntan
to display upon their return home.
A crowd of smalt boysfollowed me out to the public beach afew
blocks away. Perhaps they associated me with some of the South
Sea Island characters they had seen in movies and waited
cxpectantly for an exhibition of my aquatic skilts. I doffed my
194 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

gorgeous robe and stepped into the water, walked out a few feet
and sat down. I turned to see expressions of amazement,
disappointment, and even pity. Their bewilderment was quite
natura), for I myself had never met a Russian who didn't know
how to swim. These children regarded swimming to be a natura)
human attribute; to them, an adult who couldn't swim was
regarded as sort of a cripple.
One day, while walking to the bcach in Yalta, I was approached
by a uniformed officer of the OGPU ( federal police). "Bonjour,
camarade, vous etes Senegalais?" he,asked in French.
He seemed a bit surprised when I responded in Russian, telling
him that I was an American Black and a student at K UTV A in
Moscow.
He said that he had noticed me several times on the streets and
wondered if I were Senegalese. He had fought beside Senegalese
rifJemen during the world war. His Cossack regiment, he ex­
plained, was a part of a small Russian expeditionary force sent to
fight with the French Army on the Western Front.
I told him that I had also fought in the war with an American
Black regiment and how I had seen Russian troops in a prison
camp on my way to the Soissons front in the late summer of 1918. I
asked him if he had been in that camp.
He shrugged and said that it was quite possible. "They scattered
us around in a number of camps; they didn't want too many of us
together in one place," he said.
"Our Russian force," he went on, "was small and had no real
military significance." It had been sent by the Czar as a demon­
stration of solidarity and friendship between Russia and France­
sort of a morale b9oster for the French people.
"Be that as it may," he said, "it didn't boost our morale any to be
there. In France, we fought in some of the toughest battles in the
war, on the Champagne front and the Marne salient, and we
suffered heavy casualties. Our fellows were homesick and con­
fused, and didn't know what they were fighting for so far away
from Mother Russia.
"There was much grumbling and always an undercurrent of
discontent. All of this was heightened towards the latter part of the
 TROTSKY'S DAY IN COURT 195

war by the bad news of Russian defeats on the Eastern Front. This
all came to a head with the news of the fall of the Czar. Shortly after
that we were withdrawn from the front by the French, as an
unreliable element. Behind the lines, we were surrounded and
disarmed by Senegalese troops, and quite a number who resisted
were killed or wounded. To say that we were 'unreliable' was an
understatement; by that time, we were downright mutinous!"
The Bolshevik Party had active nuclei in the regiments. "I
myself was a member of the Party," said my new-found friend.
"We followed the course of the Revolution through French
newspapers and were able to glean the truth behind their
distortions. We also had contact with some of the French left­
socialists and with Bolshevik exiles before they returned home
after the outbreak of the February Revolution. After the Armistice
was signed, we were sent to Morocco and eventually Soviet ships
came to take us to Odessa and home.
"The French used the Senegalese against us," he said. "We
learned later of a mutiny among the Senegalese troops in which
they were shot up and disarmed by the French Blue Devils." I had
just been reading Andre Barbusse and was surprised to learn how
widespread mutiny had been in the French Army.
"Well, c'est la guerre," he said, "especially so an imperialist war.
After all, what interest had the Senegalese in defending French
imperialism? What interest did we Russian workers and rnuzhiks
(peasants) have in fighting the Czar's wars?"
W e parted, with both of us wanting to meet again, but he had to
leave town that evening and I never saw him again.
Often, we visited the local vineyards and wine cellars and tasted
the local wines. It was wine country and Crimean wines were of the
first quality, from the sweet ports, tokays and muscatels, to the dry
red and white wines. On these outings there was always someone
who had a guitar or accordion, and we sat late into the nights
singing Russian folk songs and gypsy romans (love songs).
The Crimea was not just a vacationers' haven, although tourism
occupied a large place in its economy. At that time, the economy
was mainly agricultural. Vineyards were constantly expanding in
the mountain valleys along the southern coast. Tobacco of fine
196 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

quality was grown, and there was also an important fishing

industry.
On the east coast of the peninsula near Kerch, there was an area
of rich iron ore deposits and mines. This was to serve as the basis
for the construction of the gigantic Kerch metallurgical, chemical
and engineering works, contemplated in the first five year plan. It
was a plan which sought to quadruple the basic capital of the
republic.
With the renaissance of national cultures which accompanied
the Soviet policy on the national question, the Turkic language
spoken by the Tartars-which I understood was closely related to
modem Turkish-was being revived and taught in schools. A
Latinized alphabet was introduced, replacing the old Arabic
script. Tartar literature and culture flourished through this
encouragement.
" l met the Party secretary for the county, a young Tartar who
took me to visit a kolkhoz ( collective farm), a vineyard in this case;
A hundred or more peasant families were in the collective, all wine­
growers. As in all collective farms, its members were required to
sell a definite amount to the government at fixed prices and were
allowed to sell the surplus on the free markets.
Each family had a special plot of land which they cultivated for
their own food supply. The chairman of the collective was a buge
Ukrainian fellow, who showed us around and explained the wine­
growing process. The cultivation of grapes and making of the wine
required special knowledge, which the government supplied.
The members of the collective used up-to-date wineries owned
by the state and managed by expert vintners. There I was to view
the intricate process of wine-making, the pressing of the grapes,
the fermenting process and the bottling itself. As I remember, this
particular collective specialized in dry wines-both red and white.
The Crimeans insisted that their wines were as good as the French.
Not being a connaisseur, I wouldn't know, but all I can say is that
they tasted good to me.
When I returned to Moscow in the fall, Otto told me of the
disc�very he had made on one of his trips to the southern region of
the Caucasus. He had originally gone there on the invitation of one
 TROTSKY'S DAY IN COURT 197

of our fellow students, a young woman from the Abkhazian

Rcpublic, a part of Georgia. After meeting some of us, she
commented that they too had some Black folk down near her area
in a village not very far from Sukhum, the capital of the republic
on the Black Sea.
She invited Otto down to visit the region over his summer
vucation, and there he met the people. He described them as being
of definite black ancestry-notwithstanding a history of inter­
marriage with the local people. But the starsata ( old man) of the
lribe was Black beyond a doubt. His story went some generations
hack, when he and the others joined the Turkish army as
Numidian mercenaries from the Sudan. After several forays into
I his region they deserted the Army and had settled there. The
.�tarsata himself had been in the Czar's Cavalry with the Dikhi
( wild) Division of the Caucasus Cossacks.
The people in the village wanted to know what was happening to
"our brothers over the mountains." Otto related to them the
troubles we had gone through, described the travels "over the
mountains and across the big sea." As the evening wore on and the
local brandy was consumed, toast after toast was drunk to "our
little brother from over the hills." Otto described to them the
conditions of Blacks in the U.S.-the lynchings, racism and
hrutality. Incensed, a few jumped up and pulled out their daggers.
"You should make a revolution."
"Why don't you revolt?"
"Why do you put up with it?"
We were not the only ones surprised to learn about this group; it
was news to the Russians in Moscow too! Several of these
tribesmen later visited Moscow as a result of Otto's visit.
 Chapter 7

The Lenin School

Following my summer in the Crimea, I returned to Moscow

in the fall of 1927 to attend the Lenin School. The school was
located offthe Arbot on what is now called Ambassadors' Row, a
fow blocks down the ioner ring of boulevards from the K UTVA
dormitories.
The Lenin School, which was set up by the Comintern, opened
in Moscow in May 1926. The plans for the school, formally called
the International Lenin Course, had been reported on the previous
year by Bela Kun, then head of the Educational (Agitprop)
Department of the Comintern. Accordingly, the school was to
train sixty to seventy qualified students both in theoretical and
practical subjects, which included observations of Soviet trade
unions and collective farm work. It offered a full three"year course
and a short course of one year.
It was a school of great prestige and influence within the
international communist movement. lts students, mainly party
functionaries of district and section level and some secondary
national leaders who could be spared for the period of study, were
generally at a higher level of political development than the
students at K UTV A.1
I was the first Black to be assigned to the school. Others
followed later; including H. V. Phillips in 1928, Leonard Patterson
in the thirties, and Nzula-a Zulu intellectual and national
secretary of the South African Communist Party.
 THE LENIN SCHOOL 199

The American students who entered the Lenin School in the fall
of 1927 were an impressive lat. They included prominent Party
leaders from the national and district level. Outstanding in the
group was Charles Krumbein, a member of the Central Committee
of the Party and formerly in charge of trade union work in Chicago
and district organizer for Chicago. A steamfitter by trade and a
charter member of the Party, he was one of a group ofyoung trade
unionists who made up the Chicago Party leadership in the
twenties. They were the hest representatives of the radical tradition
of that city's labor mavement.
Modesty and honesty were hallmarks of Charlie's character,
and he was a man of exceptional organizational and adminis­
trative ability. He was a founder of the Trade Union Education
League (TUEL) and played a key role in the Chicago Federation of
Labor. We developed a close and lasting friendship, and I learned
a lot from him about Party history and the background of the
revolutionary mavement in the United States.
Margaret Cowl; Charlie's wife, was a capable Party leader and
organizer. She had worked in the TUEL and was recognized
particularly for her leadership in the struggle for unity of
Pennsylvania's anthracite coal miners in 1927. Later she was to
head up the Party's Women's Commission and play an active role
in the mavement for a Woman's Charter, a broad united front
mavement launched in 1936 which asserted the rights of women to
full equality in all spheres of activity. Margaret also energetically
mobilized support for the struggles of women wage workers in the
needle trades, textile, electrical and other industries.
Joseph Zack had emigrated to the U.S. from Eastern_Europe
shortly after the First World War. Active in the first communist
organization in New York, he had been section organizer of
Yorktown and served on the Party's Trade Union Commis­
sion. Zack was ane of Foster's leading trade union cadres in
New York and had also been ane of the first New York Party
members assigned to work among Blacks. He was a bitter
enemy of Lovestone, but was also critical of Foster. In 1932, he
was expelled from the Party for refusing to abide by demo­
cratic centralism and by the forties had become an informant for
200 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

the Dies Committee on Un-American Propaganda Activities.

Morris Childs, a Chicagoan, was a leader in trade union and
Party work. He became Illinois D.O. in the thirties at the same
time that I was chairman of the Cook County Committee and
secretary of the Southside region. While at the Lenin School, he
served as the representative of the American students to the School
Bureau.
Rudy Baker, a Yugoslav comrade who later became D.O. in
Pittsburgh and in Detroit, and Lena Davis (Sherer), a good friend
of mine who was organizational secretary for New York in the
thirties, were also at the school. All of these students were
members of the Foster group. As far as I can recall, the sole
Lovestone supporter in our class was Gus Sklar of Chicago, a
leader in the Russian Federation.
Poor Gus was alone in the midst of Fosterites, and it must have
been an unhappy experience for him. When Lovestone was
expelled from the Party in 1929, Gus remained in the Soviet Union
and never returned to the U.S. He served as an officer in the Red
Army and was killed in the defense of Moscow during the Second
World War.
The American students at the Lenin School were all experienced
leaders of the U.S. Party. One might ask why so many were spared
from U.S. work at a time when the Party's position among the
masses was so weak.
Actually, these students were victims of Lovestone's purge of
the Party apparatus following his victory at the Fifth Party
Convention in 1927. Part of Lovestone's strategy was to weaken
his opposition on the home front by "exiling" some of its leaders to
the Lenin School.
His plan backfired however. In Moscow, these "exiles," as they
jokingly called themselves, were to become an effective lobby
against Lovestone both in the Comintern and in the CPSU. The
political winds were changing.
From the ashes of the defeated Trotskyist "left "rose an equally
dangerous, organized and secret rightist opposition headed by
none other than Lovestone's patron in the Comintern, Nikolai
Bukharin. On the home front, this rightist opposition had its social
 THE LENIN SCHOOL 201

base among the capitalists, the landlords and the kulaks (upper
peasantry) and pushed a line that would have lopsidedly developed
industry along consumer lines, to the detriment of the vast masses
of Soviet people. lnternationally, Bukharin greatly underesti­
mated the war danger and the potentially revolutionary situation
then developing on a world scale. At the same time, he greatly
overestimated the strength and resiliency of imperialism.
The Lenin School students helped to legitimize the anti­
Lovestone struggle in the U .S. Party by linking it up with the fight
against the right deviation, then only in its incipient stage. The
Lenin School was to become a strong point in the fight against this
danger.
There were several other American students who had entered
the Lenin School the year before. This group included Clarence
Hathaway, Tom Bell, Max Salzman and Carl Reeves (the son of
Mother Bloor). 2 Of this group, Hathaway had the most imposing
credentials. A machinist from Minneapolis and one of the leading
people in the Trade Union Education League, Hathaway proved
to be a valuable asset in the Party's trade union work.
He was a fine organizer and speaker, particularly effective in
debates, and combined these talents with a good grasp of
Marxist-Leninist theory. Clearly destined for top leadership in the
Party, he later served as D.O. of the New York District,
became an editor of the Daily Worker and a member of the
Political Bureau. Tom Bell, Hathaway's close friend, remained in
the Soviet Union, married a Russian woman and died sometime
before World War II.
William Kruse of Chicago was the principal Lovestonite in the
school. For a brief period he filled in as acting rep from the Party
to the Comintern in the absence of a permanent Party rep. Later,
he was D.O. in Chicago under Lovestone's leadership and was
expelled from the Party with Lovestone in 1929.
The students were organized at the school by language groups,
as we had been at KUTVA. In this case, the languages were
English, German, French, Spanish, ltalian, Russian and, later,
Chinese. The whole school was a collective, comprising students,
teachers, administrators and employees. The leading body was the
202 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Party Bureau, which included delegates from the various groups,

including the employees. All students transferred membership
from their home party to the CPS U, and were directly subject to its
discipline. Party meetings were held about once a month.
Our rector was a handsome, energetic woman named Kursa­
nova. She was a leading communist educator and was married to
the old Bolshevik propagandist and CC member, E. Yaroslavsky.
She was about forty at the time and had an impressive back­
ground, including civil war experiences as a machine-gunner in a
detachment of Siberian partisans. Kursanova had also been a
delegate to the Bolshevik Conference in April 1917 which adopted
Lenin's famous April Theses. 3
In addition to the Americans, others in the English-speaking
section included British, Irish, Australians, a New Zealander, two
Chinese, two Japanese and two Canadians-Leslie Morris and
Stewart Smith. The British group included Springhall, Tanner,
Black (a Welshman), Margaret Pollitt and George Brown. My
special friend among the British was Springhall, known to all as
"Springy," with whom I roomed at the Lenin School.
Springy was a British naval veteran of the First World War. He
had come from a poor family and his parents had chosen him for a
naval career. This latter aet, it seemed, was a common practice
among British lower class families with several sons. At the age of
twelve, therefore, he had been "given" to His Majesty's Navy to be
trained as a sailor. He served through the First World War and
after the Armistice was involved in a mutiny or near-mutiny
among members of the fleet who protested being sent to Leningrad
to intervene against the Bolshevik Revolution. At the time,
Springy was about twenty-one years old. As a result of the mutiny,
he was cashiered from the Navy. Apparently, the admiralty was
deterred from taking any harsher measures against the mutineers
because of the widespread sympathy their action had evoked
among British workers.
Springy was popular with everybody, particularly among the
women on the technical staff. After leaving the Lenin School, he
returned to England where he rose rapidly in Party Ieadership. He
also fought in Spain as a member of the Fifteenth International
 THE LENIN SCHOOL 203

Brigade and was wounded at J arama.

At the beginning of World War Il, he served as organizational
secretary of the British Party. During the early stages of the war,
Springy was charged by the Churchill government with subversive
activity among the armed forces. This was during the period prior
to the German invasion of the Soviet Union, when the war was still
an imperialist war and we communists opposed it.
There was no defense against the charge of subversion in
wartime England, and Springy was sentenced to seven years in
prison. After his release, he went to China, where he did editorial
work on English language pu blications until his death from cancer
in 1953. Springy died in a Moscow hospital, where he had been
sent by his Chinese comrades to make sure that everything possible
could be done to save him. His ashes were returned to China and
interred with a memorial stone in the Revolutionary Martyrs'
Cemetery outside Peking.
Springy introduced me to the gifted English writer, historian
and Marxist scholar, Ralph Fox. A promising young theoretician,
Fox was then researching material for one of his books at the
Marx-Engels Institute. He died at the age of thirty-seven, fighting
the fascists on the Cordova Front during the Spanish Civil War.
By the end of his brief life span, he had already published a
tremendous body of work. 4
I got a lot out of my friendship with Fox. Profiting greatly from
his wide-ranging knowledge, I often consulted him on theoretical
and political questions which arose during my stay at the school.
Springy and I were frequent visitors at the apartment of Fox
and his wife Midge. It was there that I first met Karl Radek. A
Polish expatriate, he had been an active leader in the Polish Social
Democratic Party and a member of the Zimmerwald Left (those
internationalists who broke off from the Second International in
1915 and were instrumental in founding the Third International).
In 1915-16, Radek-along with Rosa Luxemburg-publicly
disagreed with Lenin on the question of self-determination of
subject nations. 5 Radek later changed his position and fully united
with the Bolshevik point of view in 1917.
Radek was part of the group that returned with Lenin to Russia
204 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

via Germany in the famous "sealed coach." 6 He was a member of

the Bolshevik Central Committee and Politburo. At the time that I
met him in 1928, Radek was still under a shadow politically. He
had been a leading member of the Trotsky-Zinoviev opposition
and was expelled from the CPSU along with the other leaders of
the bloc at the Sixteenth Congress of the CPSU in December 1927.
Exiled to the Urals, he publicly repudiated his earlier position and
was readmitted to the Party a few months later in 1928. He was
assigned as editor of lzvestia and låter became the chief foreign
affairs commentator in the leading Soviet papers. He was also a
member of the Soviet delegation to the Comintern.
Radek, as I remember him, was a little man, appearing to be
somewhat of a dandy in his English tweed jacket, plus-fours and
cane. But to me, the most striking thing about him was his beard. It
stretched from ear to ear, under his chin and cheeks, giving him a
simian look.
H'is English, though accented, was fluent. When we first met, he
immediately engaged me in a conversation about conditions of
Blacks in the United States, which branched off into questions of
Black literature, writers and the Harlem Renaissance. To my
amazement, it was clear that he knew more about the latter subject
than I did. I was embarrassed when he asked my opinion about
certain Black writers with whom he was familiar but whom I had
never even read. I found out later that Claude McKay had been a
sort of a protege of Radek's during the poet's stay in the Soviet
Union.
In 1937, along with several others in the Trotskyite "Left
Opposition," Radek was convicted of treason, of acting as an
"agency" of German and ltalian fascism and giving assistance to
those who might invade the Soviet Union. He was sent to prison
where he died in the forties. 7
Springy introduced me to many other young Britons in
Moscow: such men as William Rust, who later became editor of
the British Worker; Walter Tapsell, editor of the Young Worker;
and George Brown. Both Brown and Tapsell were in my brigade in
the Spanish Civil War and were killed in battle. Brown was killed
at Brunete while I was there.
 THE LENIN SCHOOL 205

Our English-speaking section at the Lenin School included five

young Irishmen, all members of the Irish Workers League, a
communist-oriented group organized by BigJim Larkin in 1923. It
seems that the Irish Communist Party, founded in 1921 by Young
Roderick Connolly (son of Jarnes Connolly), had collapsed.8 I was
told that its failure was due to a lack of Marxist-Leninist theory
and the inability of its members to relate their views on socialism to
the specific conditions in Ireland. But there was certainly no lack
of revolutionary enthusiasm and motivation among the young
people I met at the Lenin School, some of whom had been
members of the Irish Communist Party. The group had been sent
to the Lenin School as a step towards rebuilding the Irish Party.
All five were proteges of the famous Irish revolutionary, Big Jim
Larkin-most definitely a man of action and organization, not of
theory. A tall, bulky man with a buge, hawk-like nose and bushy
eyebrows, Larkin was one of the most colorful figures of the Irish
labor movement. From his base among Dublin dockworkers, his
activities as a labor leader had ranged over three continents-from
the British Isles, to Argentina, to the U.S.-and at the time that I
met him, spanned more than three decades. He had been a
founding member of the U.S. Party and was a member ofboth the
Executive Committees of the Communist International and the
Red International of Labor Unions (RILU or the Profintern). He
was often in Moscow, where I saw him frequently.
The Irish students came from the background of the 1916 Easter
Rebellion and the revolutionary movement reflected in the lives of
men like Larkin and James Connolly. Among them were Sean
Murray and James Larkin, Jr. (Big Jim's son).9 All of them had
been active in the post-war independence and labor struggles. I
was closest to Murray, the oldest of the group, who was a
roommate of mine.
This was my first encounter with Irish revolutionaries and their
experiences excited me. As members of oppressed nations, we had
a lot in common. I was impressed by their idealism and revolu­
tionary ardor and their implacable hatred of Britain's imperialist
rulers, as well as for their own traitors. But what impressed me most
about them was their sense of national pride-not of the
206 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

chauvinistic variety, but that of revolutionaries aware of the

international importance of their independence struggle and the
role of Irish workers.
Theo too, they were a much older nation. Their fight against
Britain had at that time been going on for 750 years. They were
fond of quoting the observations of Marx and Engels on the Irish
movement, such as Marx's letter to Engels in which he said:
"English reaction in England had its roots in the subjugation of
lreland." 10 Another favorite was: "No nation can be free if it
oppresses other nations." 11
But most of all, they liked to point out Lenin's defense of the
Easter Uprising in his reply to Karl Radek, who had called the
rebellion a putsch and discounted the significance of the struggle
of small nations in the epoch of imperialism. Lenin admonished
Radek, stating that "a struggle capable of going to the lengths of
ins,.urrection and street fighting, of breaking down the iron
discipline of the army and martial law," on the doorstep of the
imperialist metropolis itself, would be a blow against imperialism
more significant than that in a remote colony. 12
I was shortly to find these observations applicable to the
liberation movement of U.S. Blacks. As a result of my association
with the Irish, I became deeply interested in the Irish question,
seeing in it a number of parallels to U.S. Blacks. In retrospect, I am
certain that this interest heightened my receptivity to the idea of a
Black nation in the United States.

TEACHERS AND CLASSES

The teaching method at the school was a combination of

lectures and discussions. About once a week the instructor would
give a lecture to the entire English-speaking group, all twenty-five
or thirty of us. Readings would be assigned, and when material
was not available in English, it would be translated especially for
us. I had one advantage in this regard because by this time I could
read Russian fluently. Foliowing the lecture, the instructor would
delineate a number of sub-topics. Several days later, we would all
 THE LENIN SCHOOL 207

get together again and ane person from each group would report
on its work. The instructors were often available for consultation
during the time the groups were discussing and researching their
topics.
There were no grades given, nor were there any examinations.
At the end of the term we would have evaluation sessions, where
everyone met and discussed each other's work, including that of
the teachers. It was a process of comradely criticism and self­
criticism.
I found the classes exciting and challenging and the students on
the whole sharp and on a high political level. I was under pressure
to keep up. The English in general seemed to be a notch above
most of us in political economy. This, I believe, was due to the
existence of a large number of Labour Party schools which were
spread throughout Britain.
Our instructor for Marxist political economy was Alexandrov,
an economist for the Gasplan, the state planning agency. In our
class, he was aften challenged on some aspect of Marxian
economics. He would aften have sharp exchanges with ane of the
British students, I believe it was Black, over differences in
interpretations of Marxian economics.
Black was a perfect foil for Alexandrov, who seemed to enjoy
these tilts and invited the whole class to participate. Summing up
the discussion, Alexandrov would brand Black's position as
"undialectical, mechanistic, and rooted in vulgar economism and
Fabianism." Black was stubbarn, however, and prodded by
Alexandrov, kept up his critical attitude for the whole first term. It
was only during the evaluations at the end of the term that Black
conceded that some of his positions had been in error.
Perhaps the most prominent among my teachers was Ladislaus
Rudas, a noted Hungarian Marxist philosopher and scholar. Like
many Hungarian intellectuals, he spoke several languages fluently.
He had been a leader of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet and had
come to Moscow along with Bela Kun and the other Hungarian
refugees. He taught historical and dialectical materialism and his
class was ane of the most interesting. It presented history, my
favorite subject, but with a different content: a Marxist-Leninist
208 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

interpretation, portraying not just the role of individuals but of

classes.
We had lengthy discussions on the French Revolution; the
petty bourgeois dictatorship under Robespierre and theJacobins;
Saint Just and the extreme left, the Thermidor and Napoleon­
"the man on the white horse." The English Revolution and
Cromwell, the Levellers, the Long Parliament. The Dutch revo­
lution and Prince Egmont. We had extended discussions on the
American revolutions-the War of lndependence, the Civil War
and Reconstruction.
These discussions brought out our lack of knowledge of our
own U.S. history; there was a complete absence of materials which
presented U.S. history from a Marxist standpoint. All I can
remember is the so-called Marxist analysis in the works of James
Oneal (The Workers in American History) and A.M. Simons's
Søcial Forces in American History.
The former I never read, but the work by Simons stands out in
my memory for its gratuitous slur on U.S. Blacks. Simons claimed
that the Black man did not revolt against slavery during the Civil
War: "His inaction in time of crisis, his failure to play any part in
the struggle that broke his shackles, told the world that he was not
of those who to free themselves would strike a blow." 13
I had read about the slave revolts of Gabriel, Nat Turner, and
John Brown's heroic raid on Harper's Ferry with his band of
whites, free Blacks and escaped slaves. I knew of the role of Black
soldiers in the Civil War who had to overcome the opposition of
the Union Army in order to fight. Simons's book skipped over all
of this.
I had come across Charles and Mary Beard's The Rise of
American Civilization. The Beards were economic determinists
who had characterized the Civil War as the Second American
Revolution. The idea seemed novel at the time, all of which points
up how widespread had been the distortion of the period by U .S.
bourgeois historians.
My sub-group, which included Springy and the lrishman Sean
Murray, had chosen the Civil War and the Reconstruction period
as our subject, with myself as the reporter. Our group had long
 tHE LENIN SCHOOL 209

discussions, after which we consulted Rudas, who by that time had

evidently done some homework of his own on the matter. He
called our attention to the writings of Marx and Engels, their
correspondence on the Civil War, and Marx's series of articles in
the New York Herald Tribune. 14 After the discussions, I submitted
a paper to the class, which evoked considerable discussion. On the
whole it was well-received by my fellow classmates and com­
mended by Rudas.
Perhaps our most interesting and stimulating course was on
Leninism and the history of the CPS U, taught by the historian I.
Mintz. A former Red Army officer, he was at the time assigned to
work on a history of the CPS U. Mintz was a young Ukrainian J ew,
a soft-spoken and mild-mannered little man. He had a way of
illustrating his subject through his own personal experiences
during the Revolution and the Civil War in the Ukraine. His
appearance contrasted sharply with his role and bloody exper­
iences in the battle for the Ukraine. His was a thrilling story,
involving a meteoric rise from leader of partisans to commander of
a Red Army brigade. They had fought against a whole array of
anti-Soviet and interventionist forces: the White Guardist Deni­
ken; the Cossack Hepmans, Kornilov and Kaledin; Makhno's
anarchists (who were sometimes with and sometimes against the
Red Army); General Petlura and sundry gangs of marauders and
pogromists; and the remnants of the German garrisons in the
Ukraine.
In connection with our studies of the Bolshevik agrarian policy
during the Civil War, Mintz told us of his involvement in the
settling of the question of land redistribution in a Ukrainian
district. This district had been reconquered by his Red Army unit
from Denikin in the early winter of 1920. He gave us a general
rundown of the agrarian situation at the time, the class forces in
the countryside, their shifting alignment during the course of the
Revolution, and the evolution of Bolshevik agrarian policy.
Kerensky's provisional government had done nothing to solve
the agrarian problem, to relieve the land hunger of the masses of
peasantry. Though Kerensky's program had promised confis­
cation of the big estates, once in power, the government reneged on
210 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

even that level of reform.

The Bolsheviks exhorted the peasants to await the decision of
the Constituent Assembly. Thus, at the time of the outbreak of the
Revolution, the vast majority of the cultivatable land was still
concentrated in the estates of the big landlords. The peasantry,
constituting four-fifths of the population of the old Czarist
Empire, was composed of three different strata. The well-to-do
peasant not only owned enough land to support himself in good
fashion, but also often hired labor to work his land. This group
comprised only about four to five percent of the total. The poor
peasant was without sufficient land to support himself and his
family and often hired himself out as a laborer to the landlord or
to a well-to-do peasant. The landless peasant subsisted entirely
from the sale of his labor to the landlord or well-to-do peasant.
Under the slogan "Land, Bread and Peace," the Bolsheviks
cQmbined the seizure of power in the cities with the land revolution
underway in the countryside. Allied with the Social Revolution­
aries (SRs), the traditional party of the peasantry, the land was
taken over in two phases. The first phase, nationalization and
confiscation, was incorporated in the Land Decree of the All Rus­
sian Congress of Soviets, November 8, 1917. This stamped the seal
of governmental endorsement on the land seizures and called for
their extension.
In September 1917, Lenin declared Bolshevik support for the
land program of the SRs, while pointing out that only a
proletarian revolution could put even this program into practice. 15
The SR program called for equal distribution of land among the
peasants while the Bolsheviks favored collective, and eventually
state-owned farms. But since the SR program represented the
understanding of the majority of peasants, Lenin's policy was to
resolve this difference by "teaching the masses, and in turn
learning from the masses, the practical expedient measures for
bringing about such a transition ."16
The day after seizing power, the Bolsheviks put this policy into
practice with their November 8, 1917, Decree on Land which made
the SR program into law. 17 Within three weeks, the SRs' left
wing-representing the poorer peasants-had split from the rest
 THE LENIN SCHOOL 211

of the party and entered a coalition government with the

Bolsheviks. In the following years, Lenin held to the basic position
he stated when presenting the November 8 decree:

As a democratic government, we cannot ignore the decision

of the masses of the people, even though we may disagree with
it. In the fire of experience, applying the decree in practice,
and carrying it out locally, the peasants will themselves realize
where the truth lies ... We must be guided by experience; we
must allow complete freedom to the creative faculties of the
masses. 18

It was against this background that Mintz related some of his

experiences in the Ukraine. He told us that the Party in the
Ukraine had not fully grasped the lessons of the agrarian
revolution in Great Russia. He spoke of one occasion when his
outfit had attempted to arbitrarily carry out the collectivization of
all the big estates in territory occupied by their division of the Red
Army; their efforts met with the stiff resistance of the local
peasants, even though the peasants supported Soviet power.
The peasants insisted on the redistribution of all the estates,
breaking them up among the individual peasant families, rather
than taking over the large estates collectively. This occurred
during the fall months of 1919, on the eve of Denikin's final defeat,
when Soviet power in the form of an "independent Ukrainian
Republic" was about to be established.
It was a time when Lenin, in order to allay anti-Russian distrust
and suspicion among the Ukrainian peasantry, had insisted that
certain concessions be made. Both Russian and Ukrainian were to
be used on an equal footing, and attempts to push back the
Ukrainian language to a secondary status were to be denounced.
Lenin demanded that all officials in the new republic be able to
speak Ukrainian and called for the 'distribution of large farms
among the peasailts. State farms were to be created "in strictly
limited numbers and of limited size and in each case in conformity
with the instruments of the surrounding peasantry." 19
Despite this, Mintz said, many of us Ukrainian Bolsheviks
212 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

tended to downplay the nationality element in our own country.

"In my own case, I had long since ceased to consider myself a J ew."
Most of them were what was called at that time "abstract
internationalists"; super-internationalists who, in the name of
internationalism, renounced the national element in the struggle of
the Ukrainian masses.
"But we were not alone in this deviation," Mintz told us.
"Although Lenin's policy was eventually adopted by the Central
Executive Committee, it was sharply opposed by leading Ukrain­
ian Bolsheviks such as Rakovsky and Manuilsky. What it finally
came down to, in the case of our army division, was that as a result
of the opposition of the peasants in the area, we were forced to give
up our plan for collectivization; we thus had to settle for having
only one of the estates being set aside as a Soviet farm."
The first part of each summer at the Lenin School was spent in
p�,iictical work that related to our studies. In the course of my
practical work program in the early summer of 1928, I had my first
close-up observation of the peasant question in the USSR. I visited
a peasant village in an agricultural district to talk with the people
and make observations. Though hardly more than 100 versts
(about 66 miles) from Moscow, it was truly in "darkest Russia," a
provincial place, isolated from the city. Few inhabitants had been
as far away as Moscow.
After taking a train to the nearest station, I then had to take a
droshky another twenty versts to the county seat. Arriving in the
morning, I was let down in the middle of the village square. I
looked around to get my bearings, and in no time at all, a crowd
had gathered to stare at me.
The crowd grew larger by the minute; it seemed as if the whole
village had turned out in the square. I could overhear remarks:
"Who is he?"
"Why is he so Black?"
"What nice teeth!"
"Look, his palms are white!"
"He seems sympatichno," remarked some.
Someone else who perhaps had done a little reading said, "Oh,
he's probably from Africa. There the sun is so hot that people who
 THE LENIN SCHOOL 213

have lived there for thousands of years become black." The crowd
seemed to accept this explanation.
I stuck out my hand to a young man standing nearby.
"Zdravstvuyte," I said. "Could you direct me to the town
committee?" He seemed to be surprised that I could speak
Russian, but getting himself together, he directed me to a building
across the square.
"Who are you? Where did you come from?" the young man
asked.
"l'm an American Negro from the United States," I replied.
Someone in the crowd remarked, "I told you he was of the
Negro tribe."
Someone else spoke up, "I thought all people in the United
States were white."
That gave me the chance to get off on my international
propaganda spiel, and Ijumped right in. "Oh no," I replied. "There
are twelve million Blacks in the U.S.-about one-tenth of the
population." I went on to tel1 thern: about Blacks in the South, and
the modern-day remnants of the plantation system: sharecrop­
ping, Jim Crow and lynch terror.
Someone remarked, "Oh. Like it was with us under the old
regime." Many of the villagers nodded their heads in agreement
with this.
Just then I noticed an old woman with a cane, slowly making her
way through the crowd toward where I was. The young people
gave way before her, in deference to her age. When she reached the
center, I watched the changes in expression on her old wrinkled
face as she gazed at me. First it registered amazement at such a
sight; then comprehension when she had "cased" the whole
situation.
Then she spit on the ground and slammed her cane down.
"Idite domoi! Go home!" she told me. "Wash your face! You
should be ashamed ofyourself, trying to fool the people around
here!" Waving her cane at me, she then turned scornfully
away. In all her ninety-odd years, she had never before seen
a Black man!
214 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE

BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION

The first time I met Stalin was at a social gathering, a party in

the Kremlin during the World Congress of the Friends of the
Soviet Union. The congress coincided with the Tenth Anniversary
celebrations in the fall of 1927. The congress sessions were held at
the Dom Soyusov (House of the Trade Unions). It was the greatest
international gathering I had ever witnessed. There were probably
more than one thousand delegates, representing countries from six
continents. The most impressive delegation was the buge one
(about one hundred people) from China which was headed by
Soong Ch'ing-ling, the young and beautiful widow of Sun Yat-sen.
(Today she is vice-chairman of the National People's Congress of
the People's Republic of China.)
t was surprised and delighted to meet my old friend Chi (Dum
Ping), a former Chinese student at the University of Chicago with
whom I had worked in the organization of the ill-fated Interracial
Y outh Forum on the Southside in 1924. He had since gone back to
China and was now one of the translators for the Chinese
delegation. It was Chi who introduced me to Madame Sun Yat­
sen. She spoke English with an American accent, which was not
surprising since she had been educated in the United States.
Among the other notables we were to meet were the young
Cuban revolutionary, Antonio Mella, later murdered in Mexico
City by Machado's assassins. He was a tall, wiry youth, who
always had a guitar slung over his back. There was Henri
Barbusse, a pale, wan man, a victim of tuberculosis. He was a great
literary figure in France and wrote a biography of Stalin. There
was the American novelist Theodore Dreiser, father of American
realism, who was there with his secretary, Ruth Epperson Kennell,
a young American woman.
A special friend of us Black students was Josiah Gumede, the
elderly president of the African National Congress and a descen­
dant of Zulu chiefs.20 We took him in charge. Every morning we
would call for him �t his room at the National Hotel on Tverskaya
 THE LENIN SCHOOL 215

(now Gorky Street) and escort him to the congress sessions. We

also accompanied him on the rounds of parties held by the various
delegations. He must have been about sixty at the time, but was
big, strong and healthy and never seemed to tire.
The gala occasion for the whole congress was the Evening of
National Culture. It consisted of an elaborate pageant of folk
dances from the various Soviet republics and autonornous regions.
The dancers were all in their traditional costumes, a striking array
of color and diversity. On this occasion, our Soviet hosts went all
out for their foreign guests.
The hall in the Dom Soyusov had been coqverted into a buge
banquet room. We were seated before tables loaded with various
kinds of liquor, including of course, the hest vodka and zakuskas;
appetizers of all kinds-cheeses, herrings, caviar, cold sturgeon
and cold rneats. Then carne dinner, from soup to dessert.
The banquet finally ended. Most of us were in somewhat of a
stupor from food and drink. Our group, which included our
teacher Sik, was leaving the hall arnidst the din of a thousand
people talking and laughing. On our way out we stopped and
chatted with nurnerous delegates.
Gumede was the chief attraction; he had given a stirring speech
at a session of the congress a few days before. As I recall, we were
nearing the door when we were stopped and greeted by the old
Cossack cavalryman, Marshall Budenny. He was a short, power­
ful, bow-legged man, with a large ferocious black mustache. He
was also in a rnerry mood.
"Tell the chief," he said, grasping Gumede's band, "that we
stand ready to corne to his support anytime he needs us!"
"Thank you, thank you," beamed Gumede.
At that moment, someone approached us, I believe it was Tival,
Stalin's secretary, and informed us that we were invited to a party
in the Krernlin.
We walked the short distance across the square to the Kremlin.
Once within the Kremlin walls, we were guid ed into one of the old
palaces and then taken upstairs to a small hall. It was a long room
with an arched ceiling reaching alrnost to the floors on the sides. It
iooked to me as though it could have been a throne room of one of
216 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

the old czars.

There were perhaps fifty people in the room. In the center there
was a large table loaded with the traditional zakuskas, fruits and
drinks. It was sort of a buffet; chairs were not directly at the table
but rather were along the walls on each side.
There in the center on one side was Stalin, with a number of
people seated beside him. He rose, shook our bands, and after we
were introduced, welcomed us, "Be our guests." He was a short,
thick-set man, as I remember, dressed in a neat tan suit with a
military collar and boots shined to glisten.
He motioned us to the vacant chairs on the other side of the
room. On that side were a number of folk dancers and musicians,
presumably participants in the earlier festivities. Somebody
introduced Gumede as an African Zulu chief from the congress,
and the dancers probably thought we were all from the same tribe.
Gumede, however, was the center of attention, surrounded by the
dancers, who insisted on being photographed with him.
They gathered around him-a couple sitting on his lap and
others behind him with their arms around him. Stalin, observing
all this from the other side of the room, seemed amused. Later on,
Stalin got up, bid us all good-night and walked out. As I
remember, it was quite a relaxed evening with no political
discussion. We left shortly after Stalin departed and were driven
home by a chauffeur from the Kremlin car pool.
Another version of this occasion was given, I believe by Sik,
who insisted that Otto had danced with Stalin that evening. I don't
doubt Sik's word, but I certainly don't remember seeing it. Otto
didn't remember the incident either. But I do know that in Russia it
was not uncommon for one man to dance with another on festive
occasions. As I recall, the hall became more crowded, and I was
attracted by a group of folk dancers who offered to help us stud­
ents with our Russian.
Afterwards Sik kept reminding Otto, "Don't you remember,
Otto, you asked Stalin to dance, and you danced around the hall
with him several times. That was a memorable occasion; how
could you forget it?"
As for Gumede, he returned home a firm supporter of the Soviet
 THE LENIN SCHOOL 217

Union. Everywhere he went, he gave glowing reports of his visit

there. In January 1928, he told an ANC rally that "I have seen the
new world to come, where it has already begun. I have been to the
new Jerusalem." 21
One day in December, Otto called me and said he had just
gotten a call to pick up a young Black woman, Maude White, who
was to be a student at K UTV A. She was waiting at the station. He
asked me if I'd like to go along and I readily agreed, looking
forward with pleasure to meeting this woman-the first Black
woman since Jane Golden to study in the Soviet Union.
W e rented a droshky and proceeded to the station. It was a cold
winter night, the temperature was somewhere around thirty-five
below zero. When we got there, we saw the young Black woman.
She was about nineteen, standing in the unheated station. She
was a strikingly pretty, brown-skinned woman with buge dark
eyes.
She had on a seal skin coat, silk stockings and pumps, and by the
time we got there she was practically hysterical with the cold. "Get
me out of here. Get me out of here," she shouted. Otto and I looked
at each other, both thinking the same thing-we're going to have a
rough time with this one.
We couldn't have been more wrong. Maude got right into the
swing of things at school. She was a very popular student and
stayed in Moscow for three years. We later learned that she had
been a school teacher before coming to Moscow. On returning to
the States, she became an outstanding Party cadre and a life-long
friend of mine.
 Chapter 8

Self-Determination:
The Fight for a Correct Line
Towards the end of 1927, Nasanov returned to the Soviet Union
after a sojourn in the United States as the representative of the
Young Communist International. I had known him briefly in the
Stdtes before my departure for Russia. Nasanov was one of a
group of YCI workers who had been sent on missions to several
countries. He had considerable experience with respect to the
national and colonial que.stion and was considered an expert on
these matters.
Nasanov's observations had convinced him that U.S. Blacks
were essentially an oppressed nation whose struggle for equality
would ultimately take an autonomous direction and that the
content of the Black liberation movement was the completion of
the agrarian and democratic revolution in the South-a struggle
which was left unresolved by the Civil War and betrayal of
Reconstruction. Therefore, it was the duty of the Party to channel
the movement in a revolutionary direction by raising and support­
ing the slogan of the right of self-determination for Afro­
Americans in the Black Belt, the area of their greatest concen­
tration.
U pon his return, Nasanov sought roe out and it was he, I believe,
who first informed me that I had been elected to the National
Committee of the YCL back in the States. In the months ahead, we
were to become close friends. Through him, I met a number of YCI
people, mostly Soviet comrades who held the same position as
 SELF-DETERMIN ATION 219

Nasanov did on the national question. They seemed to be pushing

to have the matter reviewed at the forthcoming Sixth Congress of
the Comintern. And as it later became clear to me, they were
anxious to recruit at least one Black to support their position.
As I have indicated befare, the position was not entirely new to
me. I was present at the meeting of the YCL District Committee in
Chicago in 1924 when Bob Mazut (then YCI rep to the U.S.), at the
behest of Zinoviev, had raised the question of self-determination
At that time, he had been shouted down by the white comrades.
(See Chapter Four.)
Sen Katayama had told us Black KUTVA students that Lenin
had regarded U.S. Blacks as an oppressed nation and referred us to
his draft resolution on the national and colonial question which
was adopted by the Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920.1
Otto and other Black students had also told me that they got a
similar impression from their meeting with Stalin at the Kremlin
shortly after their arrival in the Soviet Union.
All of this seemed tentative to me. No one had elaborated the
position fully and Nasanov was the first person I met who
attempted to argue it definitively. But all of these arguments, and
especially Nasanov's prodding, set me to thinking and confronted
me with the need to apply concretely my newly-acquired Marxist­
Leninist knowledge on the national-colonial question to the
condition of Blacks in the United States.
To me, the idea of a Black nation within U.S. boundaries
seemed far-fetched and not consonant with American reality. I
saw the solution through the incorporation of Blacks into U.S.
society on the basis of complete equality, and only socialism could
bring this to pass. There was no doubt in my mind that the path to
freedom for us Blacks led directly to socialism, uncluttered by any
interim stage of self-determination or Black political power. The
unity of Black and white workers against the common enemy, U.S.
capitalism, was the motor leading toward the dual goal of Black
freedom and socialism.
I felt that it was difficult enough to build this unity, without
adding to it. the gratuitous assumption of a non-existent Black
nation, with its implication of a separate state on U.S. soil. To do
220 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

so, I felt, was to create new and unnecessary roadblocks to the

already difficult path to Black and white unity.
Socialism, I reasoned, was not in contradiction to the move­
ment for Black cultural identity, expressed in the cultural renais­
sance of the twenties and in Garvey's emphasis on race pride and
history (which I regarded as one of the positive aspects of that
movement). Socialism for U.S. Blacks did not imply loss of
cultural identity any more than it did for the Jews of the Soviet
Union, among whom I had witnessed the proliferation of the posi­
tive features of Jewish culture-theater, literature and language.
The Jews were not considered a nation because they were not
concentrated in any definite territory; they were regarded as a
national minority and Birobidzhan was set aside as a Jewish
autonomous province. Such a bolstering of self-respect, dignity
and self-assertion on the part of a formerly oppressed minority
people was a necessary stage in the development of a universal
culture which would amalgamate the hest features of all national
groups. This was definitely the policy of the Soviet Union with
regard to formerly oppressed nationalities and ethnic groups.
Like the Jews, I reasoned, the position of U.S. Blacks was
that of an oppressed race, though at the time I am sure I would
have been hard-pressed to define precisely what was meant by that
phrase. The main factor in the oppression of Jews under the Czar
had been the religious factor; the main factor with U.S. Blacks was
race. Blacks lacked some of the essential attributes of a nation
which had been defined by Stalin in his classic work, Marxism and
the National Question. 2
Most assuredly, one could argue that among Blacks there
existed elements of a special culture and also a common language
(English). But this did not add up to a nation, I reasoned. Missing
was the all-important aspect of a national territory. Even if one
agreed that the Black Belt, where Blacks were largely concen­
trated, rightfully belonged to them, thcy were in no geographic
position to assert their right of self-determination.
I could see many analogies between the national problem in the
old Czarist Empire and the problem of U .S. Blacks, but the
analogy floundered on this question of territory. For the subject
 SELF-DETERMINA TION 221

nations of the old Czarist Empire were situated either on the

border of the oppressing Great Russian nation or were completely
outside it. But American Blacks were set down in the very midst of
the oppressing white nation, the strongest capitalist power on
earth. Faced with this, it was no wonder that most nationalist
movements up until then had taken the road of a separate state
outside the United States. How then could one convince U.S.
Blacks that the right of self-determination was a realistic program?
N asanov and his young friends answered my arguments over the
course of a series of discussions and were quick to pick out the
flaws in my position. They contended that I was guilty of an
ahistoric approach with respect to the elements of nationhood.
Certainly, some of the attributes of a nation were weakly
developed in the case of U.S. Blacks. But that was the case with
most oppressed peoples precisely because the imperialist policy of
national oppression is directed towards artificially and forcibly
retaining the economic and cultural backwardness of the colonial
peoples as a condition for their super-exploitation. My mistake
had been to ignore Lenin's dictum that in the epoch of imperialism
it was essential to differentiate between the oppressor and the
oppressed nations.
They further contended that I had presented the matter as
though self-determination were solely a question for Blacks. I had
therefore separated the Black rebellion from the struggle for
socialism in the United States. In faet, it was a constituent part of
the latter struggle or, more precisely, a special phase of the struggle
of the American working class for socialism.
My argument added up to a defense of the current position of
the U.S. Party, albeit I had embellished the position somewhat
against Nasanov's criticisms. Up to this point, tl;le Black students
had not challenged the Party's line on Afro-American work. We
reasoned that the Party's default in the work among Blacks was
not the result of an incorrect line, but came from a failure to carry
out in practice its declared line. We believed that this failure was
due to an underestimation of the importance of work among
Blacks, which came from an underestimation of the revolutionary
potential of the struggle of the Black masses for equality. All this
222 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

resulted from the persistence of remnants of white racist ideology

within the ranks of the Party, including some of its leader­
ship.
N asanov and some of his friends agreed with us that the
American CP did underestimate the revolutionary potential of the
Black struggle for equality. But, they maintained, this under­
estimation came from a fundamentally incorrect social-demo­
cratic line, rather than from white chauvinism. They said that I had
stood the whole matter on its head: I had presented the incorrect
policies as the result of subjective white chauvinist attitudes;
whereas, they pointed out that the white chauvinist attitudes
persisted precisely because the Party's line was fundamentally
incorrect in that it denied the national character of the question.
"Our American comrades seem to think that only the direct
struggle for socialism is revolutionary," they told me, "and that the
national movement detracts from that struggle and is therefore
reactionary." This, they pointed out, was an American version of
the "pure proletarian revolution" concept; they referred me to
Lenin's polemic against Radek on the question of self-deter­
mination.
The Bolsheviks also criticized my formulation of the matter as
primarily a race question. To call the matter a race question, they
said, was to fall into the bourgeois liberal trap of regarding the
fight for equality as primarily a fight against racial prejudices of
whites. This slurred over the economic and social roots of the
question and obscured the question of the agrarian democratic
revolution in the South, which was pivotal to the struggle for Black
equality throughout the country. They pointed out that it was
wrong to counterpose the struggle for equality to the struggle for
self-determination. For in faet, in the South, self-determination
for Blacks (political power iri their own hands) was the guarantee
of equality.

HISTORY OF THE QUESTION IN THE COMINTERN

In these discussions with my young friends, which extended
over the course of several months, I became keenly aware of the
 SELF-DETERMIN ATION 223

gaps in my understanding of Marxist-Leninist theory on the

national-colonial question. I was to find, as Nasanov and others
had indicated, that the idea of Blacks as an oppressed nation was
not new in the Comintern. Though Stalin was undoubtedly the
person pushing the position at the time, it had not originated with
him, but with Lenin himself.
It first appeared in Lenin's "Draft Theses on the National­
Colonial Question" which he submitted to the Second Congress of
the Comintern in 1920. The draft, which was later adopted, called
upon the communist parties to "render direct aid to the revolu­
tionary movements among the dependent and underprivileged
nations (for example, Ireland, the American Negroes, etc.) and
in the colonies."3
Same have argued that Lenin's reference to U.S. Blacks as a
subject nation was merely a tentative deduction. When he
submitted his draft, he asked the delegates for opinions and
suggestions on fifteen points, one of which was "Negroes in
America. "4
It was recorded, however, that the Colonial Commission of the
congress, which Lenin himself headed and in which Sen Kata­
yama was a leading member, held lengthy discussions on the
question of U.S. Blacks. 5
John Reed, the American author, was a delegate and partici­
pated in the discussion, apparently in opposition to Lenin's
formulations. In faet, he made two speeches, one in the commis­
sion and one to the congress, contending that the problem of U.S.
Blacks was that of "both a strong race mavement and a strong
proletarian workers' mavement which is rapidly developing in
class consciousness." 6 Equating all national movements among
Blacks to Garvey's Back to Africa separatism, he contended that
"a mavement which struggles for a separate national existence has
no success among the Negroes, like the 'Back to Africa' mavement,
for example....." and that Blacks "consider themselves above all
Americans, they feel at home in the United States. This makes the
tasks of communists very much easier." 7
But despite Reed's objections, the reference to American Blacks
as an oppressed nation remained in the resolution as finally
224 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

adopted. For Lenin's thesis was not something spun out of thin air,
but was the result of a serious study of the question. This is clear
from his work "New Data on the Laws Governing the Develop­
ment of Capitalism in Agriculture," which spoke about the United
States.
In this work, published in 1915 (and based on the U.S. Census of
1910), Lenin viewed the question of Blacks in the South as one of
an uncompleted agrarian and bourgeois democratic revolution.
He drew attention to the remarkable similarity between the
economic positions of the South's Black tenants and the emanci­
pated serfs in the agrarian centers of Russia, pointing out that both
groups were not tenants in the European civilized sense, but
".... semi-slaves, share-croppers... " 8
Emphasizing the absence of elementary democratic rights
among Blacks, he alluded to the South as "the most stagnant
art:�, where the masses are subjected to the greatest degradation and
oppression...a kind of prison where (these 'emancipated' Negroes)
are hemmed in, isolated, and deprived of fresh air." 9 These kinds of
conditions, the lot of the vast majority of U.S. Blacks, undoubt­
edly led Lenin to conclude that their movement for "emanci­
pation" would take a national revolutionary direction.
Conclusive proof of Lenin's thinking at the time with respect to
U.S. Blacks can be found in an uncompleted work written in 1917,
though not available until 1935. The ·work, "Statistics and
Sociology," was begun in the early part of 1917, but was
interrupted by the February Revolution and never resumed. 10
In the section of the manuscript referring to U.S. Blacks, he
drew a clear distinction between their positions and that of the
foreign-born immigrants, that is between the white foreign-born
assimilables and the Black unassimilables.

In the United States, the Negroes (and also the Mulattos.and

Indians) account for only I I.I per cent. They should be
classed as an oppressed nation, for the equality won in the
Civil War of 1861-1865 and guaranteed by the Constitution of
the republic was in many respects increasingly curtailed in the
chief Negro areas (the South) in connection with the transi­
tion from the progressive, pre-monopoly capitalism of 1860-
 SELF-DETERMINATION 225

1870 to the reactionary, monopoly capitalism (imperialism)

of the new era."IJ
Whereas with the white foreign-born immigrants, Lenin observed
that the speed of development of capitalism in America has
"produced a situation in which vast national differences are
speedily and fundamentally, as nowhere else in the world,
smoothed out to form a single 'American nation.' " 12
All of this shows that the idea that U.S. Blacks comprise an
oppressed nation was neither a temporary nor tentative formula­
tion on Lenin's part.
Despite the thesis of the Second Congress, Reed's views­
reflecting as they did the position of the young American Party­
were to persist in the U.S. without serious challenge through the
Fifth Congress of the Comintern. The Third Congress of 1921
recorded no discussion with respect to the character of the
problem.
The Fourth Congress in 1922 also did not seriously discuss the
point. This meeting, however, marked the first appearance of
Black delegates to the Comintern. They were Otto Huiswood as
regular Party delegate, and the poet Claude McKay as a special
fraternal delegate. It was also the first congress to set up a Negro
Commission, and extended discussions took place on the thesis
brought in by the commission which characterized the position of
U.S. Blacks as an aspect of the colonial question. It stressed the
special role of American Blacks in support of the liberation
struggles of Africa, Central and South America and the Carib­
bean.
The thesis of the Fourth Congress did add a new, international
dimension to the question, but it did not challenge the Party's basic
anti-self-determination position. This position was stressed in a
speech by Huiswood (Billings) which called the Afro-American
question "another phase of the racial and colonial question," an
essentially economic problem which was "intensified by the
friction which exists between the white and black races." 13
The discussion of the character of the question came up in the
Fifth Congress in 1924, this time in connection with the Draft
Program of the Communist International. For the first time since
226 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

the Second Congress, the discussion centered directly on the

character of the question as an oppressed nation and the
appropriateness of the slogan of the right of self-determination.
August Thalheimer (the German head of the Commission on
the Draft Program) reported that "the slogan of the right of
self-determination cannot solve all national questions." Such is the
case in the United States, "where there is an extraordinarily
mixed population" and where the "race question" is also involved.
Therefore, he pointed out, "the Program Commission was of the
opinion that the slogan of right of self-determination must be
supplemented by another slogan: 'Equal Rights for all National­
ities and Races.' "14
Representing the U.S. at the Fifth Congress, John Pepper
supported this anti-self-determination position. According to him,
the United States was a co'untry in which the different nationalities
col_¾ld not be separated. Self-determination was not appropriate;
Blacks in the U.S. did not want it. "They do not want to set up a
separate state inside the U.S.A.," and they wish to remain inside
the U.S., not leave it for Africa. To the demand of "social
equality," he held that "we should change these words to the
following: full equality in every respect." 15
Lovett Fort-Whiteman, the sole Black delegate, apparently
supported Pepper's position and gave his standard speech (which I
was to hear a number of times in the States). He stressed the racial
aspect of the problem and called for a special communist approach
to Blacks.
There appeared to be no opposition to the draft program, but,
after all, it was only the first version. The program in its final form
was to be discussed and adopted at the Sixth Congress. Apparent­
ly Zinoviev and others in the Cl leadership were not satisfied with
the formulation that had rejected self-determination for U.S.
Blacks. Zinoviev had instructed Bob Mazut to investigate the
question while on his assignment to the U.S., immediately
following the congress.
Such was the situation following the Fifth Congress. The
question can be raised as to why the U.S. Party's position was not
seriously challenged during this whole period and why the
 SELF-DETERMIN ATION 227

proponents in the Comintern of the self-determination thesis

failed to press for their position.
Their reluctance in this regard, I presurne, was because they did
not want to push their position against the unanimous opposition
of the American Party, including its Black members. After all, the
Comintern was a voluntary union of communist parties which
operated under democratic-centralism. It was not the policy of the
Comintern leadership to arbitrarily force positions on member
parties.

1928: A REEXAMINATION OF THE QUESTION

H ow are we to account then for the renewed interest in the

Afro-American question among certain influential leaders of the
Comintern on the eve of the Sixth Congress? Why the drive to re­
open the question? The answer lies in the changed world situation:
the sharpened crisis of the world capitalist system, consequent on
the breakdown of partial capitalist stabilization; the beginning of a
deepening economic depression in Europe; and the continued
upsurge of the colonial revolutions in China, India and Indonesia.
These harbingers of the new period were pointed out by Stalin at
the Fifteenth Congress of the CPSU in early December 1927, in
which he referred to the "collapsing stabilization" of capitalism. 16
It was to be a period of revolutionary struggle. In order to lead
these struggles, an attack on right opportunism was required in the
practice and work of the communist parties. It was a period in
which the national and colonial question was to acquire a new
urgency. The Cl paid special attention to the fight against those
views which liquidated or downplayed the importance of the
question. In this context, the Comintern felt that the establishment
of a revolutionary line on the Afro-American question was key if
the CPUSA was to lead the joint struggle of the Black and white
working masses in the coming period.
The low status of the CP's Negro work itself was another factor
pressing fora radical policy review. There had been no progress in
228 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

this work, despite the prodding of the Comintern. As already

mentioned, the highly touted American Negro Labor Congress
had failed to even get off the ground.
In a speech at the Sixth Congress, James Ford counted nineteen
communications from the Comintern to the U.S. Party on Negro
work, none of which had been put into effect or brought
befare the Party. He further observed that "we have no more
than 50 Negroes in our Party, out of the 12 million Negroes
in America." 17
All of these factors strengthened the determination of the
Comintern to make the Sixth Congress the arena for a drastic re­
evaluation of work and policy in this area.
In the winter of I 928, preparations were already afoot for the
Sixth Congress which was to convene the following summer. The
Anglo-American Secretariat of the Cl set up a special sub­
committeee on the Negro question which would prepare a draft
resi'>lution for the official Negro Commission of the Congress.
As I recall, the subcommittee consisted of Nasanov and five
students: four Blacks (including my brother Otto and myself) and
one white student, Clarence Hathaway, from the Lenin School. In
addition, there were some ex-officio members: Profintern rep Bill
Dunne and Comintern rep Bob Minor. They seldom attended our
sessions. James Ford, who was then assigned to the Profintern,
also attended some sessions.
Our subcommittee met and broke the subject down into topics;
each of us accepted one as his assignment to research and report on
to the committee as a whole. The high point in the discussion was
the report of my brother Otto on Garvey's Back to Africa
movement. In his report, he concluded that the nationalism
expressed in that movement had no objective base in the
economic, social and political conditions of U.S. Blacks. It was, he
asserted, a foreign importation artif.icially grafted onto the
freedom movement of U.S. Blacks by the West Indian nationalist,
Garvey.
U.S. Blacks, Otto concluded, were not an oppressed nation but
an oppressed racial minority. The long-range goal of the move­
ment was not the right of self-determination but complete
 SELF-DETERMIN ATION 229

economic, social and political equality to be won through a

revolutionary alliance of Blacks and class-conscious white labor in
a joint struggle for socialism against the common enemy, U.S.
capitalism.
Up to that point, I was still not certain as regarded the
applicability of the right of self-determination to the problems of
Blacks in the U.S., but my misgivings about the slogan had been
shaken somewhat by the series of discussions I had had with my
Russian friends. Otto, in his report, had merely restated the CP's
current position. But somehow, against the background of our
discussion of the Garvey movement, the inadequacy of that
position stood out like a sore thumb. Otto, however, had done
more than simply restate the position; he brought out into the open
what had been implicit in the Party's position all along. That is,
that any type of nationalism among Blacks was reactionary.
This view, it occurred to me, was the logical outcome of any
position which saw only the "pure proletarian" class struggle as the
sole revolutionary struggle against capitalism. The Party had
traditionally considered the Afto-American question as that of a
persecuted racial minority. They centered their activity almost
exclusively on Blacks as workers and treated the question as
basically a simple trade union matter, underrating other aspects of
the struggle. The struggle for equal rights was seen as a diversion
that would obscure or overshadow the struggle for socialism.
But how could one wage a fight against white chauvinism from
that position? I thought at the time that viewing everything in light
of the trade union quest�on would lead to a denial of the
revolutionary potential of the struggle of the whole people for
equality. Otto's rejection of nationalism as an indigenous trend
brought these points out sharply in my mind.
, In the discussion, I pointed out that Otto's position was not
merely a rejection of Garveyism but also a denial of nationalism as
a legitimate trend in the Black freedom movement I felt that it
amounted to throwing out the baby with the bathwater. With my
insight sharpened by previous discussions, I argued further that
the nationalism reflected in the Garvey movement was not a
foreign transplant, nor did it spring full-blown from the brow of
230 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Jove. On the contrary, it was an indigenous produet, arising from

the soil of Black super-exploitation and oppression in the United
States. It expressed the yearnings of millions of Blacks for a nation
of their own.
As I pursued this logic, a totally new thought occurred to me,
and for me it was the clincher. The Garvey movement is dead, I
reasoned, but not Black nationalism. Nationalism, which Garvey
diverted under the slogan of Back to Africa, was an authentic
trend, likely to flare up again in periods of crisis and stress. Such a
movement might again fall under the leadership of utopian
visionaries who would seek to divert it from the struggle against
the main enemy, U.S. imperialism, and on to a reactionary
separatist path. The only way such a diversion of the struggle could
be forestalled was by presenting a revolutionary alternative to
Blacks.
To the slogan of "Back to Africa," I argued, we must counter­
pose the slogan of "right of self-determination here in the Deep
South." Our slogan for the U.S. Black rebellion therefore must be
the "right of self-determination in the South, with full equality
throughout the country," to be won through revolutionary
alliance with politically conscious white workers against the
common enemy-U.S. imperialism.
Nasanov was seated across the tabte from me during this
discussion and, elated at my presentation, he demonstratively rose
to shake my hand. I was the first American communist (with
perhaps the exception of Briggs) to support the thesis that U.S.
Blacks constituted an oppressed nation.
The next day, Nasanov and I submitted a resolution to the
subcommittee incorporating our views. We couldn't get a majority
but we had Hathaway's support, as I remember. It was agreed that
the resolution be submitted to the Anglo-American Secretariat as
the views of those who subscribed to it, and those who disagreed
with it would present their own views.
The only really persistent opposition in the subcommittee, as I
remember, came from Otto; the other students were somewhat
ambivalent on the question. I attributed much of this to Sik's
influence, since he had already begun to develop his position which
 SELF-DETERMINATION 231

held that the question af U .S. Blacks was a "race" question and
that Blacks should not demand self-determination, but simply full
social and political equality. His theories were later used by the
Lovestoneites and others who opposed the self-determination
position.
Once my hesitations were overcome, the whole theory fell
logically into place. Here is the full analysis as I came to
understand it. The thesis that called for the right of self­
determination is supported by a serious economic-historical
analysis of U.S. Blacks.
The evolution of American Blacks as an oppressed nation was
begun in slavery. In the final analysis, however, it was the result of
the unfinished bourgeois democratic revolution of the Civil War
and the betrayal of Reconstruction through the Hayes-Tilden
(Gentlemen's) Agreement of 1877.
This betrayal was followed by withdrawal of federal troops
and the unleashing of counter-revolutionary terror, including the
massacre of thousands of Blacks and the overthrow of the
Reconstruction governments which had been based on an alliance
of Blacks, poor whites and carpetbaggers. The result was that the
Black freedmen, deserted by their former Republican allies, were
left without land. Their newly-won rights were destroyed with the
abrogation of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amend­
ments, and they were thrust back upon the plantations of their
former masters in a position but little removed from chattel
bondage.
The revolution had stopped short of a solution to the crucial
land question; there was neither confiscation of the big plantations
of the former slaveholding class, nor distribution of the land
among the Negro freedmen and poor whites. It was around this
issue of land for the freedmen that the revolutionary democratic
wave of Radical Reconstruction beat in vain and finally broke.
The advent of imperialism, the epoch of trusts and monopolies
at the turn of the century, froze the Blacks in their post­
Reconstruction position: landless, semi-slaves in the South. It
blocked the road to fusion of Blacks and whites into one nation on
the basis of equality and put the final seal on the special oppression
232 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

of Blacks. The path towards equality and freedom via assimilation

was foreclosed by these events, and the struggle for Black equality
thenceforth was ultimately bound to take a national revolutionary
direction.
Under conditions of imperialist and racist oppression, Blacks in
the South were to acquire all the attributes of a subject nation.
They are a people set apart by a common ethnic origin, economi­
cally interrelated in various classes, united by a common historical
experience, reflected in a special culture and psychological
makeup. The territory of this subject nation is the Black Belt, an
area encompassing the Deep South, which, despite massive
outmigrations, still contained (and does to this day) the country's
largest concentration of Blacks.
Thus, imperialist oppression created the conditions for the
eventual rise of a national liberation movement with its base in the
S0uth. The content of this movement would be the completion of
the agrarian democratic revolution in the South; that is, the right
of self-determination as the guarantee of complete equality
throughout the country.
This new analysis defined the status of Blacks in the north as an
unassimilable national minority who cannot escape oppression by
fleeing the South. The shadow of the plantation falls upon them
throughout the country, as the semi-slave relations in the Black
Belt continually reproduce Black inequality and servitude in all
walks of life.
There are certain singular features of the submerged Afro­
American nation which differentiate it from other oppressed
nations and which have made the road towards national con­
sciousness and identity difficult and arduous. Afro-Americans are
not only "a nation within a nation," but a captive nation, suffering
a colonial-type oppression while trapped within the geographic
bounds of one of the world's most powerful imperialist countries.
Blacks were forced into the stream of U .S. history in a peculiar
manner, as chattel slaves, and are victims of an excruciatingly
destructive system of oppression and persecution, due not only to
the economic and social survivals of slavery, but also to its
ideological heritage, racism.
 SELF-DETERMINATION 233

The Afro-American nation is also unique in that it is a new

nation evolved from a people forcibly transplanted from their
original African homeland. A people comprised of various tribal
and linguistic groups, they are a produet not of their native
African soil, but of the conditions of their transplantation.
The overwhelming, stifling factor of race, the doctrine of
inherent Black inferiority perpetuated by ruling class ideologues,
has sunk deep into the thinking of Americans. It has become
endemic, permeating the entire structure of U.S. life. Given this,
Blacks could only remain permanently unabsorbed in the new
world's "melting pot."
The race factor has also left its stigma on the consciousness of
the Black nation, creating a powerful mystification about Black
Americans which has served to obscure their objective status as an
oppressed nation. It has twisted the direction of the Afro­
American liberation movement and scarred it while still in its
embryonic state.
Although the objective base for equality and freedom via direct
integration was foreclosed by the defeat of Reconstruction and the
advent of the U.S. as an imperialist power, bourgeois assimila­
tionist illusions were continued into the new era. They were
nurtured and kept alive by the nascent Black middle class and the
liberal detachment of the white bourgeoisie.
Conditions, however, were maturing for the rise of a mass
nationalist movement. This movement was to burst with explosive
force upon the political scene in the period following World War I,
with the rise of the Garvey movement. The potentially revolu­
tionary movement of Black toilers was diverted into utopian
reactionary channels of a peaceful return to Africa.
The period of bourgeois democratic revolutions in the United
States ended with the defeat of democratic Reconstruction. The
issue ·of Black freedom was carried over into the epoch of
imperia-lism. lts full solution postponed to the next stage of human
progress, socialism. The question has remained and become the
most vulnerable area on the domestic front of U.S. capitalism, its
"Achilles heel"-a major focus of the contradictions in U.S.
society.
234 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Blacks, therefore, in the struggle for national liberation and the

entire working class in its struggle for socialism are natura! allies.
The forging of this alliance is enhanced by the presence of a
growing Black industrial working class with direct and historical
connections with white labor.
This new line established that the Black freedom struggle is a
revolutionary movement in its own right, directed against the very
foundations of U.S. imperialism, with its own dynamic pace and
momentum, resulting from the unfinished democratic and land
revolutions in the South. It places the Black liberation movement
and the class struggle of U .S. workers in their proper relationship
as two aspects of the fight against the common enemy-U.S.
capitalism. It elevates the Black movement to a position of
equality in that battle.
The new theory destroys forever the white racist theory
trattitional among class-conscious white workers which had
relegated the struggle of Blacks to a subsidiary position in the
revolutionary movement. Race is defined as a device of national
oppression, a smokescreen thrown up by the class enemy, to hide
the underlying economic and social conditions involved in Black
oppression and to maintain the division of the working class.
The new theory was to sensitize the Party to the revolutionary
significance of the Black liberation struggle. During the crisis of
the thirties, a significant segment of radicalized white workers
would come to see the Blacks as revolutionary allies.
The struggle for this position had now begun; there remained its
adoption by the Comintern and its final acceptance by the U.s·.
Party. Our draft resolution, which summed up these points, was
turned over to Petrovsky (Bennett), Chairman of the Anglo­
American Secretariat. He seemed quite pleased with it, expressed
his agreement and suggested some minor changes. He agreed to
submit it to the Negro Commission at the forthcoming Sixth
Congress.
I continued to work with N asanov on preparations for the
congress. By that time, we had become quite a team. Our next
project was the South African question, a question which also fell
under the jurisdiction of the Anglo-American Secretariat.
 SELF-DETERMINA TION 235

We were assigned to work with Jarnes La Guma, a South

African Colored comrade who had come to Moscow to attend the
Tenth Anniversary celebrations and stayed on to discuss with the
ECCI and the Anglo-American Secretariat the problems of the
South African Party. Specifically, we were to draft a new
resolution on the question, restating and elaborating the Comin­
tern line of an independent Native S.outh African Republic. (The
word "Native" was in common usage at the time of the Sixth
Congress, though today it is considered derogatory and has been
replaced with Black republic or Azania.)

SOUTH AFRICA

This line, formulated the year before with the cooperation ofLa
Guma during his first visit to the Soviet Union in the spring of
1927, had been rejected by the leadership of the South African
Party.
La Guma, as I recall, was a young brown-skinned man of
Malagasy and French parentage. In South Africa, this placed him
in the Colored category, a rung above the Natives on the racial
ladder established by the white supremacist rulers. Colored
persons were defined as those of mixed blood, including descen­
dants of Javanese slaves, mixed in varying degrees with European
whites.
La Guma, however, identified completely with the Natives and
their movement. He had been general secretary of the ICU
(Industrial and Commercial Union, the federation of Native trade
unions) and also secretary of the Capetown branch of the ANC.
Later, after his expulsion from the ICU by the red-baiting clique of
Clements Kadalie (a Native social democrat), La Guma became
secretary of the non-European trade union federation in Cape­
town.
La Guma was the first South African communist I had ever met.
I was delighted and impressed with him and was to find, in the
course of our brief collaboration, striking parallels between the
struggles of U.S. Blacks for equality and those of the Native South
236 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Africans. In both countries, the white leadership of their respective

parties underestimated the revolutionary potential of the Black
movement.
La Guma had made his first trip to Moscow the year before. He
and Josiah Gumede, president of the ANC, had come as delegates
to the inaugural conference of the League Against lmperialism
which had convened in Brussels, Belgium, in February 1927.
Gumede attended as a delegate from the ANC, while La Guma was
a delegate from the South African Communist Party. It was
La Guma's first international gathering, and he had the oppor­
tunity to meet with leaders from colonial and semi-colonial
countries and discuss the South African question with them.
Madame Sun Yat-sen and Pandit Nehru were among those
present. The conference adopted the resolutions of the South
African delegates on the right of self-determination through the
complete overthrow of imperialism. The general resolutions of the
congress proclaimed: "Africa for the Africans, and their full
freedom and equality with other races and the right to govern
Africa." 18
After Brussels, La Guma went on a speaking tour to Germany,
after which he came to Moscow. Although the Brussels conference
had called for the right of self-determination, it left unanswered
many specific questions that are raised by that slogan. Were the
Natives in South Africa a nation? What was to be done with the
whites?
La Guma was to find the answer to these questions in Moscow,
where he consulted with ECCI leaders, including Bukharin, who
was then president of the Comintern. He participated with ECCI
leaders in the formulation of a resolution on the South African
question, calling for the return of the land to the natives and for
"an independent native South African republic as a stage towards
a workers' and peasants' republic with full, equal rights for
all races." 19
La Guma returned to South Africa with the resolution in June
1927; Gumede also arrived home in the same month. But the
resolution was received hostilely by Bunting and was rejected by
the South African Party leadership at its annua) conference in
 SELF-DETERMINA TION 237

December 1927.
Bunting was a British lawyer who had come to South Africa
some years befare. An early South African socialist and a founder
of the Communist Party, he was the son of a British peer. As
Bunting later commented, he nearly used up the small fortune he
had inherited in the support of Party work and publications.
Bunting and his followers insisted that the South African
revolution, unlike those in the colonies, was a direct struggle for
socialism without any intermediary stages. To the Comintern
slogan of a "Native South African Republic," Bunting counter­
posed the slogan of a "Warkers' and Peasants' Republic." This
concept of "pure proletarian revolution" was an echo of what we
had found in the U.S. Party with respect to Blacks. But here, the
error stood out grotesquely given the reality of the South African
situation with its overwhelming Native majority.
It was against this background that La Guma and Gumede left
to go to Moscow to attend the Tenth Anniversary celebrations,
and the Congress of the Friends of the Soviet Union. La Guma
apparently was not in Moscow on that occasion; he was probably
out on a tour of the provinces. Both he and Gumede travelled
widely during their visit to the Soviet Union.
Our purpose at this time was to develop and clarify the line laid
down in the resolution formulated the previous year. Our draft,
with few changes, was adopted by the Sixth Congress of the
Comintern and the ECCI.
As already noted, Bunting had put forward the slogan of a
South African "Workers' and Peasants' Government." Bunting's
formulation denied the colonial character of South Africa. He
failed, therefore, to see the inherent revolutionary nature of the
Natives' struggle for emancipation.
As opposed to this, our resolution began with a definition of
South Africa as "a British dominion of the colonial type" whose
colonial features included:
1. The country was exploited by British imperialism, with
the participation of the South African white bourgeoisie (British
and Boer), with British capital occupying the principal economic
position.
238 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

2. The overwhelming majority of the population were Natives

and Colored (five million Natives and Colored, with one and a half
million whites, according to the 1921 Census).
3. Natives, who held only one-eighth of the land, were almost
completely landJess, the great bulk of their land having been
expropriated by the white minority.
4. The "great difference in wages and material conditions of the
white and black proletariat," and the widespread corruption of the
white workers by the racist propaganda and ideology of the
imperialists. 20
These features, we held, determined the character of the South
African revolution which, in its first stage, would be a struggle of
Natives and non-European peoples for independence and land. As
the previous resolution had done, our draft (in the form adopted
by the Sixth Congress and the ECCI) held that as a result of these
co.nditions, in order to lead and influence that movement,
communists-black and white-must put forth and fight for the
general political slogan of "an independent Native South African
Republic as a stage towards a workers' and peasants' republic,
with full, equal rights for all races, black, coloured and white."
"South Africa is a black country," the resolution went on to say,
with a mainly black peasant population, whose land had been
expropriated by the white colonizers. Therefore, the agrarian
question lies at the foundation of the revolution. The black
peasantry, in alliance with and under the leadership of the working
class, is the main driving force. Thus, along with the slogan of a
"Native Republic," the Party must place the slogan "return_of tne
land to the Natives."
This latter formulation does not appear in the resolution as
finally adopted. Instead, it includes the foliowing two formula­
tions:
1. Whites must accept the "correct principle that South Africa
belongs to the native population."
2. "The basic question in the agrarian situation in South Africa
is the land hunger of the blacks and . . . their interest is of prior
importance in the solution of the agrarian question." 21
With the new resolution completed, La Guma retumed to South
 SELF-DETERMINA TION 239

Africa. In the year since the first resolution, the opposition to the
line had intensified and had already come to a head at the
December Party Congress-even before La Guma's return.
Bunting put forward his position in a fourteen page document in
the early part of 1928. He equated the nationalism of the Boer
minority to the nationalism of the Natives and justified his
opposition to nationalism on the basis that all national movements
were subject to capitalist corruption, and, in the case of South
Africa, a national movement among Natives "would probably
only accelerate the fusion, in opposition to it, of the Dutch and
British imperialists." 22 Since it would thus only consolidate the
forces against it, it was not to be supported.
Bunting not only underrated nationalism, he played on the
whites' fear of it and raised the specter of blacks being given free
reign, with a resulting campaign to drive the whites into the sea. He
was echoing the specter that was haunting whites who remembered
the song of the Xhosas:
To chase the white men from the earth
And drive them to the sea.
The sea that cast them up at first
For Arna Xhosa's curse and bane
Howls for the progeny she nursed
To swallow them again.23
According to Bunting, the elimination of whites seemed to be
implied in the slogan of a "Native Republic." He regarded the
phrase "safeguards for minorities " as having little meaning, since
whites would assume that the existing injustices would be reversed;
that, in effect, blacks would do to them what they had been
handing out for so long.
While Bunting had held that all nationalism was reactionary, La
Guma distinguished between the revolutionary nationalism of the
Natives and the "nationalism" of the Boers (which in reality was
simply a quarrel between sections of the ruling class). He argued
that the communists must not hold back on the revolutionary
demands of the Natives in order to pacify the white workers who
are still "sattirated with an imperialist ideology" and conscious of
240 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

the privileges they enjoy at the Natives' expense. 24

Bunting held that the road to socialism would be traveled under
white leadership; to La Guma, the securing of black rights was
the first step to be taken. As the Simonses described it, "First
establish African majority rule, he argued, and unity, leading to
socialism, would follow." La Guma called on communists to
"build up a mass party based upon the non-European masses," put
forward the slogan of a Native Republic and thus destroy the
traditional subservience to whites among Africans. 25 This argu­
ment continued up through the Sixth Congress.

MY STAY IN THE CAUCASUS

In the middle of April 1928, I left Moscow for a stay in the

Ca.ucasus. The winter had been one of those long, cold, dark
Moscow winters. Snow was still on the ground in April. Over the
whole season, I had been plagued by recurrent seizures of grippe.
Between the demands of school and the preparations for the Sixth
Congress, it had been a winter of intense activity. Undoubtedly,
this had contributed to my inability to shake off the illness. By the
spring, I was pretty run down.
The school doctor detected a slight anemia and recommended a
month in a rest home. So, I was shipped off to Kislovodsk, a
famous health resort in the northern Caucasus. I traveled south
and east, across the Ukrainian steppe, where spring had already
come to Rostov-on-Don, the administrative center for the north.­
ern Caucasus region. Then on to Mineralny Vody (Mineral
Water), the gateway to the Caucasus and a major railroad
junction. I changed there for Kislovodsk, a short distance further
towards the mountains.
Stepping off the train in Kislovodsk in early morning, I felt
betler at my first breath of fresh mountain air. The city was located
in the foothills on the northern range of the Caucasus. I ts mineral
springs were famed for their medicinal properties, especially for
coronary patients. Formerly a famous watering-place for the
wealthy, it was now enjoyed by all the Soviet people. Kislovodsk
 SELF-DETERMINA TION 241

was the source of the famous N arzan water which cost forty or fifty
kopeks a bottle in Moscow. Here it bubbled from the ground in
numerous springs, and you could drink all you wanted.
Checking in at the sanitarium, I was assigned to a room shared
by three others-two workers and a Party functionary from Tbilisi
named Kolya Tsereteli. Kolya was a tall, handsome, swarthy
young man. He cut quite a figure in his long Georgian robochka,
soft leather boots, high astrakhan cap and ornamental belt,
complete with kinjal ( dagger). He immediately took me in charge
and became my constant companion during my stay there.
After I had been examined by a doctor who prescribed daily
baths, Kolya took me around on a sightseeing tour. The sun was
coming up over the parks, cypress trees and places for open air
concerts.
After several weeks, I felt much better and was soon chafing at
the bit, bored with the regimen and eager to return to Moscow. At
this point Kolya suggested that we might try to arrange my
accompanying him to his home in Tbilisi (hot springs) and stay for
a week before returning to Moscow. I was delighted and had no
difficulty in getting both my release from the sanitarium and
permission from the school to make the trip.
Tbilisi-the Florence of the Caucasus-was a beautiful modem
city, stretching for miles along both sides of the Kura River. It had
spacious avenues lined by stately cypress trees; handsome build­
ings and apartments; a magnificent cathedra}, its great central
dorne flanked by four cupolas, framed against a background of the
mountains of the mighty Caucasus chain, with Mount David
rising 2,500 feet above the city.
It was a mixed population of mainly Georgians, Armenians,
Jews and some Turko-Tartars. Kolya explained that there actually
were more Armenians than Georgians living there in the capital of
Georgia! He went on to tel1 me that in the Caucasus, ethnic groups
often overlapped their national boundaries as finally constituted.
This was particularly so in the case of the Armenians, who were the
victims of genocidal persecution and dispersal by Turkey. As a
result, there were more Armenians in Azerbaidzhan and Georgia
than in the Armenian Republic itself.
242 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

In the old days, Georgian nationalism was directed more against

the Armenians than against the Russians. The Armenians had a
larger merchant class. They dominated commerce and were an
obstacle to the growth of the weak Georgian bourgeoisie who
retaliated by whipping up national animosity against the Armen­
ians. Hence, national hatred was aften directed against rival
national groups rather than against the dominant Czarist power,
and the Czarist government exploited these animosities fully.
The area was known for bloody battles between the various
ethnic groups. But all that ended with the revolution, Kolya said,
and with the establishment of the Trans-Caucasian Federation,
based on national equality and voluntary consent.
Within the federation, which was composed of three republics
(Georgia, Azerbaidzhan and Armenia), the Georgian republic had
three minority districts: Abkhazia and Azaria as autonomous
republics, and Yugo-Osetia as an autonomous region. National
languages and cultures were flourishing under the new regime.
"As you will see, here in Tbilisi we have Georgian, Armenian
and Russian theaters," Kolya told me.
Kolya hailed an izvozchik and we rode to his apartment, located
on one of the broad tree-lined avenues of the city. Arriving there,
we were happily greeted by his family. His wife, an attractive
young schoolteacher, received me warmly and told me that Kolya
had written her about me. They had two beautiful children, a boy
of about three and a girl about five. They seemed fascinated with
my appearance and couldn't take their eyes off me. I was
undoubtedly the first Black man they had ever seen. - .
On being told by Kolya to "shake hands with the black unde,"
the boy hesitantly extended his little hand.
I took it and gently shook it. When he withdrew it, he looked at
his hand to see whether some of the black had come off and seemed
rather surprised that it hadn't.
"No, it won't come off," I said, and we all laughed. I had
experienced this reaction from Russian children in Moscow, and it
never failed to amuse me.
The Tseretelis lived in a clean and neatly-furnished three-room
apartment on the second floor of the building, with a balcony over
 SELF-DETERMINATION 243

the sidewalk. As if reading my thoughts, Kolya said, "Don't worry,

we all usually sleep in one room; the other is for my brother who
stays here with us. He is out of town, so you can stay in his room"
Kolya was anxious to check in at the Party office where he
worked, so we left our baggage and walked to his office a short
distance away. I was interested in the people we passed. They
looked better dressed than the Russians back in Moscow, their
costumes were gayer. Perhaps it was due to the milder climate.
Kolya served as the deputy secretary of the Agitprop Depart­
ment of the Tbilisi Committee of the Communist Party. He
introduced me to his fellow workers in the department; they all
seemed glad to see him and remarked how well he looked after his
rest. They were speaking Georgian; Kolya asked them to speak in
Russian in deference to me. They all seemed to be multilingual.
Kolya, I knew, besides his native Georgian, spoke Russian,
Armenian and some French. The comrades insisted on calling a
conference. Like most Party officials, they were well-informed on
both domestic and international questions and were an educated
audience.
They asked me my impressions of their country, and they also
had questions about the situation in the United States, about the
conditions of Blacks. Kolya told them that I was a student at the
Lenin School in Moscow and that formerly I had been at K UTVA.
They knew about KUTVA as they too had sent students there.
They were interested in the work I had done in preparation for the
forthcoming Sixth Congress, and they were familiar with Stalin's
report to the Fifteenth Party Congress from that December,
where he described the international situation. They asked me
questions about the international situation and the war <langer and
we exchanged opinions.
Kolya explained that I was only going to be in town for a couple
of days. It was Friday then, and I was scheduled to leave on
Sunday. As I remember, we took a car from the pool and two or
three people from the office accompanied us on a sightseeing tour
along the banks of the river.
We returned to Kolya's home where his wife had a delicious big
meal waiting for us: shashlik, fruits and pastries. We sat up until
244 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

late that night telling stories.

The next day we saw a number of places of interest, bathed in
the famous hot sulfur springs, went up to the summit of Mount
David and saw the old church on the mountain, which dated back
centuries, and the mausoleum of famous Georgian poets and
patriots. All in all we spent a very enjoyable weekend together.
On Sunday, Kolya and his wife took me to the station and put
me on the train for Moscow. Three days later I was back home. I
saw Kolya once again when he was on a visit to Moscow and I took
him out to dinner.

.•
 Chapter 9

Sixth Congress
of the Comintern:
A Blow Against the Right
The Sixth World Congress of the Comintern, held in Moscow in
July and August of 1928, was a historie turning point in the world
communist movement. Early in July the first U.S. delegates
arrived, anxious to get the "lay of the land" and to scout the
political situation in the capital of world revolution. As I recall,
Lovestone's group staked out headquarters at the Lux Hotel,
while the Foster-Cannon opposition gathered at the Bristol, a
short distance further up the street.
A number of us from the Lenin School were on band when our
comrades in the Foster group arrived. We got together to talk with
a number of them, though Foster, Cannon and Bittelman were not
present. They were anxious to get a report on the situation in the
Soviet Party: Which leaders were involved in the right opposition?
What was Bukharin doing? Where did he stand?
We gave them a rundown on the situation as we saw it. The
issues in the discussion included industrialization, the five-year
plan, collectivization, the drive against the kulaks and the war
danger.
We told them about disagreements in the CPSU. There was talk
of a bidden right faction involving such leaders as Rykov, Tomsky
and possibly Bukharin. Thus far, however, there were only rumors
and speculations. The fight was not yet out in the open, but was
confined to the Politburo and the Central Committee. A plenum
of the Central Committee had been called on the eve of the Sixth
246 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Congress and was at that moment in session. We told them that we

could undoubtedly find out at the congress if there were any new
developments.
On their part, our fellow oppositionists ran down the latest
developments in the inner-Party struggle at home. We already
knew of the findings of a special American Commission which had
been set up at the Eighth Plenum of the CI in May 1927. The
commission's final resolution had called for the unconditional
abolition of all factionalism. 1 Both sides ignored the resolution,
however, as the most vicious factionalism continued in the Party.
At the Fifth Convention of the CPUSA in the fall of 1927, the
Lovestone-Pepper bunch were able to out-maneuver the Foster­
Cannon opposition and win control of the organizational appa­
ratus.
Firmly in the saddle of power and riding high, their support
ca.roe from the belief on the part of the membership that the
Lovestone group had the endorsement of the Comintern-a myth
assiduously cultivated by the Lovestone cohorts. They were
playing a deceitful game of double-bookkeeping, both with respect
to the Comintern as well as to the membership at home. Their
method was to give lip service to the fight against the right danger,
while in practice undermining its application and attempting to
pin the label of "right" on the opposition. Typical of this duplicity
was their sabotage of the line of the Red International of Labor
Unions' (RILU) Fourth Congress, which had called for the
formation of the new unions in industries and areas where t_he
workers were unorganized.
In the U.S., the new upsurge in class struggle, combined with the
refusal of the AFL craft-type union leaders to organize the
majority of industrial workers, demanded that the communists
take the lead and organize the unions themselves.
At this point in the discussion it was pointed out that Foster
himself was still not clear on the question of the formation of the
new unions. Other members of the grouping admitted that they
had also vacillated on the question when it was first raised-after
the decisions of the Fourth RILU Congress-but it appeared that
they now had a better grasp of the matter.
 SIXTH CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN 247

On the question of the estimate of the international situation,

they pointed out that their record was clear, whereas the leadership
definitely underestimated the economic crisis and radicalization of
the workers. They admitted that they were late in pressing the
question of independent unions, but now they had finally decided
to launch textile, mining and needle trades industrial unions.
Lovestone had jumped on the bandwagon at the last minute as a
loud trumpeter of the "new unions" line in an attempt to clear his
record before the W orld Congress.
On the whole, our comrades were ful] of fight and optimistic at
the outcome of placing their case before the W orld Congress. They
seemed sure that they would get a favorable hearing. The strategy
was to expose the Lovestone-Pepper leadership as the embodi­
ment of the right <langer in the U.S. Party and to explode the myth
of their Comintern support, thus laying the basis for the victory of
the opposition at the next Party convention. This strategy was
pressed at the numerous caucus meetings of the opposition bloc
which I attended before and during the congress.
But all was not well within the ranks of the opposition; that
much was evident at the first meeting of our caucus. Foster, the
leader of the minority, came under sharp attack for his vacillation
on the question of the new unions from his immediate co-workers,
Bittelman, Cannon, Browder and Johnstone. Foster had not been
alone in his resistance to the new policy. Most of the members of
the minority had vacillated on, if not openly resisted, the decisions
of the Ninth Plenum and of the Fourth Congress of the RILU on
this question.
But Foster had been the most stubbarn, clinging to the old
policy based on the organized workers, rather than the unorga­
nized, which placed main emphasis on work within the old
reactionary-dominated AFL unions. This policy, which Lozovsky
had caricatured as "dancing a quadrille ... around the AFL and its
various unions," 2 regarded the organization of unions independ­
ent of the AFL as "dual unionism" -a heresy left over from the
days of the IWW.
Just a month before, in the May Plenum of the CC of the
CPUSA, Foster had written a trade union resolution which was
248 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

supported by Lovestone. While it called for the building of

independent textile and miners' unions, it still reflected many
illusions as to the gains communists could make within the AFL.
Foster could not bring himself to fully criticize his earlier mistakes,
which left Lovestone free to use Foster as a cover for his rightist
position.
All of this was bad for the minority; it blurred the image that it
sought to present to the congress-that of consistent fighters
against the right <langer. There was a heated exchange at the first
meeting of the minority caucus. As I recall, Foster contended that
he had not in principle been against the new turn, but against those
who interpreted it as a signal for desertion of the work in the old
unions. It was clear that at this point Foster had lost leadership (at
least temporarily) of his own group. Bittelman was chosen to make
the report for the minority in the American Commission of the
congress.
With tempers still frayed, we passed on to a brief exchange on
the Afro-American question and the proposed new line on
self-determination, which they all knew was coming up for full­
dress discussion at the congress. I gave a brief outline of the
position and how I had been led to it by the study of the Garvey
movement.
Then someone raised the inevitable question. Wouldn't this be
construed as an endorsement of Black separation? Does it not
conflict with the struggle against segregation?
Foster objected to that implication, maintaining that self­
determination didn't necessarily mean separation. He drew _ap.
analogy to our trade union policy with respect to Blacks. He
pointed out the necessity to fight for the organization of Blacks
and whites in ane union and against all segregation. But in unions
where Jim Crow bars exclude Blacks, Foster said, we support their
right to organize their own separate unions. In such situations, the
organization of Black unions should be regarded as a step toward
eventual unity and not an advocacy of separation.
It was evident that Foster had studied the question and was
attempting to relate it to his own practical experience. While his
analogy was oversimplified, he was clearly taking a correct stand.
 SIXTH CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN 249

Bittelman, as I recall, seemed the clearest of all. Perhaps this was

as a result of his Russian revolutionary background and some
acquaintance with the Bolshevik policy on the national question.
He pointed out the ·necessity of making a distinction between the
right of separation and separation itself. Separation or independ­
ence is only one of the options; there were various forms of
federation as Soviet experience had shown. The central question
was one of building unity of Black and white workers against U.S.
capitalism and this could be achieved only by recognition of the
right of self-determination.
I was happy about the support given to the position by Foster
and Bittelman. As the main theoretician of the minority, Bittelman
had a great deal of influence. Certainly there was unclarity among
the caucus members, but by and large I was favorably impressed
by this first airing of the question. After all, I reasoned, the
proposed new line did represent a radical shift from past policy.
There seemed to be a modesty among these people and a sincere
desire to give the matter a full hearing.
I felt that on the whole my comrades were an honest lot. Despite
factional considerations, they were motivated by the overriding
desire to achieve clarity on a question which up to that point had
frustrated the Party's hest efforts.
In the caucus meetings, I had my first close-up view of some of
the leaders with whom I was to work in the future. Mostly from the
midwest, with genuine roots in the American labor tradition, they
were a pretty impressive bunch. Most had broad mass experi­
ence-especially in the trade union field. The roots of the
Lovestone group were much more grounded among former
functionaries and propagandists of the Socialist Party.
William Z. Foster, leader of the minority bloc, was also the
leader in the Party's trade union work. A self-educated man, he
had worked at a number of trades, including longshoreman,
seaman, lumberjack, street-car conductor and railroad worker. 3
Bom in Massachusetts, he spent his early childhood in Philadel­
phia and came into prominence as a trade union leader in
Chicago.
He had been a left socialist, then, for a brief period, joined with
250 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

the Wobblies. He soon clashed with them on the issue of dual

unionism. Foster himself opted for theFrench syndicalist policy of
boring from within the established unions. He joined the Commu­
nist Party in the summer of 1921 and brought an entire group of
trade unionists with him.
In Chicago, Foster was deeply involved in trade union work. He
had served as business agent for the Brotherhood of Railroad Car
Men of America; was a founder of the TUEL; initiated the
nationwide drive to organize the stockyard workers in 1917; and
was leader of the 1919 steel strike, the attempt to organize 365,000
steelworkers. It was in this strike that he became a nationally
known left trade union figure.
The first time I saw Foster in action was at the Fourth Party
Convention in Chicago in the summer of 1925. I remember him
angrily pacing with clenched fists back and forth across the
pl�tform behind Ruthenberg as the latter berated him from the
rostrum. Here in the caucus, he was again an angry man, but under
the lashing of his friends and co-factionalists.
Jack Johnstone, a Scotsman, still had the Scot's burr in his
speech. An ex-Wobbly and close co-worker ofFoster, he had been
one of the young radical Chicago trade unionists. A member of the
Chicago Federation of Labor from the Painters Union, Johnstone
was a leader in the TUEL. I had met him at the Fourth RILU
Congress. His name was familiar to me because of his role as a
leader in the organization of the Chicago stockyard workers in
which my sister had been involved. Johnstone was the organizer of
the drive for the Chicago Federation of Labor and later became
secretary of the Chicago Stockyards Council with 55,000 white
and Black members.
On the eve of the 1919 riots, he had helped to organize a parade
of white stockyard unionists through the Southside in solidarity
with the Black workers. I had the pleasure of working with
Johnstone later in Pittsburgh and in Chicago, where he was
industrial organizer for the district. He was a quiet, unassuming
guy with a wry sense of humor.
Earl Browder of Wichita, Kansas, served his ideological
apprenticeship as a radical trade unionist in the socialist and
 SIXTH CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN 251

cooperative movements. Arrested in 1917 on charges of defying

the draft law, he spent three years in the federal penitentiary at
Leavenworth, Kansas.
I had known Browder briefly in Moscow while he was rep to the
Profintern, before he went on a two year mission to the Far East
for that organization. We KUTVA students would often visit him
at his room in the Lux Hotel where he would play checkers with
Golden, who usually won. He told us that when he was at
Leavenworth, he had met a number of former members of the
Black Twenty-fourth lnfantry who had been involved in the
mutiny-riot in Houston, Texas, in the summer of 1917. He told us
that they often played baseball together in prison.
At the time, Browder seemed to me to be a quiet, modest,
unassuming man. But at this caucus meeting, something had
happened which seemed to have transformed him into a "new"
Browder. Though long associated with Foster, he now seemed
hent on not only asserting his independence, but on establishing
his own claim to leadership.
At one point in the heated discussion on trade union policy, he
exclaimed sarcastically: "You expect to get the support of the
Comintern, but you're all divided among yourselves! There's a
Cannon group, a Bittelman Group, a Foster Group-well, I'm for
the Browder Group!"
No one seemed to take his remark seriously, but less than a year
later Browder was to emerge as secretary of the Party.
James P. Cannon was also from Kansas-a tall, raw-boned
midwesterner of Irish descent. He came from the same trade union
background as the other caucus leaders; he had been a traveling
organizer for the Wobblies and an editor of a number of labor
papers. He was a supporter of Trotsky, although he didn't admit it
at the congress. Later he split from the Party and helped form the
Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party.
Bill Dunne was a man of impressive credentials. Raised in
Minnesota, Dunne entered the trade union movement as an
electrician. Then in Butte, Montana, during World War I, he
edited the Butte Daily Bulletin (official organ of the Montana
Federation of Labor and the Butte Central Labor Council).
252 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Dunne had been secretary of a local of electricians, vice-president

of the Montana Federation of Labor and a member of the state
legislature (on the Democratic ticket, which in Butte was labor
controlled). He helped organize the Socialist Party Branch of
Butte !i.nd brought it into the Communist Labor Party in 1919.
I got to know Bill quite well; he was in the Soviet Union for some
months before the Sixth Congress as a Profintern rep. I first met
him through Clarence Hathaway, and both were associated with
the Cannon sub-group. Bill was familiar with the emerging line on
self-determination and supported it. He had written a number of
articles on Black workers in the mid-twenties.
To me, he was the most colorful figure in our caucus and a man
of unusual brilliance. Keen-witted, sharp in debate, he had an
extraordinary sense of humor. Of Irish and French-Canadian
parentage, Bill was short and heavy-set, with black bushy
eyt%rows. He cut a romantic figure on the streets of Moscow in his
Georgian rabochka and sheathed dagger at his waist. I had a close
friendship with Bill which lasted over a number of years.
Alexander Bittelman was a Russian Jew who had emigrated to
the United States when in his early twenties. A little fellow,
Bittelman was both ascetic and scholarly. He had been in the
socialist movement in Russia and continued on in his political
work in the U.S. A serious Marxist student, Bittelman was the
main theoretician for the Foster group.

THE LOVESTONE CA UCUS

The Lovestone-Pepper caucus was meeting at the same time.

They too were mapping out plans for the battle on the floor of the
congress. Lovestone also had his troubles-most involved the
shedding of his opportunist reputation for that of "crusader
against the right danger."
Most of the "hig guns" were on the scene: Lovestone, Pepper,
Weinstone and Wolfe. Gitlow, Bedacht and others were left at
home as caretakers; Gitlow ostensibly to carry on the Party's
election campaign (in which he was vice-presidential candidate).
 SIXTH CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN 253

While I was the only Black in the minority caucus, the

Lovestone-Pepper caucus claimed the allegiance, if not the ardent
support, of a number of leading Black comrades. In the nine
months since the convention, the Lovestone-Pepper leadership
had attempted to patch its fences in the work among Blacks. Otto
Huiswood, now a member of the Central Committee and district
organizer in Buffalo, was the first Black district organizer. Richard
B. Moore was assigned to the International Labor Defense, and
Cyril P. Briggs was editor of The Crusader News Service, which
was subsidized by the Party.
But none of these could be called ardent supporters of
Lovestone. They were all dissatisfied with the status of Afro­
American work, which was reflected in the small number of Black
cadre in the Party. In general, it was still difficult to draw a hard
and fast distinction between the factions on questions concerning
Afro-American work.
Blacks in the Lovestone delegation included H.V. Phillips and
Fort-Whiteman (both directly from the United States) and
students from the graduating group at K UTVA-Otto, Farmer
and Williams (Golden had already left for home). The group also
included William L. Patterson, the young attorney who had
worked with the Party on the Sacco-Vanzetti case and who had
been sent to KUTVA just before the congress.
James Ford, who worked in the Profintern and was to become
an outstanding Party leader in the thirties, stood aloof from both
groups as I remember. His sympathies seemed to be with the
Foster-Cannon opposition, however.
Among the Blacks attending the congress, I was the only one
supporting the new line on self-determination. The others insisted
that "it was a race question, not a national question," implying that
the solution lay through assimilation under socialism. Probing
deeper, I found that most were hung up on a purist and
non-Marxist concept of the class struggle which ruled out all
strivings towards nationality and Black identity as divisive,
running counter to internationalism and Black and .white unity.
It was an American version of the "pure proletarian revolution"
concept; a domestic manifestation of the old deviation in the
254 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

socialist and communist movements against which Lenin, Stalin

and others had fought in the development of the Bolshevik policy
on the national and colonial question.
Recalling that I myself had held the same view just a few months
back, I felt that the resistance of Blacks in the Party to
self-determination would be overcome through exposure in the
discussions at the congress of the proposed new line. I had no
doubt that they would come to see, as I had, the grand irony of a
situation in which we Blacks, who so vociferously complained
about our white comrades underestimating the revolutionary
significance of the Afro-American question, were guilty of the
same sin. For the revolutionary significance of the struggle for
Black rights lay precisely in the recognition of its character as
essentially that of the struggle of an oppressed nation against U.S.
irnperialisrn.
At this point, the opposition to the idea of Black self-deter­
rnination was to receive theoretical support from an unexpected
source. This opposition came from Professor Sik, my old teacher
at K UTVA, who was still teaching the Black students there. Sik
contended that bourgeois race ideology, which fostered racial
prejudices, was the prime factor in the oppression of U.S. Blacks.
Therefore, their fight for equal rights should be regarded not as
that of an oppressed nation striving for equality via self-determi­
nation but, on the contrary, as the fight of an oppressed racial
minority (similar to the Jews under czarism) for assimilation as
equals into U.S. society.
Sik undoubtedly thought that he was presenting original views,
but stripped of their pseudo-Marxist phraseology, they were the
old bourgeois-liberal reformist views. He slurred over the socio­
economic factors that lay at the base of the question, factors which
call for the completion of the agrarian-democratic revolution in
the South. His perspective divested the Black movement of its
independent revolutionary thrust, reducing it to a bourgeois­
liberal opposition to race prejudice.
However, Sik's thesis continued to be used as a crutch for the
right opposition over the next year or so; it appeared in the
Communist International (organ of the Comintern) in the rnidst of
 SIXTH CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN 255

the Sixth World Congress. 4 But the pressure for a turn to the left in
this work was to flush it out into the open along with other
right-wing views on the question.
Foremost among these were the views of Jay Lovestone. His
view of Southern Blacks as a "reserve of capitalist reaction"
provided a theoretical rationale for the Party's chronic under­
estimation of the question. This was clear in his report to the Fifth
Party Convention in which he contended that:
The migration of Negroes from the South to the North is
another means of proletarianization, consequently the exis­
tence of this gro up as a reserve of capitalist reaction is likewise
being undermined.s

Lovestone held that the masses of Blacks in the South become

potentially revolutionary only through migration to the industrial
centers in the north and participation in class struggle along with
white workers. This viewpoint, which was later to become a
cornerstone for his theory of"American exceptionalism," was first
outlined in his report for the Fifth Convention of the Party and
again in his report in the Daily Worker in February 1928. 6 But
these articles passed unnoticed at the time. It was only on the eve of
the Sixth World Congress and under the pressure of the new line
that we became alerted to Lovestone's views.
The general meeting of the American delegation took place the
day before the opening of the congress. All factions were
represented but, as I recall, there were no fireworks. By that time,
lines were clearly drawn and neither faction was trying to convince
the other. On our part, we were saving our ammunition for the
battle on the floor of the congress and its commissions.
Apparently there had been same objections in the Lovestone
group to the proposed new line on self-determination. To mollify
these people, Lovestone stated that he stood for the right of
self-determination of oppressed peoples everywhere; surely he
said, no communist could oppose this right. I assumed that he
regarded the slogan as some sort of showcase principle; something
to be declared but which did not commit its advocates to any
special line of action. Lovestone knew which way the wind was
256 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

blowing and was clearly trying to straddle the fence on the issue.
The delegates at this meeting were assigned to the various
commissions; there was no struggle over the assignments as it was
understood that all commissions had to include members of both
factions. These commissions included the American Negro/ South
African Commission, Colonial Commission, Trade Union Com­
mission, and Program Commission.

THE SIXTH WORLD CONGRESS

On July 17, 1928, 532 delegates representing fifty-seven parties

and nine organizations assem bled in the Hall of the Trade Unions.
The delegation from the United States was a large one­
twenty-nine delegates, including twenty voting and nine advisory
delegates. The Sixth Congress convened under the slogan of"War
Against the Right Danger and the Rightist Conciliators."
The period since the February plenum of the Comintern had
been marked by the emergence of a clearly defined right oppor­
tunist deviation in most of the parties. They advanced the
perspective of continuous capitalist recovery and the easing of the
class struggle. In the realm of tactics this meant a continuation of
the old "united front from above" and a reliance on social
reformist trade union leaders. In the U.S., the right was to find its
foremost exponents in the Lovestone-Pepper leadership, wliich
emphasized the strength of U.S. capitalism and its ability to.­
postpone the crisis.
A right opposition had also begun to develop in the CPSU,
headed by Bukharin; Rykov, chairman of the Council of People's
Commissions; and Tomsky, heading the Soviet Trade Unions.
This group opposed the programs of the Stalinist majority of the
Central Committee with respect to the goals of the new Five Year
Plan, which called for intensified industrialization, collectivi­
zation, and the drive against the kulaks. The right deviation in the
CPS U and in the other parties of the Comintem had a common
source-overestimation of the strength of world capitalism. The
congress was faced with the need to answer these critics by
 SIXTH CONGRESS OP THE COMINTERN 257

deepening its analysis of the period and by spelling out more

clearly the policy flowing from it.
In the Soviet Party, the disagreement had come to a head prior
to its plenum of July 1928, which adjourned just before the Sixth
Congress. The differences, however, were hushed up by a reso­
lution unanimously adopted by both groups which stated that
there were no differences in the leadership of the CPSU. The
agreement undoubtedly expressed the desire of the Soviet leader­
ship to keep the congress from becoming an arena for discussion of
Soviet problems before they had been finally thrashed out within
their own Party.
The delega_tes, however, were not unaware of the struggle in the
Soviet Party. They gathered in an atmosphere charged with rumor
and speculation about differences within the CPSU. The questions
in our minds were: Who represented the right danger in the CPS U,
the leading Party of the Cl? What was the role of Bukharin? What
had been the outcome of the discussions in the plenum of the
CPSU? How would the congress be affected? We did not have long
to wait for answers to these questions. Differences developed over
sections of Bukharin's Report on the International Situation and
Tasks of the Comintern. 7
In his report which was distributed on July 18, at the second
session of the congress, Bukharin analyzed the post-World War I
international situation, dividing it into three periods. He defined
the first ( 1917-1923) as one of revolutionary upsurge; the second
( 1924-1927) as a period of partial stabilization of capitalism; and
the third (1928 on) as one of capitalist reconstruction. Bukharin
made no clear distinction between the second and third periods;
the latter was simply a continuation of the second. According to
his characterization, there was nothing new at the present time to
shake capitalist stabilization. On the contrary, capitalism was
continuing to "reconstruct itself."
On this question Bukharin was challenged by his own Soviet
delegation which submitted a series of twenty amendments to the
thesis. These characterized the third period as one in which partial
stabilization was coming to an end. Later, in his criticism of
Bukharin's position, Stalin pointed out the decisive importance of
258 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

a correct estimate of the third period. The question involved here

was: "Are we passing through a period of decline of the revolution­
ary movement...or are we passing through a period when the
conditions are maturing for a new revolutionary upsurge, a period
of preparation of the working class for future class battles? It is on
this that the tactical line of the Communist Parties depends." 8
At first, all of this was somewhat confusing to us. In his opening
report Bukharin had himself declared the right deviation the
"greatest <langer" to the Comintern. But in his characterization of
the third period as one of virtual capitalist recovery he had
adopted the main thesis of the right. He had also put himself in the
awkward position of being rejected by his own delegation. But as
Stalin was later to point out, it was his own fault for failing to
discuss his report in advance with the Soviet delegation, as was
customary. Instead he distributed his report to all delegations
simultaneously.9
In accordance with our battle plan to expose the Pepper­
Lovestone leadership as the embodiment of the right deviation in
the American Party, our caucus took the offensive. Even before
the discussion on Bukharin's report began, our minority had
submitted a document entitled "The Right Danger and the
American Party." It was signed by J.W. Johnstone, M. Gomez,
W.F. Dunne, J.P. Cannon, W.Z. Foster, A. Bittelman and G.
Siskind. 10
The document contained a bill of particulars in which we sought
to point out that the rightist tendencies and mistakes of the. ·
Lovestone-Pepper leadership added up to a right line.
Our attack, however, was hobbled by blemishes in the stateside
record of our own c�ucus. At that point it would have been hard to
discern any principled political differences between the majority or
minority; Nevertheless, differences were developing on the esti­
mation of the third period and U.S. imperialism.11
Pepper and Lovestone exaggerated the might of U.S. impe­
rialism and spoke only of the weakness of the U .S. labor
movement and the class struggle in this country. But the minority
had also wavered on the question of building independent trade
unions, the logical follow-through of the correct estimate of the
 SIXTH CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN 259

objective situation in terms of practical policy.

On the Negro question, the minority record up to that point had
been no better than that of the majority. This faet was quickly
pointed out by Otto and others. Both groups had shared the same
mistakes. As Foster later observed, both factions had "'tradition­
ally considered the Negro question as that of a persecuted racial
minority of workers and as basically a simple trade union
matter." 12 It was this orientation which explains the Party's
shortcomings in this field of work. But now, the tentative
endorsement by our caucus of the proposed new line on the Afro­
American question strengthened its position vis-a-vis the majority
leadership.
The prospects for our minority were brightened by the diffi­
culties of Lovestone's friend and mentor, Bukharin. Corridor
rumors concerning his right-wing proclivities were now being
confirmed by his differences with his own Soviet delegation on the
character of the third period.
The congress was now settling down to work. A number of
commissions were formed to discuss and formulate resolutions on
the main subjects confronting the congress. Among them were: 1)
A Commission on Program, to complete the drafting of a program
for the Comintern; 2) one on the Trade Union question, to apply
the struggle against right opportunism to the trade union field; and
3) a commission on the Colonial Question which discussed
strategy and tactics of the liberation movements in the colonies
and semi-colonies and the tasks of the Comintern. There were also
several commissions on the spedal problems of individual parties.
My major concern, however, was the Negro Commission,
which was to take up the problem of the U. S. Blacks and the South
African question. Although set up as an independent commission,
in reality it was a subcommittee of the Colonial Commission. The
resolutions formulated by it were included in the final draft of the
congress's thesis on the Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies.
The Negro Commission was set up on August 6, at the twenty­
third session of the congress. It was a memorable day, particularly
for us Black communists-a day to which we all had looked
forward. At last there was to be a full-dress discussion on the
260 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

question.
We listened attentively as the German comrade Remmele,
chairman of the session, read off on behalf of the presidium the list
of members and officers who would comprise the commission. It
was an impressive list and indicated the high priority given the
question by the congress. Thirty-two delegates, representing
eighteen countries, including the United States, South Africa,
Great Britain, the Soviet Union, France, Germany, Belgium, ltaly,
Spain, Turkey, India, Palestine and Syria were members of the
commission. lmpressive also were its officers: the chairman,
Ottomar Kuusinen, was a member of the Cl Secretariat and
chairman of the Colonial Commission; the vice-chairman Pe­
trovsky (Bennett) was also chairman of the Anglo-American
Secretariat; and the recording secretary, Mikhailov (Williams),
was a former Cl representative to the American Party.
.•The delegates from the U.S. included five Blacks: myself,
Jones (Otto Hall), Farmer (Roy Mahoney), James Ford and, I
believe, Harold Williams; plus two white comrades, Bittelman and
Lovestone. Others included Sidney Bunting of South Africa;
Fokin and Nasanov, representing the Young Communist Inter­
national; the Swiss, Humbert-Droz, a top Cl official; Heller, from
the Communist fraction of the Profintern; and several members of
the Soviet delegation to the congress.
Participation in commission meetings was not limited to its
members, however. Among the important figures who spoke in the
discussions were Manuilsky, a Cl official, and the Ukrainian,
Skrypnik, both members of the Soviet delegation. The hall was
always crowded with interested observers.
The first order of business before the Commission was the
Negro question. It was introduced by Petrovsky, who, as I recall,
stressed the need for a radical turn in the policy of the American
Party with respect to its work among Blacks. Re referred to the
Negro Subcommittee, set up earlier in the year by the Anglo­
American Secretariat, which was given the task of preparing
materials on the question for the Sixth Congress.
Petrovsky described the two positions which emerged from this
subcommittee.
 SIXTH CONGRESS OF TUE COMINTERN 261

One held that the weaknesses of the Party's Negro work was a
rr.sult of an incorrect line. The partisans of this position regarded
Ulncks in the South as an oppressed nation and recommended that
I hc right of self-determination be raised as an orientation slogan in
I hcir struggle for equality.
The other position, he said, held that the question was one of a
"rncial minority" whose immediate and ultimate demands were
t·mhraced by the slogan of complete economic, social and political
cq uality. The supporters of this position attributed the weaknesses
in lhe Party's Afro-American work to the underestimation of the
importance of work among Blacks. This resulted, in turn, from the
survivals of racial prejudices within the ranks of the Party and its
lcadership. This position did not challenge the Party's line, but
called for its more energetic application.
As I recall, Petrovsky stated that he himselffavored the position
on self-determination. He did not see it as a negation of the slogan
of social equality which, he said, would remain the main slogan for
the Black masses. But in the Black Belt, where Blacks are in the
majority, in addition to the slogan of equality the Party must raise
another slogan-the right of self-determination. For here, equal­
ity without the right of Blacks to enforce it is but an empty phrase.
At the same time he expressed agreement with the comrades who
contended that the hangovers of racial prejudice in the Party were
a main obstacle to the Party's effective work among Blacks. He
stressed the need to fight against the ideology of white chauvinism,
a principle block to the unity of Black and white workers.
Petrovsky then referred the comrades to the material before
them. It included the document by Nasanov and myself, sum­
marizing our position in support of the self-determination
thesis. The document contained a criticism of current Party
activities and policies and condemned Pepper's May 30th reso-
1 ution, which had made no reference to the Party's tasks in the
South. 13 It also criticized the completely northern orientation of
the American Negro Labor Congress, as contained in the policy
statements of its leaders, Lovett Fort-Whiteman and H. V. Phil­
lips. Finally, it criticized Lovestone's characterization of Southern
Slacks as "reserves of capitalist reaction."
262 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Other documents presented to the commission were a statement

by Dunne and Hathaway supporting the self-determination
viewpoint and a document by Sik opposing the proposed new line.
Sik argued that Blacks were a racial minority whose immediate
and ultimate demands were embraced by the slogan of ful] social
equality. 14
Later in the discussion, Pepper submitted a document contain­
ing his proposals for a·"Negro Soviet Republic" in the South,
arguing that Southern Blacks were not just a nation but virtually a
colony within the body of the United States of America. 15
Among the American delegates who spoke in favor of the
proposed new line were Bittelman, Foster and Dunne. As I
remember, all were self-critical. Bittelman, however, emphasized
the dual role of the Black working class envisioned by the new line:
first, its role as a basic and constituent element of the American
wMking class and, second, its leadership of the national Iiberation
movement of Black people.
I do not remember Lovestone speaking. If he did, he did not
openly attack th'e proposed new line, for that would not have been
his style. It was clear to all, however, that he had strong
reservations. Sam Darcy of the Y oung Communist League was,
as I remember, the only white comrade who openly opposed the
proposed new line.
But the strongest opposition to the self-determination thesis
both in the commission and on the floor of the congress was from
the Black comrades James Ford and Otto Hall. In their arguments
it was evident that they relied heavily on Professor Sik and his
"new" theory on "race problems." Up to that point, neither
Nasanov nor I had paid much attention to Sik. But now after
listening to Otto and Ford we suddenly realized the danger his
theories posed to clarity on this vital question.
Sik had evidently been working hard on his thesis which he was
now proselytizing with almost evangelic zeal. He had, if not a
captive audience, at least a willing one among the Black students at
KUTVA where he taught (of all subjects!) Leninism. Now
suddenly it seemed that Sik had become cast in the role of chief
theoretician of the opposition to the proposed new policy; in their
 SIXTH CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN 263

speeches Otto and Ford repeated verbatim many of his arguments.

For example, both Otto and Ford insisted that U.S. Negroes
were a racial minority rather than an oppressed nation or an
oppressed national minority. (They used these two latter terms
interchangeably at the time.) They ruled out all national move­
ments among U.S. Blacks as reactionary. According to Ford, such
movements were led by the "chauvinistic" Black bourgeoisie who
wanted a freer band to exploit the Black masses. These move­
ments, he argued, "play into the bands 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." 16 He also averred that Blacks lack the
characteristics of a nation. There was not the question of one
nation oppressing and exploiting another nation. "In the United
States," Ford continued, "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." The only problem, he contended, was one of racial
differences of the color of the skin, barriers set up by the
bourgeoisie. 17
Otto sharpened the argument and contended that Blacks were
"not developing any characteristics of a national minority...there
exists no national entity as such among...Negroes." Continuing
along the same line, Otto saw no community of interest between
the Black bourgeoisie and the Black toilers, whom, he argued, "are
completely separated (from each other) as far as class interests are
concerned." In sum, he contended that "historical development
has tended to create in him (the Negro) the desire to be considered
a part of the American nation."IS
What then were the objectives of Black liberation? They
were, according to Sik, the striving of Blacks for intermingling and
amalgamation. I was astounded and dismayed. This seemed to me
to be a bourgeois liberal-assimilationist position cloaked in
pseudo-Marxist rhetoric.
A few days before on the floor of the congress, Ford and Otto
complained bitterly about the rampant white chauvinism in the
Party and the widespread underestimation of the significance of
264 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Afro-American work. Could they not see that they were playing
into the bands of the white chauvinist downgraders of the Black
movement? They had conceded them their main premise: that the
movement for Black equality in itself had no revolutionary
potential.
Sik's theory had stripped the struggle for equality of all
revolutionary content; it involved no radical social change, that is,
completion of the land and democratic revolution and securing of
political power in the South. It was just a struggle against racial
ideology.
How was it possible for Otto and Ford and other Black
comrades to fall into this trap? They had separated racism, the
most salient external manifestation of Black oppression, from its
socio-economic roots, reducing the struggle for equality to a
movement against prejudice. It was a theory which even liberal
reformists could support.
And why did they downgrade the revolutionary nature of the
Black struggle for equality? I could only assume that it was an
attempt on their part to fit the Afro-American question into the
simplistic frame of "pure proletarian class struggle." This theory
ruled out all nationalist movements as divisive and distracting
from the struggle for socialism. Lovestone's idea of the Black
peasantry in the South being a "reserve of capitalist reaction" was
the logical outcome of this kind of thinking.
What was clear to me was that our thesis of self-determination
had correctly elevated the fight for Black rights to a revolutionary
position, whereas the proponents of Sik's theories attempted to
downgrade the movement, seeing it as a minor aspect of the class
struggle. Our thesis put the question in the proper perspective: that
is, as a struggle attacking the very foundation of American
imperialism, an integral part of the struggle of the American
working class as a whole.
The sad faet was that Otto, Ford and other partisans of Sik's
theory seemed completely unaware that they had come to a
practical agreement with those white chauvinists who denied the
revolutionary character of the Black liberation struggle in the false
name of socialism.
 SIXTH CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN 265

Nasanov, sitting beside me, undoubtedly had similar thoughts.

He muttered something in Russian that sounded like, "Lord
forgive them, for they know not what they do."
During an interval in the Negro Commission sessions, I
cornered Otto in the corridor and accused him and Ford of
downgrading the liberation struggle and playing into the bands of
the white chauvinist element in the Party. How, I asked him, did he
expect to fight those responsible for the neglect of work among
Blacks when he accepted their main premise-that the struggle of
Blacks was not of itself revolutionary and that it only becomes so
when they (the Blacks) fight directly for socialism?
Otto indignantly denied this and accused me of allowing
the question to be used as a factional football by the Foster group.
I conceded that they were not all clear. But, I added heatedly, at
least they had begun to recognize that their position had been
wrong and they were trying to change it.
We broke off the discussion; it was obviously useless to pursue
the matter further. We were both getting emotional. No doubt our
relationship had become rather strained as a result of our political
differences. I was terribly saddened by this growing rift between
my brother and me. True, I no longer thought of him as my
political mentor, but nevertheless I felt he was a serious and
dedicated revolutionary.
What, I wondered, were the pressures that pushed Black
proletarian comrades like Otto and Ford into this position?
Foremost was their misguided but honest desire to amalgamate
Black labor into the general labor movement. Nationalism, they
felt, was a block to labor unity. They failed to recognize the
revolutionary element in Black nationalism. I myself had held the
same position only a few months earlier, but then I hadn't studied
Leninism under Sik.
I remember running into Nasanov. We walked down the hall
arm in arm and he asked me if I was going to speak. I said, "I don't
know, should I?''
Knowing my shyness, he laughed and said, "We've got them on
the run. We've submitted our resolution and supporting docu­
ments."
266 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

We were then accosted by Manuilsky whom I had met before.

He wanted to know if I was the only Black supporting the
self-determination position. I told him that thus far I was.
"How did that happen?" he asked. That was a question I was still
trying to answer myself. But before I could reply he said, "Oh, I
know. They are all good class-conscious comrades. But I under­
stand them. We Bolsheviks had the same type of deviation within
the party." He turned away to greet somebody else.
And well he should understand, I reflected, for Manuilsky had
been 0ne of the leading Ukrainian Communists referred td in our
class on Leninism, who, during the Revolution in the Ukraine, had
been guilty of the same deviation.
Ile bad been one of those whom the Bolsheviks had called
"abstract Marxists," those unable to relate Marxism to the
concrete experience of their own people. On that occasion he
resisted the resolution of the CC drafted by Lenin which made
necessary concessions to Ukrainian nationalism; these included a
softer line on the kulaks and the establishment of Ukrainian as the
national language.
What about Comrade Pepper's new slogan for a "Negro Soviet
Republic?" Had he undergone a sudden conversion to the cause of
Black nationhood? Was this the same Pepper who had completely
ignored the South in his May thesis and who had, during the
Program Commission at the Fifth Congress of the Cl (1924),
asserted that Blacks in the US wanted nothing to do with the
slogan of self-determination?
Sudden shifts in position were not new to Pepper who, as we
have seen, was a man unrestrained by principles. Lominadze had
branded Pepper on the floor of the congress as a man of
"inadequate firmness of principle and backbone. He always agrees
with those who are his seniors even if a minute ago he defended an
utterly different viewpoint."t9
The Commission rej_ected Pepper's slogan on the grounds that,
first, it actually negated the principle of the right of self­
determination by making the Party's support of it contingent upon
the acceptance by Blacks of the Soviet governmental form.
Secondly, it was an opportunist attempt to skip over the interme-
 SIXTH CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN 267

diate stage of preparation and mobilization of the Black masses

around their immediate demands.
Pepper's position was actually an attempt to outflank the new
position from the "left." Clearly he sought to grab the spotlight, to
upstage the move towards a new policy. Perhaps he thought that
the left-sounding term "Soviet" would make the new stress on the
national character of the question more palatable to his factional
cohorts of the pure revolutionary persuasion.
Otto seemed to have nibbled on the bait; at least he felt it did
not contradict his position. In his previously quoted speech he
stated, "There is no objection on our part on (sic) 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." 20
In this case, however, Pepper had overreached himself, having
jumped over the bandwagon instead of on it.
Despite Pepper's defeat in the commission, he still had a card or
two up his sleeve. This we were to find to our surprise and anger
when we received the October 1928 issue of The Communist,
official organ of the CPUSA. Prominent among the articles was
Pepper's on "American Negro Problems," which presented his call
for a "Negro Soviet Republic." But that was not all; the article was
also published simultaneously in pamphlet form by the American
Party. Neither the article nor the pamphlet was labeled as a
discussion paper, which gave them the appearance of being official
statements of the new policy.
Pepper's article had originally appeared in the Communist
International, organ of the Comintern, as one of a series of
discussion articles.21 The other articles were one by Ford and
Patterson (Wilson),22 "The Comintern Programme and the Racial
Problem" by Sik, and "The Negro Problem and the Tasks of the
CPUSA," by me.23
Of these, Sik's was the only one to appear in the English edition
of the magazine. This was because the English edition had
suspended publication for technical reasons from September to
December.
But Pepper also sent his article to The Communist, organ of the
268 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

American Party, where it appeared in October 1928. Because the

official resolutions of the congress were not published until
January of the following year, Pepper's distorted version of the
new line was the first document available to American Party
members. The result was considerable confusion and misunder­
standing.
Particularly aggravating was that Pepper filched the basic facts
of our analysis-national character, Black Belt territory, etc.­
distorting them into a vulgar caricature of our thesis. This latest
piece of chicanery did nothing to enhance Pepper's image in
Moscow where it was already on the wane. It was, however, well­
received in the U.S. where he still had considerable influence.

ESSENCE OF THE NEW LINE

.,
The CI's new line on the Afro-American question was released
by the ECCI in two documents. The first was the full resolution of
the commission, which addressed itself to the concrete issues raised
in the discussion. The second was a summary of the full resolution,
worked out in the commission under the direction of K uusinen, for
incorporation in the congress thesis on the "Revolutionary
Movement in the Colonies and Semi-Colonies." 24
The resolution rejected the assimilationist race theories upon
which the line of the Party had been based. It defined the Black
movement as "national revolutionary" in character on the grounds
that "the various forms of oppression of Negroes....concentrated
mainly in the so-called 'Black Belt' provide the necessary condi­
tions for a national revolutionary movement."
Stressing the agrarian roots of the problem it declared that
Southern Blacks "are....not reserves of capitalist reaction," as
Lovestone had contended, but they were on the contrary, "reserves
of the revolutionary proletariat" whose "objective position facili­
tates their transformation into a revolutionary force under the
leadership of the proletariat."
The new line committed the Party to champion the Black
struggle for "complete and real equality..... for the abolition of all
 SIXTH CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN 269

kinds of racial, social, and political inequalities." It called for an

"energetic struggle against any exhibition of white chauvinism"
and for "active resistance to lynching."
At the same time, the resolution stressed the need for Black
revolutionary workers to resist "petty bourgeois nationalist ten­
dencies" such as Garveyism. It declared that the industrialization
of the South and the growth of the Black proletariat was the "most
important phenomenon of recent years." The enlargement of this
class, it asserted, offers the possiblity of consistent revolutionary
leadership of the movement.
It called upon the Party to "strengthen its work among Negro
proletarians," drawing into its ranks the most conscious elements.
It was also to fight for the acceptance of Black workers into unions
from which they are barred, but this fight did not exclude the
organization of separate trade unions when necessary. It called for
the concentration of work in the South to organize the masses of
soil-tillers. And finally, the new line committed the Party to put
forth the slogan of the right of self-determination.
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 ... a radical transformation of the Agrar­
ian structure of the Southern States is one of the basic tasks of
the revolution. Negro Communists must explain to the Negro
workers and peasants that only their close union with the
white proletariat and joint struggle with them against the
American bourgeoisie can lead to their liberation from
barbarous exploitation, and that only the victorious prole­
tarian revolution will completely and permanently solve the
agrarian and national question of the Southern United
States in the interests of the overwhelming majority of the
Negro population of the country. 25

SOUTH AFRICA

There was keen interest as the Commission moved to the next

point on the agenda-South Africa. Here again it was a fight
against the denial of the national liberation movement in the name
270 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

of socialism, the same right deviation on new turf. In the South

African setting, where four-fifths of the population were black
colonial slaves, the deviation was particularly glaring.
It was true that in the past year or so the South African Party
had intensified its work among the natives, a "turn to the masses."
As the Simons noted, by 1928 there were 1,600 African members
out of a total of I, 750 in the Party. The year before there were only
200 African members.26
The Party had pursued a vigorous policy in the building gf
Black trade unions, in conducting strikes, and in fighting the most
vicious forms of national oppression-pass laws and the like. The
Party's official organ, The South African Worker, had been
revived on a new basis. More than half the articles were now
written in three Bantu languages: Xhosa, Zulu and Tsotho.
Sidney Bunting, leader of the South African Party, had emerged
as"a stalwart fighter for Native rights in the defense of Thibedi, a
framed-up Native communist leader. As a result about a hundred
Natives had been recruited into the Party, and two were now on
the Central Committee. On the whole, the Party was making a turn
toward the Native masses. But it still lacked the theory which
would enable it to tap their tremendous revolutionary potential.
As did most of the white leading cadre, Bunting exhibited a
paternalism with respect to the Natives. This paternalism was
rooted in an abiding Jack of faith in the revolutionary potential of
the Native movement. They saw the South African revolution in
terms of the direct struggle for socialism. This white leadership,
brought up in the old socialist traditions and comprised mainly of
European immigrants, had not yet absorbed Lenin's teachings op
the national and colonial questions.
These shortcomings had been brought sharply to the attention
of the Comintern by La Guma. The result was the resolution on the
South African question which La Guma, Nasanov and I had
worked on the previous winter. It recommended that the Party put
forward and work for an independent Native South African
Republic with full and equal rights for all races as a stage toward a
Workers and Peasants Republic. This was to be accompanied by
the slogan "Return the land to the Natives."
 SIXTH CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN 271

The resolution was not only rejected by the Party leadership,

but they had now sent a lily-white delegation to the congress to
fight for its repeal. The delegation consisted of Sidney Bunting,
Party chairman, his wife Rebecca, and Edward Roux, a young
South African communist leader who was then studying at
Oxford. Whatever their hopes were on arrival in Moscow, they
now seemed dejected and subdued. Having sat through the
discussion an the Afro-American question, they undoubtedly saw
the handwriting an the wall.
From the start, the South African delegation was an the
defensive, having been confronted by other delegates with the
inevitable question: Where are the Natives?
What answer could they give? It was evident to all that theirs
was a mission an which Natives could not be trusted, even those
"brought up in the old tradition," to use the phrase of Roux.
We Blacks asked about La Guma and they replied, "Oh, he was
here just a short while ago and had his say. We felt that the other
viewpoint should be represented."
After copies of the ECCI resolution an South Africa had been
distributed, the South African delegates took the floor before the
entire congress to challenge the line af the resolution. The South
African revolution, they argued, was a socialist revolution with no
intermediate stage, an argument which posed a sort of South
African exceptionalism.
The argument ran that South Africa was not a colonial country.
Bunting then contended that "South Africa is, owing to its climate,
what is called a 'white man's country' where whites can and do live
not merely as planters and officials, but as a whole nation of all
classes, established there for centuries, of Dutch and English
composition." 27
Bunting's statement came under attack an the floor of the
congress, notably by Bill Dunne. Bunting defended himself,
holding that his description was solely factual and was not an
"advocacy of 'White South Africa,' ... the very view we have
combatted for the last thirteen years ." 28
In essence, Bunting's views liquidated the struggle af the black
peasantry in South Africa. He declared that they were "being
272 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

rapidly proletarianized," and further that "the native agrarian

masses as such have not yet shown serious signs of revolt." Hence
the slogan of "Return the land to the Natives "would antagonize
white workers with its implication of a "black race dictatorship. "29
Rebecca Bunting spoke in the commission sessions. Addressing
herself to the land question, she denied that the land belonged to
the Bantu in the first place. Both the Bantu from central Africa and
the Afrikaaners coming up from Capetown had forced the
aboriginal Hottentots and Bushmen off their land. Thus, there was
no special Native land question.
The real question on Rebecca Bunting's mind, however, was not
of land, but of the position of the white minority in a Native South
African Republic. She came right to the point. Who will guarantee
equality for the whites in an independent Native Republic? Their
slogan, as you know, is "Drive the whites into the sea." We listened
tO' her in amazement and a laugh went through the audience.
The cat was finally let out of the bag, and a mangy, chauvinistic
creature it was. Manuilsky stepped forward, his eyes twinkling.
"Comrade Bunting has raised a serious question, one not to be
sneezed at. What is to become of the whites? My answer to that
would be that if the white Party members do not raise and
energetically fight for an independent Native Republic, then kto
znaet? (Who knows?) They may well be driven into the sea!" That
brought the house down.30
The commission finally affirmed the resolution for a Native
South African Republic. It was then passed onto the floor of the
congress where the fight continued and our position was even­
tually accepted.31

THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN THE COLONIES

Upon the adjournment of the Negro Commission, many of us

moved into the sessions of the Colonial Commission. We found
there no peaceful, harmonious gathering, but acrimonious debate.
Kuusinen's report and draft thesis on the Revolutionary Move­
ment in the Colonies was under sharp attack. The point of
 SIXTH CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN 273

controversy was the nature and objective of imperialist colonial

policy.
The draft thesis held that the colonial policy of imperialism was
directed toward "repressing and retarding" by all possible means
the free economic and cultural development of the colonies and
retaining them as backward, agrarian appendages of the imperial­
ist metropolitan countries. This policy, the draft thesis main­
tained, is an essential condition for the super-exploitation of the
colonial masses. Thus, it pointed out:
The objective contradiction between the colonial policy of
world imperialism and the independent development of the
colonial peoples is by no means done away with, neither in
China, nor in India, nor in any other ofthe colonial and semi­
colonial countries; on the contrary, the contradiction only
becomes more acute and can be overcome only by the
victorious revolutionary struggle of the toiling masses in the
colonies. 32
Accordingly, the primary question for the colonies was their
liberation.
The opponents of the draft thesis, on the other band, took the
view that imperialism had shifted its policy from one of hindering
the economic development of the colonies to one of promoting
industrialization under the joint auspices of the imperialists and
native bourgeoisie. This was shown particularly in the more
advanced colonies such as India and lndonesia, they argued.
It was the old social democratic theory of decolonization. It
implied that the main contradiction between imperialism and the
colonies was being eased; the colonial revolution was thereby
being defused. The main components of that revolution, the
national liberation struggle and the agrarian revolution, were
being eliminated through industrialization. Thus, the perspective
befare the peoples of those colonies was not national liberation,
but rather a lang-range struggle for socialism.
I was amazed to find that leading the attack on the draft thesis
was none other than our Comrade Petrovsky. He who had seemed
to be such a stalwart warrior against the right on the Afro­
American and South African question had now become the chief
274 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

advocate of the blatantly rightist "decolonization theory." But that

wasn't all. He had rallied behind him most of the British delegation
in his attack upon the draft thesis. It was quite a scandal!
Here was the British Party, in the homeland of the world's
greatest imperialist power, championing the idea that Britain was
taking the lead in decolonizing her empire. The tragedy was that
the British delegation seemed totally unaware of the chauvinist
implication of their stance.
It became clear to us in the discussion that the British Party's
position with regard to the colonies pre-dated the congress. This
was merely the first occasion for its full airing. Petrovsky had been
Cl representative to Britain and had played no small role in the
development of the "decolonization" theory.
The partisans of decolonization were utterly routed both in the
commission and on the floor of the congress. Lozovsky, Remmele,
M urphy, Manuilsky, Katayama and Kuusinen all took the floor in
rebuttal. In an early session of the congress, Katayama pointed to
the "criminal neglect" of the British Party with regard to lreland
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," he
said.
I was impressed by the speeches of Kuusinen and Murphy, the
sole Britisher who really spoke out against the position taken by
his delegation. Murphy accused his comrades of "presenting a
Menshevik picture of the colonial problem and drawing ultra­
leftist conclusions."
He assailed the contention that the British were out to
decolonize India jointly with the native bourgeoisie. "The need of
the hour in every colonial country," he continued, "is a strong
independent Communist Party which understands how to expose
the bourgeoisie and destroy their influence over the masses
through the correct exploitation of the differences between them
and win the masses in the numberless crises which precede the
revolutionary overthrow of all counter-revolutionary forces." 33
Kuusinen, a mild-mannered little man with a dry, rasping voice,
 SIXTH CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN 275

took the floor for the concluding blast. His summary, as I

remember it, was a two-hour long devastating attack on the
"decolonizers." He compared their position with that of the
notorious Austrian social-imperialist, Otto Renner, who had put
forth the perspective of world industrialization under capitalism,
postponing the world socialist revolution "till the proletariat will
become the great majority even in the colonies." Kuusinen pointed
out that such views "embellished the 'progressive' role of imperial­
ism .... as if the colonial world were to be decolonized and
industrialized in a peaceful manner by imperialism itself."34
Kuusinen further contended that "the development of native
capital is not being denied in the thesis." But rather than there
being an equal partnership in exploitation between the colonial
bourgeoisie and imperialism, "imperialism does in faet restrict the
industrialization of the colonies, prevent the full development of
the productive forces." It is under such conditions that the class
interests of the national bourgeoisie "demand the industrialization
of the country," and in as much as the national bourgeoisie stands
up for its class interests, "for the economic independence of the
country, for its liberation from the imperialist yoke,then it plays a
certain progressive role, while imperialism plays a substantially
reactionary role. "35
It was a brilliant and definitive presentation, I thought. Slowly
gathering up his papers, Kuusinen looked out over the audience.
"Yes, comrades," he said, "industrial development is taking place
in the colonies, but veryslowly, comrades,veryslowly. In fact,just
as slowly as the bolshevization of the British Party Politburo
under the leadership of Comrade Petrovsky."
He then picked up his papers and stepped down from the
rostrum. A momentary silence followed, then an outburst of
laughter and prolonged applause.36

PEPPER GETS HIS LUMPS

The struggle against the Lovestone-Pepper leadership faction
sharpened as the congress progressed. Their position of over­
estimating the strength and stability of U .S. capitalism and of
276 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

underestimating the radicalization of the workers came under

sharp attack. Our opposition group (Bittelman, Foster, Dunne,
Cannon and Johnstone) came down hard on Pepper, taking
advantage of his growing unpopularity at the congress. The attack
on the Lovestone-Pepper faction was supported by leading and
influential members of other delegations: notably Lozovsky,
president of the Red International of Labor Unions, Lominadze
from the Russian Delegation and Hans Neumann from the
German Communist Party.
It was a pleasure to see how they zeroed in on Pepper. At last, he
was getting his well-deserved lumps.
Lozovsky began by criticizing the CC of the CPUSA for having
"instigated opposition to the decision of the Fourth RILU
Congress on the question of new unions." But the thrust of his
attack was not on the position itself, but on the dishonesty of the
U,S. Central Committee which, on its arrival in Moscow, claimed
support for the RILU Congress decisions.
"Of course, every Central Committee has the right to declare its
disagreement with decisions adopted by the RILU, but there must
be the courage to declare this .... You cannot change a negative
attitude.. .into a positive one on the way from New York to
Moscow."
Lozovsky reiterated earlier criticism of the Party leadership; its
passivity in organizing the unorganized, its incorrect attitude
toward Black workers and toward the AFL. Theo he focused in on
Pepper, blasting his articles in The Communist ("America and the
Tactics of the Cl: Certain Basic Questions of our Perspectiv�,"
May 1928.)
"Comrade Pepper sees nothing but the power of America�
capitalism," he charged, "and discovering America anew although
this discovery was made long ago, completely passed over those
vital points in my articles on the eve of the Fourth RILU
Congress."
Theo, in a concluding salvo, Lozovsky accused Pepper of
having "frequently lost his bearings in European affairs ... Today,
as you have been able to convince yourselves from his speech here,
he is all at sea in American affairs. He could truly be named: the
 SIXTH CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN 277

muddler of the two hemispheres." 37

Lominadze also kept Pepper under constant attack during the
congress, scoring same devastating blows. He called Pepper's
speech "an advertisement for the power of American imperial­
ism," and stated that if it were printed in the paper, it could be
mistaken for a "speech of any of the candidates of the Repu blican
and Democratic parties." 38 He then blasted Pepper's articles in
The Communist whi<;:h listed the obstacles to the growth of the
Party. According to Pepper, Lomindaze said, "everything is
hindering us, capitalists are hindering us by exploiting the
workers, the existence of capitalism itself hinders us, and of
perspectives there are none at all." 39
As the historie congress was drawing to a close, Jack Johnstone
read into the minutes for our opposition caucus a statement
expressing our disagreement with the section concerning the
United States in Bukharin's draft thesis.
Among many points made in this statement, the most important
were that Bukharin failed to emphasize the instability of American
imperialism and recognize the contradictions confronting it; he
failed to condemn the opportunist errors in Afro-American work
and did not "state clearly that the main danger in our Party is from
the Right. " 40
This statement was signed by Dunne, Gomez, Johnstone,
Siskind, Epstein and Bittelman; significant was the faet that
Browder, Cannon and Foster did not sign.
Although he basically agreed with the statement and opposed
Lovestone and Pepper, Browder continued to hold his position of
not identifying himselffully with the opposition caucus. Cannon's
reasons for not supporting the statement were unclear at the time,
but within a few months, he had become the organizer and leader
of the Trotskyist movement in the U.S. I feel Foster was, at the
time, still assessing the political lines in the struggle against the
right deviation-and for this reason did not sign the document.

CONCLUSION

The Sixth Congress called for a sharpened fight of the working

278 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

class and the colonial masses against imperialism. It set the stage
for an all-out war against the main obstacle to the left turn. The
right accommodationists and their conciliators in all the parties of
the Cl-all provided ideological ammunition for this struggle. The
correctness of these documents were verified by the events of the
following decade-world economic crisis, the rise of fascism and
the outbreak of World War II.
The war against the right got into full swing immediately
following the congress. In the next few months the Lovestone­
Pepper cohorts were to expand further their right opportunistic
thesis of American exceptionalism, elements of which they were
developing before and during the congress.
In substance, the theory held that while the third period of
growing capitalist crisis and intensification of class struggles was
valid for the rest of the world, it did not apply to the United States.
ln.the U.S., capitalism was on the upgrade and the prospects were
for an easing of the class struggle. An era of industrial expansion
lay ahead.
The next few months were also to reveal Lovestone's ties with
the international right conspiracy led by Bukharin. This con­
spiracy, which we had only suspected during the congress, was
finally exposed at the November 1929 joint meeting of the
Political Bureau and Presidium of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union. From this point on, the
conspiracy of the "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites" wentunder­
ground to plot the overthrow of socialism in the Soviet Union. In
1937, Bukharin was convicted as one of the main leaders of this
treasonous conspiracy and was executed. 41
One of the most positive and enduring contributions of the
Sixth Congress was the program on the question of U .S. Blacks. It
pointed out that all the objective conditions exist in the Black Belt
South for a national revolutionary movement of Black people
against American imperialism. It established the essentially agrar­
ian-democratic character of the Black liberation movement there.
Under conditions of modem imperialist oppression, it could
fulfill itself only by the achievement of democratic land redivision
and the right of self-determination for the Afro-American people
 SIXTH CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN 279

in the Black Belt. Thus, the new line brought the issue of Black
cquality out of the realm of bourgeois humanitarianism. It was no
longer the special property of philanthropists and professional
u plifters who sought to strip the Black struggle of its revolutionary
implications.
The new position grounded the issue of Black liberation firmly
in the fight of the American people for full democratic rights and in
the struggle of the working class for socialism. The struggle for
cquality is in and of itself a revolutionary question, because the
special oppression of Black people is a main prop of imperialist
domination over the entire working class and the masses of
exploited American people. Therefore, Blacks and the working
class as a whole are mutual allies.
The fight of Blacks for national liberation, quite apart from
humanitarian considerations, must be supported as it is a special
feature of the struggle for the emancipation of the whole American
working class. It is the historie task of American labor, as it
advances on the road toward socialism, to solve the problems of
land and freedom which the bourgeois democratic revolution of
the Civil War and Reconstruction left unfinished.
The slogan of self-determination is a slogan of unity. lts
overriding purpose was and still is to unite the white and Black
exploited masses, working and oppressed people of all national­
ities, in all three stages of the revolutionary movement: from the
day-to-day fight against capital, through the revolutionary battle
for state power, to the task of building and consolidating socialist
society. The new line clearly stated that this unity could be built
only on the basis of the struggle for complete equality, by
removing all grounds for suspicion and distrust and building
mutual confidence and voluntary inter-relations between the white
masses of the oppressor nation and the Black masses of the
oppressed nation.
This line committed the Communist Party to an uncompromis­
ing fight among its members and in the ranks oflabor generally to
bum out the root of the ruling class theories of white chauvinism
which depicts Blacks as innately inferior. The mobilization of the
white workers in the struggle for Black rights is a precondition for
280 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

freeing the Black workers from the stifling influences of petty

bourgeois nationalism with its ideology of self-isolation. Only
thus, the program pointed out, can the historie rift in the ranks of
American labor be breached and a solid front of white and Black
workers be presented to the common enemy, American imperial­
ism.
Of course, weaknesses were inevitable in this first resolution.
The document was open to the interpretation that the emerging
Black nation was limited only to the territory of absolute majority
and that the slogan of right of self-determination was primarily
dependent on the continued existence of an area of absolute Black
majority.
The document should have made clear that one cannot hold
absolutely to the national territorial principle in the application of
the right of self-determination. 42 The very nature of imperialism
&,t:tacks and deforms the characteristics of nationhood. lmperial­
ism has, to a large extent, driven Afro-American people from the
rural areas to the cities of the north and South.
Another weakness was the underestimation of the nationality
factor in the struggle for equality and democratic rights in the
north. Thus, the program failed to advance any slogans for local
autonomy which would guarantee and protect the rights of Blacks
in the north. The need for such a program has been most clearly
demonstrated in recent years by the growth and development of
the movement for community control of the schools and police in
northern cities.
But on the whole, the resolution was a strong one. lts
significance was that it drew a clear line between the revolutionary
and the reformist positions-between the line of effective struggle
and futile accommodation.
The document was not a complete and definite statement, but a
new departure, a revolutionary turning point in the treatment of
the Afro-American question.
 Chapter 10

Lovestone U nmasked

Otto, Harold Williams and Farmer, having completed their

course at K UTV A, left the Soviet Union after the Sixth Congress.
The African, Bankole, remained for further training to prepare
him for work in the Gold Coast (Ghana). At K UTV A there was
another contingent of Black students from the U.S. Along with
Maude White, there were now William S. Patterson (Wilson),
Herbert Newton, Marie Houston and many more were to come.
I was then thirty and had recently completed my last YCL
assignment as a delegate to the Fifth Congress of the Young
Communist International (YCI). Along with my studies at the
Lenin School, I was continuing my work in the Comintern. I was
then vice-chairman of the Negro Subcommission of the Eastern
(colonial) Secretariat, and Nasanov was chairman. The sub­
commission was established as a "watch-dog" committee to check
on the application of the Sixth Congress decisions with reference
to the Black national question in the U.S. and South Africa.
According to our reports, the South Africans were applying the
line of the Sixth Congress and so we devoted most of our attention
to the work in the United States.
In the U.S., the minority girded itself for a long struggle against
the Lovestone-Pepper leadership, which had emerged from the
Sixth Congress battered, but not beaten. This leadership still
enjoyed the majority support within the Party. This was due
primarily to the widely prevalent belief within the Party that this
282 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

leadership was favored by the Comintern. Lovestone was loud in

his protestations of support for the line of the Sixth Congress and
attempted to pin the right-wing label on the minority. This
deception was successful for a short time.
The CI's support for Lovestone seemed confirmed by a letter
from the ECCI dated September 7, 1928, a week after the
adjournment of the Sixth Congress. The letter contained two
documents. The first was the final draft of paragraph forty-nine of
the "Thesis on the International Situation and Tasks of the
Communist International," which dealt with the U.S. Party. The
second was a "Supplementary Decision" by the Political Secre­
tariat of the Executive Committee of the Communist International
which denied the minority's charge that the Lovestone-Pepper
leadership represented a right line in the Party. 1
Paragraph forty-nine commended the Party, saying, "it has
d�played more lively activity and has taken advantage of symp­
toms of crisis in American industry .... A number of stubborn and
fierce class battles (primarily the miners' strike) found in the
Communist Party a stalwart leader. The campaign against the
execution of Sacco and Vanzetti was also conducted under the
leadership of the Party."
It also criticized the Party, stating that "the Party has not with
sufficient energy conducted work in the organization of the
unorganized and of the Negro Movement, and ...it does not
conduct a sufficiently strong struggle against the predatory policy
of the United States in Latin America." It concluded by stating,
"These mistakes, however, cannot be ascribed to the majority
leadership alone....the most important task that confronts the
Party is to put an efld to the factional strife which is not based on
any serious differences on principles... " The thesis pointed out that
while some rightist errors had been committed by both sides, "the
charge against the majority of the Central Committee of the U.S.
Party of representing a right line is unfounded."
The letter evoked great jubilation among Lovestone-Pepper
cohorts and was given widest publicity. A self-laudatory statement
from the Central Committee was published alongside the Cl letter
in the October 3, 1928, Daily Worker. It boasted that the letter
 LOVESTONE UNMASKED 283

proved that the Cl "is continuing its policy of supporting

politically the present Party leadership."
Of course we in the minority resented Lovestone's interpre­
tation of the CI's letter. We felt that the CI's criticisms of all
factionalism and its rejection of our specific charge against the
Lovestone-Pepper leadership were not equivalent to a political
cndorsement for Lovestone. The Comintern called for unity in the
Party on the basis of the Sixth Congress's decisions. We could
hardly expect the Cl to come out in support of the minority; it was
not a cohesive ideological force itself. The subsequent defection of
Cannon to Trotskyism further demonstrated the lack of ideologi­
cal cohesion in the minority. Then there was the hard faet that
Lovestone still held the majority of the U.S. Party.
Differences of principle between the minority and the Love­
stone leadership had begun to develop only a half year before at
the Fourth Congress of the RILU in March 1928. These arose over
the question of trade unions; but even here they were clouded by
factionalism and vacillation on the part of the minority. There
was, therefore, substance to the CI's charges that both groups had
placed factional consideration above principles.
About the same time, the Party was shocked by the defection of
James Cannon and his close associates Max Shachtman and
Marty Abern. They were ex_posed as bidden Trotskyists and
expelled from the Party. Cannon's treachery was first exposed by
the minority. This frustrated Lovestone's attempt to pin the label
of Trotskyism on our group. Nevertheless, Lovestone sought to
use the Trotsky issue to divert the Party from the struggle against
the main right danger. Later, the Comintern was to criticize the
minority for its lack of vigilance and its failure to disassociate itself
"at the right time" from Cannon's Trotskyism.
Lovestone was cocky and over-confident. He was looking
forward to wiping out the minority as a political force in the U.S.
Party at the next convention. Even the recall to Moscow of
Pepper, his main advisor and co-factionalist, shortly after the
return of the U.S. delegation, seemed not to shake his self­
confidence. (Pepper had originally come to the U.S. as a
Comintern worker and was thus directly subject to its discipline.)
284 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

His recall was undoubtedly an indication of Lovestone's declining

support within the Comintern. The Lovestone leadership support­
ed Pepper's protest against recall. The Cl did not press the issue at
the time and Pepper remained in the U.S. Shortly thereafter he
returned to his former position in Party leadership. But the
incident was not forgotten; it was to be added on the debit side of
the ledger at Lovestone's final accounting.
Then came the first blow. It was a letter from the Political
Secretariat dated November 21, 1928. The letter expressed sharp
displeasure at the factional manner in which Lovestone had used
the previous letter of September 7. It pointed to the non-self-criti­
cal and self-congratulatory character of the statements issued by
the majority in response to the September letter and expressed
emphatic disapproval of the claim by Lovestone that the Comin­
tern was "continuing its policy of supporting politically the present
leadership." "This formulation," the new letter asserted, "could
lead to the interpretation that the Sixth Congress has expressly
declared its confidence in the majority in contrast to the minority.
But this is not so."2
The letter also called for the postponement of the Party
Convention until February 1929. Clearly Lovestone had over­
reached himself. Coming on the eve of the U.S. Central Committee
Plenum, the letter threw the Lovestoneites into dismay and
consternation. How do we explain the sharpened tone of this
letter? It was a by-produet of the heightened counter-offensive
against the international right and its conciliators which had
gotten underway after the Sixth Congress of the Comintern. It was
a warning tremor of the quake that was to come.
Internationally the right had crystallized at the congress and,
immediately foliowing, it had burgeoned forth in the USSR and
other leading parties of the Comintern. In Germany it was
expressed in illusions regarding the social democrats and in
resistance to the organization of left unions. In France it was
reflected in opposition to the election slogan of "class against
class." In Britain it surfaced as a non-critical attitude towards the
Labor Party and a refusal to put up independent candidates.
This new thrust of the right was met by a strong counter-
 LOVESTONE UNMASKED 285

offensive. In Germany it led to the expulsion of the Brandler­

Thaelheimer right liquidationists. The Cl intervened there on
behalf of Thaelmann against the conciliators Ewart and Gerhart
Eisler.
In the Soviet Union, the right line of Bukharin and his friends
had encouraged resistance on the part of the kulaks and capitalist
elements to the five-year plan, industrialization and collectivi­
zation. They resisted the state monopoly on foreign trade. This
was reflected in mass sabotage, terrorism against collective
farmers, party workers and governmental officials in the country­
side, burning down of the collective farms and state granaries. In
the same year (1928), a widespread conspiracy of wreckers was
cxposed in the Shackty District of the Donetz Coal Basin. The
conspirators had close connections with former mine owners and
foreign capitalists. Their aim was to disrupt socialist development.
As a result, the counter-offensive could no longer be postponed,
and the CPSU was obliged to take sharp action against the
menacing right and its leaders-Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky.
The opening gun against the right came in October 1928, at a
plenary mteting of the Moscow Committee of the CPS U. At first,
Bukharin was not mentioned by name. Other meetings followed.
In early February 1929, at a joint meeting of the Politburo and
Presidium of the Central Control Commission (CCC), Bukharin
was exposed as a leader of the bidden right.
In the Comintern itself, the struggle unfolded after the Sixth
Congress. As Bukharin came under attack, his leadership became
increasingly tenuous. De facto leadership of the Cl passed to the
pro-Stalin forces and Bukharin became little more than a figure­
head. His lieutenants, the Swiss Humbert-Droz and the Italian
Celler, also came under attack.
Against this background, it was inevitable that Lovestone too,
would be smoked out in the open.
We students held what amounted to a dual-party membership­
enabling us to keep abreast of the situation in both the CPSU and
the CPUSA. From our vantage point in Moscow, we had a clearer
view of the developments in the Cl than did our counterparts at
home. As members of the CPSU we participated in the fight of the
286 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

school against the right. Molotov himself, Stalin's closest aide,

came to the school to report on the decisions of the February 1929,
joint meeting of the Central Commission of the CC of the CPSU
and the Moscow Party organization. Along with Bukharin, Rykov
and Tomsky were exposed as leaders of a clandestine right in the
Soviet Party.
Molotov had moved into the Cl immediately after the Sixth
Congress-a clear political move to offset Bukharin's leadership.
Therefore, he spoke authoritatively on the ramifications of the
international right and of Bukharin supporters in the fraternal
German, French, ltalian and other parties. He didn't mention the
CPUSA or Lovestone in his report, but we students did in
discussion on the floor foliowing his report.
The Lenin School was a strong point in the struggle against the
Bukharin right, just as it had been in the struggle against the
T,otsky-Zinoviev left. The school reflected in microcosm the
struggle raging throughout the Cl for the implementation of the
Sixth Congress line against the right opposition. Here we had the
right on the run. They were in the minority and at a decided
disadvantage from the start, for the entire school administration
and faculty from Kursanova (the director) down were stalwart
supporters of the Central Committee of the CPSU and its majority
grouped around Stalin.
Indeed, Lovestone had made a fatal mistake in allowing so
many able comrades of the minority in the CPUSA to go to the
Lenin School. He had undoubtedly already realized this. My
group was now in its second year. The students who had
preceded us, including Hathaway, were back in the U.S. and
Hathaway quickly became an outstanding leader of the minority
group upon his return.
We all had many friends in the Russian Party and in the Cl,
especially among the second level leadership-people important in
international work. Some of us were sent on brief international
missions-for example, the Krumbeins were sent to China and
also to Britain. Rudy Baker, another student from the U.S., was
also sent to China. A number of us American students were invited
to participate in meetings of the Profintern, the Anglo-American
 LOVESTONE UNMASKED 287

Secretariat and even the ECCI itself an occasions where American

questions were discussed.
I remember one such meeting that I attended as part of a group
from the Lenin School. I had been sent by the school to extend
greetings to a joint meeting of the Central Control Commission of
the CC of the CPS U and its Moscow organization held January­
February 1929, as mentioned above. Although I felt no need for an
interpreter, as my Russian was adequate, Gus Sklar was sent with
me. He was a fellow student and one of the few supporters of
Lovestone at the school. A Russian-American, he was completely
bilingual and a very affable fellow.
In my brief speech of greetings I hailed the victoriaus struggle of
the CPSU against the right and right-conciliators under the
leadership of Comrade Stalin as setting an example for us in the
American Party. "We have our own right deviationists," I said,
"Bukharin's friends in the American Party-the Pepper-Love­
stone leadership." I described the leadership's theory of American
exceptionalism and its underestimation of the radicalization of the
American working class and oppressed Blacks. I ended my speech
in a typical Russian manner: "Lang live the CPSU and its
Bolshevik Central Committee led by Comrade Stalin."
I listened attentively as poor old Gus honestly and accurately
translated my speech. It certainly was a factional speech but was
greeted with applause by the Moscow offo::ials and workers in the
audience.
Gus left the hall and proceeded immediately to the Lux Hotel to
inform Lovestone's crony, Bertram Wolfe. Wolfe had recently
replaced J. Louis Engdahl as U.S. representative to the Cl. He had
been sent by Lovestone in the hope af improving communication
between Moscow and the American Party.
I recall that he was particularly riled by this speech. Several days
later there was a meeting of the ECCI on the preparations for the
American Party's Sixth Convention to which a number of us
students were invited as usual. Wolfe, while giving his report,
voiced a number of complaints. Citing my speech, he questioned
the seeming lack of respect accorded the legitimate representative
of the Amei-ican Party. "How is it," he wondered, "that Haywood,
288 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

a mere student, extends greetings to the Soviet Party. Why is it that

he is given a platform at such an important meeting to launch a
factional attack on the U.S. Communist Party? Why is it that
when I report here, Lenin School students are always called on to
give minority reports?"
These complaints were met with stony-faced silence by the
members of the secretariat.

CURTAINS FOR LOVESTONE

From Moscow, we students followed events in the U.S. with

avid interest. Out line of communication was in good repair, as our
stateside friends kept us well posted. We knew a showdown was
imminent. Finally, the Sixth Convention of the CPUSA convened
on"March 1, 1929.
It was attended by two special Cl emissaries with pleni­
potentiary powers, the German, Philip Dengel, and the British
Communist leader, Harry Pollitt. They brought with them two
sets of directives: the first was public in the form of the final draft
of the CI's open letter to the convention, and the second,
confidential organizational proposals designed to ensure the
carrying out of the directives of the open letter. The contents of the
open letter were known; it had been circulated as a draft. We
students at the Lenin School had participated in the discussions in
the Cl in which the letter was formulated.
The open letter continued the balanced criticism of both groups
along the lines of paragraph forty-nine of the Thesis of the Sixth
Congress and the Supplementary Thesis. It held that both groups
were guilty of unprincipled factionalism; it pointed to the absence
of differences on principle between them. It said both were guilty
of right mistakes. However, there was something new in the open
letter. It pointed out that the source of the right mistakes of both
groups lay in the idea of American exceptionalism. "Both sides," it
continued, "are inclined to regard American imperialism as
isolated from world capitalism. as independent from it and
developing according to its own laws. " 3
 LOVESTONE UNMASKED 289

To us in the minority, it seemed the scales were now tipped

slightly but definitely against Lovestone. Though both sides were
guilty of this error, it was the Lovestone faction which had
articulated it into a full blown theory and which, I felt, held to it the
most strongly.
"This mistake of the majority is closely related to its great
overestimation of the economic might and the powerful technical
development of the United States." In this regard the open letter
emphasized that it is "absolutely wrong to regard this technical
revolution as a 'second industrial revolution' as is done in the
majority thesis." It was a "serious error," it stated, to infer that the
remnants of feudalism were being wiped out in the South and that
a new bourgeoisie with a new proletariat were being formed.
"Such overestimation (of the results of the development of
technique) would play into the bands of all advertisers of the
successes of bourgeois science and technique who seek to deafen
the proletariat by raising a lot of noise about technical progress
and showing that there is no general crisis of capitalism; that
capitalism is still vigorous in the U.S. and that thanks to its
extremely rapid development, it is capable of pulling Europe out
of its crisis." The letter contended that "technical transformation"
and rationalization lead "to further deepening and sharpening
of the general crisis of capitalism."
With regards to the minority it criticized Bittelman's "apex
theory " and stated that the "sharpening of the general crisis of
capitalism is to be expected not because American imperialism
ceases to develop but on the contrary it is to be expected because
American imperialism is developing and surpasses other capitalist
countries in its development, which leads to an extreme accen­
tuation of all antagonisms." The "apex theory" is the view that
U.S. imperialism had reached its peak of development and would
soon be brought to its knees, primarily by the weight of its own
internal contradictions.
The letter went on to condemn the factionalism in the Party,
stating, "so long as these two groups exist in the Party ...the further
healthy ideological development of the Party is excluded."
It concluded by putting forth four principal conditions essential
290 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

to the Party's "transformation into a mass Communist Party ... the

decisive significance of which neither the majority ... nor the
minority have understood." The four conditions were: "I) A
correct perspective in the analysis of the general crisis of capitalism
and American imperialism which is a part of it; 2) To place in the
center of the work of the Party the daily needs of the American
working class; 3) Freeing the Party from its immigrant narrowness
and seclusion and making the American workers its wide basis,
paying due attention to work among Negroes; and 4) Liquidation
of factionalism and drawing workers into the leadership."
Clearly the letter put an end to any basis for Lovestone's claim
of Cl support.
What then were the CI's proposals for a new, non-factional
leadership? These were contained in the confidential organiza­
tional proposals brought by the two Cl reps, Dengel and Pollitt.
Tqe proposals called for the temporary withdrawal of Lovestone
and Bittelman-considered the two main factionalists-from the
U.S. and requested that they be placed at the disposal of the Cl for
assignment to international work. It advised the appointment of
William Z. Foster as the new general secretary. Pepper was again
ordered to Moscow immediately and forbidden to attend the
convention.
Formal acceptance of the line of the open letter posed no
difficulties for an unprincipled opportunist of Lovestone's caliber.
In faet, the letter was endorsed by both factions. But the
organizational proposals, which threatened to snatch power from
Lovestone, were another matter. The crucial question for Love­
stone and company was to retain contol of the Party. With his
buge majority in the Party, he felt he was in a position to bargain
with the Cl. But the situation called for some fast footwork.
While loudly proclaiming full agreement with the political
directive and proposing its unqualified acceptance, he directed
his main thrust at the organizational proposals, claiming they
contradicted the political directive. Defying the Cl reps, he and his
partisans carried the fight to the convention floor. There they
launched an unbridled campaign of defamation and character
assassination against Foster, who was then favored by the Cl to
 LOVESTONE UNMASKED 291

rcplace Lovestone. The minority, on its part, charged Lovestone

with support of the deposed Bukharin.
Not to be outdone, the Lovestoneites supported a resolution
dcnouncing Bukharin and calling for his ouster as head of the
Comintem. Lovestone had no compunction in dumping his
former political patron.
Tempers flared; fistfights erupted on the convention floor. A
group of so-called proletarian delegates organized by Lovestone
sent a cable to the Cl pleading fora reversal of the organizational
proposals, and that the convention be allowed to choose its own
general secretary, subject of course to the Cl's approval.
The situation was so tense that the CI responded by conceding
the right of the convention to elect its own leadership-and thus its
general secretary-with the exception of Lovestone. They still
insisted on Lovestone's and Bittelman's withdrawal to Moscow.
Other than that, the convention with its Lovestone majority was
free to elect its own leadership.
Lovestone made his crony Gitlow general secretary. The Cl
also insisted on Pepper's return to Moscow. The convention ended
up with the appointment of several Lovestone loyalists as a
"proletarian delegation," which would trave! to Moscow and
plead the majority case in the Comintern. The members of the
delegation were mainly Party functionaries chosen for political
reliability. Led by the majority leaders Lovestone, Gitlow and
Bedacht, they went to Moscow to seek the repeal of Lovestone's
assignment to Moscow and his prohibition from CPUSA leader­
ship.

THE SCENE SHIFTS TO MOSCOW

Since the Sixth Congress, Lovestone had succeeded in covering

his flanks on the Afro-American question. He had proposed
Huiswood as candidate for the ECCI (of which he was now a
member). Five Blacks-Huiswood, Otto Hall, Briggs, Edward
Welsh and John Henry-were elected to the new Central Com­
mittee. Lovestone's "proletarian delegation" arrived in Moscow
292 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

on April 7, 1929, its ten members included two Black comrades,

Edward Welsh and Otto Huiswood. I assumed that the line-up of
leading Black comrades with the Lovestone crowd represented an
alliance of convenience and had little to do with ideology. Up to
that time there had been no serious discussion in the Party of the
Sixth Congress resolution on the Negro question.
Foster and Weinstone also arrived to place the case of the
minority before the American Commission. Weinstone had
switched over to the minority during the Sixth Party Convention
and now supported the Cl organizational proposals. Bittelman
was also on hand, having acceded without protest to his reassign­
ment to Comintern work.
The American Commission convened a week later, on April 14,
1929, in a large rectangular hall in the Comintern building. More
than a hundred participants and spectators were on hand. The
cqmmission itself was an impressive group and included leading
Marxists from Germany, Britain, France, Czechoslovakia and
China. Among the delegates from the USSR were Stalin, Molotov
and Manuilsky. There were also top officials of the Comintern and
Profintern: Kuusinen, Gusev, Mikhailov (Williams), Lozovsky,
Bela Kun, Kolarov, Kitarov (secretary of the YCI) and Bell.
Kuusinen was chairman of the commission and Mikhailov was
secretary.
Among the invited guests was our large contingent from the
Lenin School. I sat and looked over the "proletarian delegation" as
we waited for the meeting to start. 4 I knew Huiswood, having met
him at the founding convention of the American Negro Labor
Congress in 1925, but I didn't know Welsh-he was a newcomer,
having been in the Party only a few months.
There was Alex Noral, a farmer from the west coast whom I had
met in Moscow the year before. There he had worked in the
Crestintern (the Peasant International) representing American
farmers. There was Mother Bloor whom I had met previously; she
was a plump, kindly-looking elderly woman, formerly with the
Foster faction. She always had a twinkle in her eye and her gentle
look belied her true character as a staunch, fierce, proletarian
fighter. A veteran of many labor battles, she was an impressive
 LOVESTONE UNMASKED 293

agitator. I wondered what she was doing in Lovestone's crowd.

There were three others in the delegation whom I didn't know:
William Miller, Tom Myerscough and William J. White.
The commission sessions were to last nearly a month. Gitlow led
off stating the case for the majority. A large man, his face screwed
up in a perennial frown, he was an ill-tempered sort. He harangued
lhe audience for two hours, pouring invective on the minority,
particularly Foster. Boasting that the overwhelming majority of
the Party supported his group, he praised Lovestone, contrasting
the great (so-called) "contributions" of Lovestone with the
shortcomings and failures of Foster.
Woven throughout was the implication that the Party would be
destroyed if the Comintern's decisions were not reversed. He
attacked Lozovsky, Profintern chairman, as being virtually a
member of the minority faction. He wound up his pitch by calling
for a reversal of the CI organizational directives to the CPUSA
Sixth Convention, stating that the removal of Lovestone from
leadership would be a damaging blow to the Party.
Foster replied in a more moderate tone, scoring the Pepper­
Lovestone leadership and their theory of American exception­
alism as representing the right deviation in the U.S. Party. He
cxpressed outrage at the smear campaign launched against him by
the Lovestone group which he said was designed to line up the
Party against the Cl decisions. He called for support of the
Co mintern.
Bittelman spoke, emphasizing that the downward swing of the
U.S. economy was already taking place and life itself refuted the
Lovestone-Pepper optimistic prognosis. Wolfe complained about
discriminatory treatment by the ECCI; how his status as official
representative of the CPUSA was not recognized and how he was
excluded from important discussions on the American question.
At last, members of the "proletarian delegation" took the floor
and spoke, damning Foster and praising Lovestone. After speak­
ing, each one was questioned by members of the commission. The
questions were designed to bring out their understanding of the
issues involved. Nothing came out but a parroting of Gitlow and
Lovestone.
294 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

There was an undercurrent of belligerency and hostility to the

commission and the Comintern. Loyalty to Lovestone was a
hallmark of the delegation. I was particularly embarrassed by Ed
Welsh. He was a tall, handsome, young Black. Welsh, I learned,
had been in the Party only a few months, but was a staunch
henchman of Lovestone, who had placed him on the Central
Committee.
As he mounted the platform, anger, defiance and disrespect for
the commission was written plainly on his face. He launched into a
most vicious tirade against Lozovsky, the chairman of the
Profintern. Manuilsky, a Soviet member of the ECCI who was
sitting in front of the rostrum, was so shocked at the virulence of
this attack against a person of Lozovsky's stature that he started to
rise to his feet in protest.
Welsh waved him down with his hand, shouting, "Aw, sit down,
)'OU!"
Manuilsky flopped back in his chair in open-mouth amazement.
Tom Myerscough, a mine organizer from the Pittsburgh area,
also spoke. He was a tough-looking, blustering ex-miner. He
strode up to the platform and declared that he spoke three
languages, "English, profane, and today I'm gonna speak cold
tur key."
The running translation came to an abrupt halt and there was a
momentary confusion as the translators stumbled over this slang
term.
In the end, Myerscough's "cold turkey" turned out to be just
another rehash of Lovestone's charges.
The commission then brought up its big guns. Comintern and
Profintern officials-Gusev, Kolarov, Lozovsky, Bela Kun, Hel­
ler and Bell. Th�y continued with a balanced criticism of both
groups, but as the meeting went on more and more emphasis was
placed on the mistakes of the majority.
Lozovsky, his eyes twinkling, stepped up Joyously to the attack.
It was evident that he welcomed this opportunity to settle old
scores. He'd been subject to insults and slanders from Lovestone
and company for several years, and now the day of reckoning had
come. He directed his main barbs against Lovestone and Pepper,
 LOVESTONE UNMASKED 295

dwelling at length on the "strange case" of Comrade Pepper and

his fictitious travels.
Pepper was first called back to Moscow in September 1928; the
call was repeated in the organizational proposals ofFebruary 1929,
and he was ordered to take no part in the U.S. Party convention.
Pepper dropped out of sight, giving the impression that he was on
his way back to Moscow. Pepper's account of what then happened
was that he went to Mexico to seek transportation by ship to the
Soviet Union. When no satisfactory arrangements could be made,
he returned to New York and from there went on to Moscow. But
during the period he was supposedly in Mexico, he was seen in
New York at the time of the Party convention there.
Pepper had returned, we heard, but was not present at any of the
sessions. His case was before the International Control Commis­
sion. (An arm of the Cl, the ICC was composed of representatives
of seventeen parties. Its functions were to supervise the finances of
the ECCI and deal with questions of discipline referred to it by
member parties.)
Lozovsky dwelt at length on Pepper's mysterious travels; how it
was the longest trip on record from New York to Moscow, how he
had somehow managed the impossible feat of being in two places
at the same time. He spoke of how Pepper had faced a hig decision:
either to return to Moscow or remain in the United States-which
meant dropping out of the Party. It took him a long while to make
up his mind, Lozovsky observed.
Kolarov, a buge Bulgarian, took the floor. He referred to
Myerscough's "cold turkey" speech with heavy humor. He con­
ceded that he lacked the linguistic skills of some of his American
comrades, and since he didn't know anything about this "cold
turkey," he was just going to speak plain Russian.
Stalin made his first speech at the commission on May 6. Foster
had introduced me to him at the beginning of the commission
sessions. I guess Foster had wanted him to know he also had some
Black supporters. I had met Stalin before, but I doubt that the
great man had remembered me from our first meeting.
I was now to hear him speak for the first time. Garbed in his
customary tan tunic and polished black boots, he stepped to the
296 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

rostrum. Very informally leaning on the stand with a pipe in one

band, he began speaking in a calm, measured, scarcely audible
voice. We had to strain to hear him.
Stalin emphasized two main points, charging both the majority
and minority factions with American exceptionalism and unprin­
cipled factionalism: "Both groups are guilty of the fundamental
error of exaggerating the specific features of American capitalism.
Y ou know that this exaggeration lies at the root of every
opportunist error committed both by the majority and minority
groups." 5 Stalin followed this with a rhetorical question: "What
are the main defects in the practice of the leaders of the majority
and the minority? ... Firstly, that in their day-to-day work they, and
particularly the leaders of the majority, are guided by motives of
unprincipled factionalism and place the interests of their faction
higher than the interests of the Party.
-• "Secondly, that both groups, and particularly the majority, are
so infected with the disease of factionalism that they base their
relations with the Comintern, not on the principle of confidence,
but on a policy of rotten diplomacy, a policy of diplomatic
intrigue." As an example he cited the way in which both factions
speculated on the "existing and non-existing differences within the
CPSU," adding that they are "competing with each other and
chasing after each other like horses in a race. "6
He presented a six-point program for a solution to the
problems faced by the American Party. This included approval "in
the main" of the ECCI proposals to the Sixth Convention of the
CPUSA (except that relating to the candidacy of Foster); sending
of an open letter to all Party members "emphasizing the question
of eradicating all factionalism"; condemning the refusal of the
majority leaders to carry out the ECCI proposals at the Party
convention; ending immediately the situation in the American
Party in which important questions of developing the mass
movement, "questions of the struggle of the working class against
the capitalists," were "replaced by petty questions of the factional
struggle."
Stalin concluded by calling for a reorganization of the CPUSA
by the secretariat of the ECCI, with emphasis on advancing those
 LOVESTONE UNMASKED 297

workers "who are capable of placing the interests and the unity of
lhe Party above the interests of individual groups." Finally,
that Lovestone and Bittelman be made available for work in the
Comintern so that everyone clearly understands that "the Comin­
tcrn intends to fight factionalism in all seriousness." 7
Stalin's remarks indicated why the Cl considered the devel­
opment of the American Party so crucial and why it spent so much
time in resolving its problems: "The American Communist Party is
one of those few communist parties in the world upon which
history has laid tasks of a decisive character from the point of view
of the world revolutionary movement....The three million new
unemployed in America are the first swallows indicating the
ripening of the economic crisis in America ...I think the moment is
not far off when a revolutionary crisis will develop in America." 8
As Stalin was speaking, I looked across and saw Lovestone with
a leer on his face. Earlier on during a break in the session, I had run
into him in the corridor.
"Hello, Harry," he called to me, "you ought to come over to our
side; we could use a bright young fellow like you."
Rather taken aback at the man's gall, I said something like,
"You've got your own Negroes!"
"Oh, that trash!" he said with a deprecating wave of his hand,
obviously referring to Huiswood and Welsh.
Shocked by his crudeness, I was strongly tempted to ask how
much he thought I was worth, but I was afraid he might have taken
me seriously.
The session continued as Molotov followed Stalin, speaking
along basically the same line. He stressed the need to put an end to
the factionalism which had corroded the Party and held back the
growth of the working class movement. He concluded by calling
on the CPUSA to "get on a new track .... to ensure the liquidation
of factionalism not in words but in deeds, and to ensure the
transformation of its organization" so that the Party could
prepare itself for the sharpening struggles and crises to come.9
It was now clear from the speeches of Stalin, Molotov and other
members of the commission which way the wind was blowing. For
the majority, Stalin's speech was definitely an ill omen. Even
298 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

though the subcommittee of the commission (Molotov, Gusev and

Kuusinen) had not yet reported out a draft of the commission's
findings, Lovestone and company decided to force a showdown.
From this point on, they began a series of veiled threats against the
Comintern.
On May 9, three days befare the subcommittee's draft was
presented, the Lovestoneites issued a declaration which accused
the ECCI of supporting the minority against the majority and
"rewarding Comrade Foster with its confidence." Gambling that
they would stili be able to control the Party at home, the
Lovestoneites arrogantly challenged the leadership of the Cl. As a
cover for their own splitting activities, they accused the ECCI of
trying to split the American Party. 10
This was clearly the rhetoric of splitting, and was so considered
by the members of the commission. It could only be interpreted as
a 1:hreat to take the U.S. Party out of the Cl.
On May 12, the last meeting of the full commission was called
into session. Kuusinen, as chairman, reported the findings and
decisions of the subcommittee. Their report was in the form of a
draft address from the ECCI to the membership of the CPUSA
which had been circulated the day before. 11 Addressed over the
heads of the Party leadership, it singled out the Lovestone faction
for its sharpest attack. In this respect, it went much beyond
previous criticisms, such as those of the "Open Letter to the Sixth
Convention." It now said that exceptionalism was "the ideological
lever of the right errors in the American Communist Party,"
adding that exceptionalism:
found its clearest exponents in the persons of Comrades
Pepper and Lovestone, whose conception was as follows:
There is a crisis of capitalism but not of American capitalism,
a swing of the masses leftwards but not in America. There is
the necessity of accentuating the struggle against reformism
but not in the U nited States, there is a necessity for struggling
against the right danger, but not in the American Communist
Party.
The address charged the Lovestone leadership with "misleading
honest proletarian Party members who uphold the line of the
 LOVESTONE UNMASKED 299

Comintern," and "playing an unprincipled game with the question

of the struggle against the right danger." It termed Lovestone's
declaration of May 9 to be a "most factional and entirely
impermissible anti-Party declaration," stating that it "represents a
direct attempt at preparing a condition necessary for paralyzing
the decisions of the Comintern and for a split in the Communist
Party of America."
The draft address concluded with five points:
1) A call for dissolution of both factions;
2) Temporary removal of Lovestone and Bittelman from work in
the CPUSA;
3) Rejection of the minority demand for a special ·convention;
4) A call for the re-organization of the secretariat of the CC of the
CPUSA on a non-factional basis;
5) The turning of Pepper's case over to the International Control
Commission.
Presenting the draft address, Kuusinen appealed to the Love-
stone delegation:
We call upon the comrades to turn back from this road
unconditionally ....Our subcommission deems it necessary to
call quite definitely upon the delegation as a whole, and upon
every individual member of the delegation, to state with
absolute clearness whether they are prepared to submit to the
decisions of the Comintern on the American question and to
carry them out implicitly without reservations. Yes or no? It
will substantially depend upon your answer, what character
the measures of the Comintern upon the American question
shall eventually assume. From your declaration we see plainly
that it is no longer a question of factionalism of the leaders of
the Majority of the CC against the Minority group, but it is
already a factional attitude towards the Executive of the
Comintern. 12
The majority delegates, after provoking this showdown with the
ECCI, refused to give a straight answer to the question posed by
Kuusinen-whether or not they would accept the decisions of the
Comintern. They backed away, postponing a confrontation until
May 14. In the meantime, the majority leaders were secretly taking
steps to split the Party.
300 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

A cable drafted immediately after the May 12 meeting and

telegraphed from Berlin on May 15 was secretly sent to "care­
takers" at home, instructing them that the ".... draft decision means
destruction of Party.... take no action, any proposals by anybody."
The cable went on to state, "situation astounding, outrageous,
can't be understood until arrival" and "possibility entire dele­
gation being forcibly detained."
The cable then instructed the majority cohorts at home to:
"Start wide movements in units and press for return of complete
delegation ...take no action on any...CI instructions....Carefully
check up all units, all property, all connections, all mailing lists of
auxiliaries, all sub-lists, district lists, removing some offices and
unreliables. Check all checking accounts, all organizations, seeing
that authorized signers are exclusively reliables, appointing secre­
tariat for auxiliaries and treasury dis-authorize present signatory.
ln.<,tantly finish preparations sell buildings especially eliminating
(Weinstone) trusteeship. Remove Mania Reiss." 13

LOVESTONE'S MOMENT OF TRUTH

May 14, the night of the big showdown, finally arrived. The
Presidium of the ECCI-the highest body of the Comintern­
convened to hear the report of the commission and render the final
decision on the American question. The Red Hall of the Comin­
tern building was jam-packed with participants and on-lookers,
among them top flight leaders of the Comintern and Profintern,
political workers of both these organizations and leaders of many
affiliate parties.
We Americans constituted a sizeable group. In addition to the
ten delegates, it seemed as though Moscow's entire American
Communist colony was present. Asidc from our large Lenin
School contingent, which had attended the sessions from the
beginning, there were now students from the Eastern U niversity
(K UTV A): Maude White, Patterson, Marie Houston, Bennett and
Herbert Newton.
Lovestone's moment of truth had arrived. During the month of
 LOVESTONE UNMASKED 301

sessions, tension had been steadily building; we waited with eager

anticipation for the outcome of the final session.
Finally the meeting was gaveled to order and Kuusinen, the
chairman of the commission read its findings. They were in the
form of an address from the Executive Committee of the
Comintern to all members of the Communist Party USA. He
concluded by pointing out that the majority delegates had yet to
answer the question he had posed in the commission on the twelfth
of the month. The floor was then thrown open for discussion.
An angry, scowling Ben Gitlow mounted the platform and read
another declaration signed by the American "proletarian" dele­
gation. Although presented in a more diplomatic form than the
previous declaration, this new statement continued the same
factional and anti-Party attack. As later characterized by the
ECCI, it was a "direct attempt to nullify the decisions of the Cl and
pave the way for an open split in the CPUSA."1 4
The declaration opened with some formal phrases asserting the
adherence of its signers to discipline, loyalty and devotion to the
Comintern, and claiming to speak for the "overwhelming majority
of the membership" of the Party.
It went on to charge the new draft letter to be
Contrary to the letter and spirit of the line of the Sixth
(Comintern) Congress...our acceptance of this draft letter
would only promote demoralization, disintegration and
chaos in the Party. This is the only logical outcome of the line
of the draft letter.... There are valid reasons for our being
unable to accept this new draft letter, to assume responsibility
before the Party membership for the execution of this letter,
to endorse the inevitable irreparable damage that the line of
this new draft letter is bound to bring to our Party."15
The audience sat in stunned silence at this outright defiance of
the Comintern. It was a clear declaration of war.
Following Gitlow's tirade, members of the Presidium and
leaders of other parties took the floor and attacked the declar­
ation, pointing out its anti-Party splitting character. They pleaded
with the rank-and-file members of the delegation to remain loyal
to the Comintern. This plea was joined by a number of our Lenin
302 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

School students; Zack, Cowl and Lena Davis all spoke.

During this part of the discussion, Stalin took the floor for the
second time. In his usual calm, deliberate manner he delivered a
scathing blast at the majority leaders-Lovestone, Gitlow and
Bedacht. He characterized the May 9 declaration as "super­
factional" and "anti-Party." The May 14 declaration was "still
more factional and anti-Party than that of May 9th." 16 He called
the new declaration a deceitful maneuver, drawn up "craftily...by
same sly attorney, by same petty-fogging lawyer."
On tbe one band, tbe declaration avows complete loyalty to
tbe Comintern, tbe unsbakeable fidelity of tbe autbors of tbe
declaration to tbe Communist International.. .. On tbe otber
band, the declaration states that its authors cannot assume
responsibility for carrying out the decision of the Presidium
of tbe Executive Committee ....If you please, on the one band,
complete loyalty; on the other, a refusal to carry out the
" decision of the Comintern. And this is called loyalty to the
Comintern!... What sort of loyalty is tbat? What is the reason
for this duplicity? This hypocrisy? Is it not obvious tbat this
weighty talk of loyalty and fidelity to the Comintern is
necessary to Comrade Lovestone in arder to deceive the
membership? 17
It cannot be denied that our American comrades, like all
Communists, have the right to disagree with the draft of the
decision of the Commission and have the right to oppose
it.... But...we must put the question squarely to tbe members of
tbe American delegation: When the draft assumes tbe force of
an obligatory decision of the Comintern, do they consider
tbemselves entitled not to submit to that decision? 18
Stalin then dwelt at length on the evils of factionalism and his
barbs hit us in the minority as well as the majority. He held up the
American Party as an example of the havoc factionalism can
wreak. He stated that factionalism:
weakens communism, weakens tbe communist offensive
against reformism, undermines the struggle of communism
against social-democracy... weakens tbe Party spirit, it dulls
tbe revolutionary sense...interferes witb the training of the
Party in the spirit of a policy of principles ... undermining its
iron discipline ... completely nullifies all positive work done in
tbe Party. 19
 LOVESTONE UNMASKED 303

He warned the majority against playing "trumps with percen­

tages," and denied their claim of majority support in the U.S.
Party:
You had a majority because the American Communist Party
until now regarded you as the determined supporters of the
Communist International.. .. But what will happen if the
American workers learn that you intend to break the unity of
ranks of the Comintern?... Y ou will find yourselves com­
pletely isolated ....You may be certain of that,20
Stalin's speech really struck home to me. I had been a member of
11 faction for the whole five years I had been in the Party; I had been
rccruited simultaneously into the Party and into a faction. Thus,
when Lovestone took over, I had shifted from the Ruthenberg
!'action to the Foster faction, but after the past month of discussion
t here was no getting around the faet that factionalism had harmed
t hc Party's work. It was clear the Party could not make the turn to
t hc left and, in particular, develop the Black mavement without
t hc elimination of factionalism.
It was now after midnight, and the Presidium was finally called
to vote on the draft address. It was accepted with ane vote against,
cast by its only American member, Gitlow. A poll was then taken
ol' each of the majority delegates. Each was called to the platform
11 nd asked directly if he or she accepted the decision, yes or no?
There was a ripple of excitement when Bedacht, a majority
lcader and hitherto staunch supporter of Lovestone, broke with
t hc majority and declared that he accepted the decision of the
Prcsidium and would carry it out. He was joined by Nora!, the west
coast farmers' organizer.
Lovestone stood by the majority declaration. Six others,
i ncluding Welsh, answered that while disagreeing with the decision
t hcy would follow communist discipline and accept it until it could
hc raised at the next Party convention. Gitlow spoke last. He
dcclared that not only did he disagree with the decision, but that he
would actively fight against it when he returned to the U.S.
Again Stalin took the floor, evidently dissatisfied with the
hcdging of most of the American delegation. In a quiet voice he
pointed out that the American comrades apparently "do not fully
304 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

realize that to defend one's convictions when the decision had not
yet been taken is one thing, and to submit to the will of the
Comintern after the decision has been taken is another." He said it
involved the ability of communists to aet collectively and is
"summed up as the readiness to conform the will of the individual
comrades to the will of the collective."
He denied that the American Communist Party would perish if
the Comintern persisted in its opposition to Lovestone's line,
arguing rather that "only one small factional group will
perish." The Presidium decision, he concluded, was important
because "it will make it easier for the American Communist Party
to put an end to unprincipled factionalism, create unity in the
Party and finally enter on the broad path of mass political work." 21
The historie meeting was finally adjourned at 3 A.M. the
morning of the fifteenth. It was nearly summer and, as we passed
into the street, the early dawn shone on Moscow's gilded church
dornes. We Lenin School students headed towards our dormitory
off the Arbot. At first we were all quiet, each one engrossed in his
or her own thoughts, trying to piece together what had happened
and assess what it meant for the Party. Breaking the silence,
someone asked me if I had witnessed the incident between Stalin
and Welsh as we were leaving the hall.
"No," I said, "what happened?"
It seemed that on the way out, Stalin passed Welsh who was
standing in the aisle talking to Lovestone. Stalin, in a friendly
gesture, extended his band to Welsh, as if to say ''we have our
disagreements, but we're still comrades."
Welsh rudely rejected the proferred band and in a loud voice
said to Lovestone, "What the hell does that fellow want'?" There
was something strange about Welsh I didn't like. His attachment
to Lovestone seemed to transcend any communist or political
principles. I wasn't really too surprised at this incident, remem­
bering the earlier one with Manuilsky. But I was glad I hadn't seen
it.
The Lovestone drama was drawing to a close. The Comintern
moved with dispatch to head off the threatened split. On May 17,
two days after the Presidium meeting, the Political Secretariat of
 LOVESTONE UNMASKED 305

the Cl removed Lovestone, Gitlow, and Wolfe from all positions

of leadership in the Comintern and in the Party. At the same time
all three were detained in the Soviet Union to await the formal
disposition of their cases. Lovestone was warned that to leave the
Soviet Union without permission of the Comintern would be
considered a violation of communist discipline. Bedacht, Wein­
stone and Foster, who supported the address, were immediately
sent home. Mikhailov (Williams) was also sent to the States as Cl
rep.
The Comintern cabled the 3,000 word address to the CPUSA. It
was received by Lovestone's caretakers Minor and Stachel, who
immediately disassociated themselves from Lovestone. Along
with the leading ten man majority caucus, they pledged to follow
the Comintern decisions. The Central Committee met the same
day and unanimously called upon the delegates remaining in
Moscow to cease all opposition to the Cl.
On May 20, five days after the meeting of the Cl Presidium, the
address was published in the Daily Worker and became the
property of the entire Party membership. Lovestone's double­
dealing and deception were now apparent to all. The mandate
from the Sixth Convention had limited him to seek review of the
Cl decisions, not to defy them.
In the foliowing days, there was a flood of letters and resolutions
from former Lovestone supporters denouncing him, repudiating
the actions of their former leaders in Moscow, and uncondition­
ally supporting the Comintern. On May 24, Huiswood, Noral and
Mother Bloor, who were still in Moscow, issued a statement. They
maintained · that they still disagreed with the Cl, but had no
intention of resisting.
The Central Committee set up interim leadership composed of
William Z. Foster, Robert Minor, W.W. Weinstone and Max
Bedacht as acting secretary. The new leadership immediately
inaugurated a mass campaign to educate the rank-and-file Party
members about the political issues involved in the struggle. This
campaign swiftly swung the vast majority of the Party behind the
Cl. On June 22, the U.S. Party was notified by the Cl that
Lovestone had left Moscow in violation of the Comintern decision
306 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

and without meeting his promise to submit for publication a

political declaration retracting his opposition. Gitlow and Wolfe
had left befare. Upon his return to the U.S., Lovestone continued
his splitting maneuvers. By the end of June, all three were expelled
from the Party.
Thus Lovestone's attempt to split the Party failed completely. It
was repudiated by almost his entire foliowing. His boasted ninety
percent majority shrank to two percent. Only a couple hundred
bitter-end right wing factionalists remained loyal to him and were
expelled along with him.
The political and organizational line of the Sixth Congress was
soon vindicated. Scarcely three months after the expulsion of the
Lovestoneites came the stock market crash of October 1929-
signaling the onset of the great economic crisis which was to engulf
the entire capitalist world and exacerbate the already deepening
general crisis of capitalism. The crisis shattered the bourgeois
liberal myth of American exceptionalism perpetrated by Love­
stone and Pepper.
With the elimination of the six-year-old factional struggle and
its chief perpetrators, uni.ty was at last achieved. The Party was
now in a position to carry through the left turn called for by the
Sixth Congress, now capable of leading the great class and
liberation struggles of the next decade.
The political degeneration of the Lovestone leaders was rapid
and predictable. Lovestone formed a so-called Communist Party
Opposition Group, declaring its purpose to be the "re-establish­
ment of communism in America." He kept up the pretense of being
a Marxist-Leninist for a few years but when his anti-Party
campaign proved ineffectual, the group fell apart and Lovestone
embarked on an open anti-communist course.
He later placed himself in the service of the reactionary trade
unionists Matthew Woll and David Dubinsky, with whom he
helped sponsor the AFL-CIO anti-communist crusades. In 1963
Lovestone moved up to international prominence as director of
the AFL-CIO's Department of International Affairs and George
Meany's "Foreign Minister." The International Affairs Depart­
ment had its own network of ambassadors, administrators and
 LOVESTONE UNMASKED 307

intelligence agents and collaborated closely with the State Depart­

ment and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in reactionary
subversion of trade union movements in Africa, Asia, Latin
America and Europe. 22
John Pepper was expelled from the Party by the International
Control Commission, not for his political crimes, but for lying
with respect to the trip to Mexico which he never made and for
falsifying an expense account for a fictitious trip to Korea. He
wound up working for the Gosplan (State General Planning
Commission in the Soviet Union). I occasionally saw him on
Tverskaya on his way to or from work. What a come-down for
Pepper! From the glamor of international politics to a bureau­
crat's desk in the Planning Commission.
Edward Welsh remained Lovestone's man-Friday. Many years
later, in the early fifties, I ran into him on the street in New York
City. We immediately recognized cach other. Surprised and
curious, I asked if he were still with Lovestone. He said he was,
adding that he knew I was still with the Party. Neither of us had
more to say; there was an awkward pause, we said goodbye and
went our own ways.
Back at the Lenin School, we of the former minority were elated
by the decisions of the commission and the news of the complete
rout of the Lovestoneites at home. The political and organi­
zational decisions of the Comintern were accepted unanimously at
a meeting of American students held shortly af ter the close of the
commission. Factionalism was condemned and the unity of
American students achieved. It was at .this meeting that the last
two Lovestone holdouts, Gus Sklar and H.V. Phillips, finally
capitulated.

THE CRIMEA REVISITED

It was mid-summer and I was again on my way to the Crimea. I

looked forward with pleasure to revisiting the lovely peninsula
with its subtropical climate, lush beauty and of course, its warm
and friendly people. It would be a month until school began, and I
308 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

intended to spend half my time in rest and relaxation and the

remainder in "practical work," which in this case was further
observations on the national question.
Arriving in Sevastopol, I went immediately to the Party
headquarters where I presented my letter of introduction to the
local Party secretary. Where did he think would be the best place
for me to go, I asked. The secretary, a big bluff man of Russian or
Ukrainian nationality, was evidently very busy.
The anteroom was crowded with people undoubtedly with
more important business than mine. He, was polite and friendly,
however, and in what seemed to me a split-second decision, he said
he knew just the place for me-Alushta. It was a resort town on the
coast about twenty-five kilometers beyond Yalta, where I had
stayed two summers before. He offered to put me up in a rest home
where his Party organization had a number of places reserved.
1:J:1at sounded good to me, and I asked him if I would have an
opportunity to study the national question there.
"Oh yes," he assured me, "you'll find a number of nationalities
in the town there-Tartars, Greeks, Karaite Jews, Germans,
Ukranians and even some Russians! How many more could you
want?" he joked. And he wished me good luck as his secretary
called in the next person from the crowded anteroom. I waited
outside while she typed the letter of introduction and then asked
her for directions to the Coast Artillery Barracks.
It was a regiment "adopted" by the school in a special fraternal
relationship which included mutual visits and cultural exchanges.
We students also sent them literature and periodicals from our
respective parties. This relationship heightened their political
understanding of the international situation and the communist
movement abroad. For us it deepened our insight into the role of
the Red Army as a politically conscious guardian of Soviet power.
It furnished a concrete illustration of how the Red Army
functioned. I had met some of the members of the regiment in
Moscow, but this was to be my first visit to their barracks. I
arrived at the barracks which were situated on the outskirts of the
city near the coast and was greeted warmly by the political officer
of the regiment whom I had met in Moscow. He introduced me to
 LOVESTONE UNMASKED 309

other officers and men. I was then taken on a tour of the gun sights.
They were big coastal guns, elaborately protected behind earth
and concrete fortifications.
They were so expertly·camouflaged, that it was impossible from
the sea to tel1 anything was there. The buge guns were bidden in
underground implacements; each had its own electrical system
which raised it by elevator to firing position. After firing they
would drop back to their concealed pits. Under each gun was what
seemed to be a virtt!al machine shop.
They had observation posts established along the coast to
control the long range fire of the guns. They were proud of their
guns and especially proud of their new British range finding
equipment.
I asked how they had gotten hold of that, and an officer grinned,
"Well, that's what the British would like to know!"
After touring the gun sites, I felt Sevastopol was well defended
against any attack from the sea. But alas, the enemy attack on
Sevastopol thirteen years later-during the Second World War­
was not to come from the sea. It came from the land when the Nazi
armies smashed into the Crimea across the narrow Perekov
isthmus connecting the Crimea with the Ukrainian mainland. The
"hero city" of Sevastopol was to withstand the seige for 250 days
before it fell after putting up a stubborn defense which tied down
the powerful German army.
Next came the inevitable beced-informal conference-with
the army men. I was plied with questions about the United States,
conditions of Blacks, and Lovestone and the right deviation in the
Party. I gave them a rundown on the recent decisions, described
the participation of Comrade Stalin and the eventual expulsion of
the Lovestoneites. I was impressed by the high political level of the
questions they posed and the knowledge they displayed of
American affairs.
I stayed with them overnight and was invited to a big hearty
meal at their mess. Discussions continued until the bugle sounded
lights out. Next morning I was escorted to the station. From there,
we drove a lovely, scenic route to the town of Alushta.
Alushta was a beautiful little town by the sea with the Crimean
310 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

mountain range rising immediately behind it. I found myself in a

modem rest home on the outskirts of town with the beach
conveniently near-a perfect place to relax and rest. I met the
Party Sectetary of Alushta, a Tartar. He introduced me to some
members of the Party Committee and town Soviet. These
committees, I found, were representative of the various national­
ities and ethnic groups in the area.
But in general I found nothing particularly new on the national
question-it was similar to the situation in the Yalta area where I'd
been two years before. All groups were living in peaceful harmony
and the cultures of each were mutually respected. Stress was laid,
however, on the development of the Turkic language and culture
of the Tartars, who comprised the main nationalities of the
Crimean Autonomous Republic, about one-third of the total
population of the peninsula. After them came Ukrainians,
Russians, Greeks, Jews, and Germans in that order. The Tartars,
however, were regarded as the basic nationality and it was their
homeland dating from the days of the Golden Hordes. These were
sufficient factors for an autonomous republic to be set up for them
in 1921 with a Tartar president.
But after a couple of weeks in the Crimean paradise I became
restless and bored and longed to be back in the hustle and bustle of
Moscow. I felt isolated; I wondered what was happening in the
U.S. Party. I'd had no news of developments and had heard
nothing of the unfinished business of the Black national question. I
wanted to talk to Nasanov about plans for our Negro C-ommission
in the Comintern. Then, not least, I missed my wife Inushka.

RETURN FROM THE CRIMEA

I returned to Moscow a few days before the school opened in

order to spend some time with Ina. From her I learned that a
young Russian woman who worked in the chancellor's office at
K UTV A had returned from vacation in the Crimea and was
spreading malicious slander about me, portraying me as an
insatiable womanizer. The woman was known among the K UTV A
434 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

An effective struggle against reformist leaders and the winning

of the masses from their reactionary influence demanded once
and for all, that we seriously take up the task of building the LSNR
into an independent mass organization around the Party's pro­
gram of struggle for Black liberation.
Only on the basis of building up our work along these lines,
would we be able to weld that unbreakable unity of Black and
white toilers. My report lasted two hours and was considered a
highlight of the convention. I received a standing. ovation. By a
motion of a delegate from Michigan, my report-"The Road to
Negro Liberation"-was published in pamphlet form. I was later
placed on the Politburo as a result of this speech.

LOOKING BACK

Before the Party could take the lead in the Black liberation
movement, it had to demonstrate in action to Blacks that their
deeply rooted distrust of white workers-nurtured by race riots
and discrimination, and encouraged by established leaders-was
an obstacle to united action in the crisis.
The Party was able to do this because it had a comprehensive
program to deal with the crisis and the other groups did not. In
Scottsboro, the Party effectively discredited the legalistic strategy
of the NAACP-its reliance on courts, lawyers and liberal
politicians. It was in our day-to-day work in the northern ghettos,
the unemployment demonstrations, the campaigns against evict­
tions and police brutality, and in struggles to organize non­
discriminatory unions, that the Party won hegemony over the
local bourgeois nationalist organizations. Such movements were
springing up at the time in Chicago, New York, Baltimore, St.
Louis, Washington and Detroit.
These nationalist and separatist organizations exploited the
antagonisms which inevitably developed between Blacks and
white immigrants in neighboring ghettos. This was further exacer­
bated by the presence of white immigrant shop keepers in the
Black community.
312 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

letter from the school and knew what I was supposed to do," I
replied.
"He probably wanted to get rid of you," she pointed out. I
told her I saw no reason why practical work could not be combined
with leisure and added that my comrades had said the rumor had
been started there by a known scandal-monger. This cartoon, I
contended, was just an echo of that malicious campaign.
"Regardless, you shouldn't have allowed yourself to get caught
in such a situation," she observed.
I simmered down and we parted on a friendly note. But the
source of the cartoon remained a mystery.
As I remember I protested the incident to Maurice Childs, the
Party secretary of the English speaking sector and its repre­
sentative to the School Bureau. I didn't see how the cartoon could
have been posted without his knowledge, but he brushed the
matter aside.
�The foliowing day however, the picture was removed. I believe it
was Childs who told me that the artist was a young Mexican in the
Spanish language section of the school. I remembered two
Mexican comrades had entered the school some months before,
but like most of the students they were using pseudonyms.
But this was not the end of the story. A few days after the wall
cartoon incident I ran into Marie Houston, a Black K UTVA
student from the U.S. Marie had a grudge against me for taking
sides against her in some of her personal disputes with other
students at KUTVA. Apparently her grudges were many and
extended to most of her fellow students.
We exchanged cool formal greetings, and as I was about to pass
on she lashed out, "Hey man, I've been hearing all about your
carryings on in the Crimea-that's pretty bad stuff! What you
trying to do, scandalize our name?'' she demanded. "By the way,
when you gonna be cleansed? I'm sure gonna be there!" she
gloated.
She was referring to the Party cleansing ( chistka) which was
taking place that fall throughout the Soyiet Union. I didn't take
Marie's threat lightly. A few days before, during the cleansings at
KUTVA, she hurled a series of violent and false charges at
 LOVESTONE UNMASKED 313

Patterson and Maude White. They were kept on the stand for
hours attempting to refute them. In Patterson's case, his cleansing
had taken up one whole evening and was extended to the next.
William Weinstone, then official Party representative to the
Comintern and also a member of the International Control
Commission, finally interceded to get Pat off the hook. A curious
thing about all this was that to my knowledge Marie was never
called to account for her slanderous accusations.
The day of the Party cleansings at the Lenin School finally
arrived. The entire collective including the rector, the scrub­
woman, maintenance personnel, faculty, clerical workers and the
entire student body gathered in the school auditorium.
The chairman of our cleansing committee was none other than
the famous old Bolshevik Felix Kohn, member of the Central
Control Commission of the CPSU. He had been a member of one
of the first Marxist groups in Russia and a friend of Lenin-a
person with an unchallengeable record. He was a thin elderly man,
stem looking, with a shaggy goatee and flashing eyes under
bristling eyebrows. He impressed me as a strict disciplinarian.
He opened the meeting, called attention to the solemnity of the
occasion, and then outlined the task, purpose and the procedure to
be followed. It was a process of purification, he said, designed to
purge from our ranks all noxious elements, factional trouble­
makers and self-seeking careerists which a Party in power
inevitably attracts to it. Party members were to be examined on the
basis of both their individual work assignments and their political
commitment as members of the CPSU.
In other words it was to be a scrutiny of both conduct and
conviction. All present, whether Party or non-Party, had the duty
to come forth if they had criticisms or charges against any Party
member. Indeed, it was permissible for people outside the school,
anyone who had a complaint against any Party member, to
participate. The Party member on the stand was required to give
an autobiography-when, how and why he or shejoined the Party,
and what he or she was doing to merit renewing their membership.
In a stem voice, eyes flashing, Kohn warned: "Woe betide anyone
who makes false statements or attempts to in any way deceive this
314 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

commission!"
He then listed the penalties which could be given to Party
members for various infractions. First there was a reprimand for
minor offenses, a censure for more grave ones, then strict censure
with a warning and expulsion as a last -resort.
We all sat tensely as the secretary of the commission began to
call students to the stand. The commission had five members­
sent by the Party from outside the school. Each Party member
upon taking the stand was required to turn his or her membership
card over to the commission, to be returned only if the commission
felt that he or she had answered all questions to its satisfaction. In
other words the commission decided whether you retained the
right to remain in the Party.
Eventually my turn came. I must admit I was rather nervous. I
took the stand and sketched my background and Party exper­
ieq,ces, what I got out of study at the school, what I intended to do
when I returned home. No one rose to criticize me. And to my
great relief, Marie didn't even show up. In faet, Kursanova
commended me as a good student and spoke favorably about my
studies on the national question.
The cleansing continued for several exciting days but no serious
infraction of Party discipline or lack of Party loyalty was found
among our English-speaking group. The cleansing, however, was a
more serious matter among students from underground parties in
fascist or semi-fascist countries. As I remember, a police agent was
flushed out in the Polish group.
But who had drawn that cartoon? This mystery was not to be
cleared up until forty years later, although I had always had some
faint suspicion as to the artist's identity. I attended a birthday
party for the world-renowned Mexican muralist Davido Si­
quieros. As a result of an international protest movement, he had
just been released from prison where he and other revolutionaries
had been incarcerated, charged with leading and fomenting the
National Railway Strike of 1959.
It was a festive occasion in typical Mexican style, complete with
fireworks and a round-the-clock open house. Hundreds of com­
rades, friends and neighbors gathered to congratulate the great
 LOVESTONE UNMASKED 315

artist. As I was introduced to him by a friend a thought suddenly

occurred to me: Had he not been a student at the Lenin School in
1929, I asked.
"Yes," he responded, looking at me curiously. "Yes, I was
there."
"Were you the one who drew a cartoon for the school wall
newspaper titled 'Comrade Haywood doing practical work in a
Crimean Rest Home?' "
His eyes lit up with a gleam of recognition. "Yeah, that was me."
"Well," I said, "l'm that Harry Haywood." We both burst out
laughing and he proceeded to tel1 the others around us the whole
story.
"Who was the other young Mexican with you at the school?'' I
asked.
"Oh, that was Encina." (Encina was the General Secretary of the
Mexican Communist Party.) "He's still in jail," Sequieros added
sadly.
 Chapter 11

My Last Year
in the Soviet Union
Following Lovestone's expulsion from the Party in June of
1929, Nasanov and I continued our work in the Negro Com­
mission of the Comintern. We both loved the work which involved
a tontinuous check on the press of the U.S. Party (then the Daily
Worker and The Communist); the minutes and resolutions of the
Party's leading committees; and other labor and progressive
publications in which Party members were active.
This included Labor Unity, the organ of the TUUL, and Labor
De/ender which was put out by the International Labor Defense.
This material was to be found in the Comintern Information
Department whose American representative at the time, as I
remember, was A. G. Bosse.
As I acquainted myself with the material, I became pleased and
excited at the advances the Party had made in work among Blacks.
The U.S., it seemed, had entered the third period with a bang-a
rapid decline of the economy and growth of mass unemployment.
Most impressive was the widespread resistance of workers to
"rationalization" (wage cutting, stretch-out and speed-up), and the
anti-union terror campaign of employers backed by the federal,
state and local governments. The resistance was reflected in the
needle trades, mining, automobile and textile industries.
All this was two months befare the October 1929 stock market
crash and the anset of the economic crisis which was to embrace
the whole capitalist world. The Party, now freed from faction-
 MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVIET UNION 317

alism, had united on the basis of the Comintern Address and was
vigorously moving forth to organize and lead the mounting
struggles of the workers.
Nasanov and I felt the hest evaluation of the Party's work
among Blacks was put forward by Cyril Briggs in a series of articles
which appeared in the June, July and September 1929 issues of
The Communist. 1
Briggs characterized the Sixth Congress of the Cl as a major
turning point for the Party in carrying out a revolutionary
program in Afro-American work. Using the struggle against white
chauvinism as a barometer of the effectiveness of the Party's work
in this area, he pointed out that "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." 2
Before the Sixth Congress there were only a handful of Blacks in
the Party, but since then the Central Committee had set up a
National Negro Department to help in the formulation of policies
and in the direction of the work nationally. District and section
Negro committees were formed in most areas of Party concentra­
tion.
At the Sixth Party Convention, Black comrades were elected to
the highest body in the Party, the Central Committee, and to the
National Executive Committee of the Young Communist League.
They were also elected to the Party's Politburo, the National
Bureau of the League, and added to district committees and
section committees. Another step forward was registered at the
founding convention of the TUUL in September 1929; of the 800
plus delegates, 68 were Black.
Nevertheless, this was only a beginning. White chauvinism was
still pervasive and represented a powerful influence in the Party.
Briggs · then turned a critical spotlight on the most dramatic
struggle of the period-the strike of Southern textile workers at
Gastonia, North Carolina, which took place in the spring of 1929.
This strike-led by the Party and the National Textile Workers
Union, an affiliate of the TUEL-was the Party's first mass
318 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

activity in the South. It was therefore a test for the new line on the
unions and on the Afro-American question.
The Southern textile industry-and Gastonia's mills were no
exception-was traditionally a white industry with Blacks about
five percent of the work force. The whites were new proletarians
from the mountains and farms, employed by northern mill owners
who had moved their mills south to exploit the cheap and
unorganized labor of the region. In Gastonia, these workers
responded to their exploitation by striking against "stretch-out"
and starvation conditions.
The bosses used the old battlecry of white supremacy to divide
the Black and white workers and try to break the strike. It created
an atmosphere of reeking race hatreds and suspicion, and this was
the state of things when the National Textile Workers Union
launched its organizing campaign in Gastonia.
.• The mill owners and their local myrmidons-the sheriff, police,
militia, foremen, managers and extra-legal arms of the KKK­
sought to maintain the status quo threatened by the strikers. The
strike speedily took on a political character, reaching the point of
armed conflict.
The heroic woman strike leader, Ella May Wiggins, was pursued
and shot down in broad daylight. The Gastonia chief of police was
killed and several deputies wounded when they attacked a tent
colony which strikers had formed after being evicted from their
company-owned homes. Sixteen strike leaders, including some
communists, stood trial for the murder of the police chief.
The reign of terror that ensued made the situation extremely
difficult for our organizers. Clearly there could be no retreat from
the principle of organizing Blacks and whites into one union on the
basis of complete equality, yet there were some union and Party
leaders who wanted to back down in the face of the prevailing
chauvinism among the white workers.
The Central Committee firmly laid down the line against such a
retreat. Following the line of the ECCI resolution, it insisted that
the new union embrace all nationalities and colors and that
separate unions for Blacks were to be organized only in those
trades from which they were barred by the reactionary policies of
 MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVIET UNION 319

white union leaders. After their initial wavering, the local leader­
ship rallied to the correct line. Blacks and whites were organized
into the same union.
Testimony to this is a dramatic incident involving my brother
Otto. I hadn't heard much of Otto since he'd returned to the States,
only that he'd been placed on the Central Committee at the Sixth
Convention and was working in the Negro Department of the
TUUL. As TUUL organizer, he had been sent to Gastonia. He was
at nearby Bessemer City at the time of the attack on the strikers'
tent colony and the shooting of the police chief. Otto was unaware
of what had happened and that the stage had been set for his
lynching should he return.
As an article in the Daily Worker described the incident:
Otto Hall...was on his way... to Gastonia on the night of the
raid ... the white workers, realizing the grave danger to which
Hall was exposed if he happened to get into Gastonia that
night, formed a body guard and went to meet Hall and
warned him to keep away. They met Hall two miles out of
town and took him in a motorcar to Charlotte where they
collected enough money among themselves to pay his railroad
fare to New York. No sooner had Hall embarked on thetrain
a mob broke into the house where he hid befare his departure.
It was only timely action on the part of these white workers
that saved the life of their Negro comrade. 3
The Gastonia struggle signaled a new period in the Party's trade
union work-a period which characterized the thirties overall.
Under the leadership of the Commuifist Party and our left trade
unions, Black and white workers were organized into the same
unions on the basis of equality and in the common fight against the
capitalists. The Party was able to mobilize mass support for the
strike and the sixteen leaders framed for murder, in cities
throughout the South and the country as a whole. Otto personally
spoke in some twenty-seven cities.
But what was to be said about the needle trades union, long a
bastion of the left? Briggs pointed out the "criminal" apathy of the
comrades working in this area. The Needle Trades Industrial
Workers' Union only organized Blacks in times of strike, and as a
320 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

result, had very few Black members. While the union had special
departments and scores of functionaries for Greek, ltalian, Jewish
and other immigrant workers, there was no Afro-American
department and not a single Black functionary. This, at a time
when in New York alone there were several thousand Black needle
trades workers.
Comrades in the Miners Union made a similar underestimation
of work among Afro-Americans. This union, operated in an
industry which had a large number of Black miners-in some
fields even out-numbering the white workers-but had not yet
appointed a single Black organizer. In Illinois District Eight (my
old district), there occurred a particularly blatant case of white
chauvinism. William Kruse, the district organizer, refused to share
the pool of funds available for wages with Comrade Isabel, the
Black functionary. He persisted in this practice despite the
de mands of the National Secretariat that the funds be shared
equitably. 4
Despite the numerous examples of white chauvinism, there was
no doubt that the Party was making advances in regards to Negro
work. In faet, it was precisely because of these advances that
chauvinistic practices which hitherto had gone under wraps were
brought out into the open and attacked. Briggs' series of three
articles was the sharpest attack on white chauvinism ever pub­
lished by the Party.
Their publication reflected that despite the many shortcomings
in our work, there was a growing awareness in the Party leadership
of the seriousness of the question. The rapid deterioration of
economic conditions affecting both Black and white workers
allowed no complacency. If the Party was going to play a leading
role in the coming struggles, it would have to carry on a continuous
struggle against white chauvinist ideology and practices.
I was heartened by Briggs's articles. At the same time, however, I
was somewhat disturbed. While Briggs evoked the Comintern
resolution on the Negro question in his blast against white
chauvinism, he was curiously silent on the theory and program
underlying the resolution. It was certainly true, as Briggs said, that
among revolutionary white workers, white chauvinism was often
 MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVJET UNION 321

manifested in the "general underestimation of the role of the Negro

masses in the revolutionary struggle." But to say no more than
that was to avoid the essence of the question.
What were the ideas and theories fueling this underestimation?
Clearly they were to be found in the remnants of Lovestone's line
which still clung to the Party-the hangovers of the social
democratic view which considered the fight against the special
oppression of Blacks to be a diversion from the class struggle.
The new line was a drastic break with the social chauvinist
doctrines of the past, and in it the Party had a mighty weapon in
the fight against white chauvinism and petty bourgeois nation­
alism of the Garvey stripe. But the new line could not simply be
declared, it had to be fought for.
As months passed, Nasanov and I searched in vain through the
Party press and documents for further discussion of the 1928
resolution. The resolution of the October 1929 plenum of the
Central Committee had noted the increasingly important role
the Black proletariat played in building the new unions. lts
Program of Action called for "merciless struggle against white
chauvinism and any attempt towards segregating the Negro
workers." 5 Following the plenum, the National Agitprop Depart­
ment had promised to publish a special discussion bulletin on the
Afro-American question. None ever materialized, however.
By the beginning of 1930, it was becoming clear to us that there
was not only confusion in the Party, but definite opposition to the
new line.
As if to confirm our misgivings, the February 1930 issue of The
Communist contained an article by veteran Black communist
Otto Huiswood, titled "World Aspects of the Negro Question." It
was the first article in a year to broach the theoretical aspects of the
question, but it was a direct challenge to the line of the Comintern
Sixth -Congress.
Huiswood sought to establish a difference in character between
the oppression of Blacks in Africa and the West Indies, and those
in the USA. The question in Africa and the West Indies, he
contended, was a national question, but in the United States, it was
a race question. According to Huiswood, the Black minority in the
320 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

result, had very few Black members. While the union had special
departments and scores of functionaries for Greek, Italian, Jewish
and other immigrant workers, there was no Afro-American
department and not a single Black functionary. This, at a time
when in New York alone there were several thousand Black needle
trades workers.
Comrades in the Miners Union made a similar underestimation
of work among Afro-Americans. This union, operated in an
industry which had a large number of Black miners-in some
fields even out-numbering the white workers-but had not yet
appointed a single Black organizer. In Illinois District Eight (my
old district), there occurred a particularly blatant case of white
chauvinism. William Kruse, the district organizer, refused to share
the pool of funds available for wages with Comrade Isabel, the
Black functionary. He persisted in this practice despite the
demands of the National Secretariat that the funds be shared
equitably. 4
Despite the numerous examples of white chauvinism, there was
no doubt that the Party was making advances in regards to Negro
work. In faet, it was precisely because of these advances that
chauvinistic practices which hitherto had gone under wraps were
brought out into the open and attacked. Briggs' series of three
articles was the sharpest attack on white chauvinism ever pub­
lished by the Party.
Their publication reflected that despite the many shortcomings
in our work, there was a growing awareness in the Party leadership
of the seriousness of the question. The rapid deterioration of
economic conditions affecting both Black and white workers
allowed no complacency. If the Party was going to play a leading
role in the coming struggles, it would have to carry on a continuous
struggle against white chauvinist ideology and practices.
I was heartened by Briggs's articles. At the same time, however, I
was somewhat disturbed. While Briggs evoked the Comintern
resolution on the Negro question in his blast against white
chauvinism, he was curiously silent on the theory and program
underlying the resolution. It was certainly true, as Briggs said, that
among revolutionary white workers, white chauvinism was often
 MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVJET UNION 321

manifested in the "general underestimation of the role of the Negro

masses in the revolutionary struggle." But to say no more than
that was to avoid the essence of the question.
What were the ideas and theories fueling this underestimation?
Clearly they were to be found in the remnants of Lovestone's line
which still clung to the Party-the hangovers of the social
democratic view which considered the fight against the special
oppression of Blacks to be a diversion from the class struggle.
The new line was a drastic break with the social chauvinist
doctrines of the past, and in it the Party had a mighty weapon in
the fight against white chauvinism and petty bourgeois nation­
alism of the Garvey stripe. But the new line could not simply be
declared, it had to be fought for.
As months passed, Nasanov and I searched in vain through the
Party press and documents for further discussion of the 1928
resolution. The resolution of the October 1929 plenum of the
Central Committee had noted the increasingly important role
the Black proletariat played in building the new unions. lts
Program of Action called for "merciless struggle against white
chauvinism and any attempt towards segregating the Negro
workers." 5 Following the plenum, the National Agitprop Depart­
ment had promised to publish a special discussion bulletin on the
Afro-American question. None ever materialized, however.
By the beginning of 1930, it was becoming clear to us that there
was not only confusion in the Party, but definite opposition to the
new line.
As if to confirm our misgivings, the February 1930 issue of The
Communist contained an article by veteran Black communist
Otto Huiswood, titled "World Aspects of the Negro Question." It
was the first article in a year to broach the theoretical aspects of the
question, but it was a direct challenge to the line of the Comintern
Sixth -Congress.
Huiswood sought to establish a difference in character between
the oppression of Blacks in Africa and the West Indies, and those
in the USA. The question in Africa and the West Indies, he
contended, was a national question, but in the United States, it was
a race question. According to Huiswood, the Black minority in the
322 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

U.S. lacked the requisites of a nation. It had "no distinct language

and culture from the dominant racial group...its only distin­
guishing feature is its racial origin. " 6
Thus, Huiswood pulled the Afro-American question out of the
category of national-colonial questions and dumped it back into
the muddy waters of "race question." He had fallen back upon Sile
and his "social race" theory, which asserted the primacy of the race
factor, race ideologies, in the oppression of U.S. Blacks.
By making race primary, Huiswood's article denied the validity
of self-determination as a slogan for Black liberation. It rejected th�
concept of Blacks in the South as an oppressed nation, and
therefore rejected the perspective which called for the develop"
ment of a national revolutionary movement based on the masses of
Black soil-tillers and workers in that region.
Huiswood's article demanded an answer. Nasanov and I felt
that it could in the end serve a positive purpose in that our reply
afforded an excellent opportunity to clarify a number of areas of
misunderstanding and confusion. Our response could be the
vehicle to finally settle accounts with Sik and demolish his "social
race" theory. Nasanov had already written a polemic against Sik
exposing the latter's incredible ignorance of Lenin's position on
the national question. This was to be published in the April issue of
The Communist. 7 I would take on Huiswood directly.
First I answered his assertion that Blacks in the U.S. had no
special culture. "Negroes have a culture which reflects their whole
historical development as a people in the U.S.," I pointed out.
"And as to separate language...this is not one of the prerequisites
of the nation." 8 I referred to Stalin, who said: "A common
language for every nation, but not necessarily different languages
for different nations." 9
But was there in faet a difference in the character of oppression
between Blacks in the U.S., on the one band, and in Africa and the
West Indies on the other? I concluded that there was no such
difference. It was clear to me, of course, that Blacks in the U.S.
were not a colony in the formal sense of the term. Unlike a colony,
they were not separated geographically from the metropolitan
country.
 MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVJET UNION 323

There was, however, no substantive difference in the character of

Black oppression in the United States and the colonies and semi­
colonies. In both instances, imperialist policy was directed to­
wards forcibly arresting the free economic and cultural devel­
opment of the people, towards keeping them backward as an
essential condition for super-exploitation.
In attempting to prove a difference in the character of op­
pression, Huiswood wound up downgrading the anti-imperialist
content of the Black liberation struggle in the United States.
Since the Sixth Congress I had given considerable thought to
the race factor and its role in the question of U.S. Blacks.
Certainly it was clear that race played an important role in the
Afro-American guestion, but it was only one element and not
the central question itself.
Of course, I pointed out: "It would be a serious mistake to
underestimate the profound social role played by these theories.
Arising first as a moral sanction for a national colonial policy,
these dogmas become fixed in laws, in tum influence politics and
in this manner react again upon the social and economic basis,
sharpening and deepening the exploitation of subject peoples and
perpetuating the existing social relations." 10
In reality, I wrote, the racial persecution of Blacks was a
particular form and device of national oppression. The racial
element was a peculiarity of the question of U .S. Blacks. Nowhere,
with the exception of apartheid in Southem Africa, had race been
made to play such a decisive role. Nowhere had it served for such a
long period as an instrument of ruling class oppression. The
prominence of racial ideologies in Black oppression in the U.S.
arose from the necessity of the white rulers to maintain the
degradation of Blacks in the midst of the most modem and
advanced capitalist society in the world.
Under these conditions the bourgeois rulers had to pursue "the
most energetic policy in order to keep up the bar of separation
between white · and Negroes, i.e., retard the process of assimilation
and thus preserve the conditions for the super-exploitation of the
latter." 11
In the absence of pronounced cultural distinctions such as
324 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

language or religion, I argued, the "racial visibility" of U.S. Blacks

was used by bourgeois social theorists as the most convenient
factor upon which to erect spurious theories of white supremacy,
in order to set them apart from the masses of the white population
as permanent objects of scorn.
Sik, (and thus Huiswood) on the other band, counterposed the
race question to the national question. They asserted that Blacks
were separated from the dominant white race solely by "artificial
racial divisions and race oppression arising on this basis."
Sik compounded these errors when he reduced the whole
national question to a struggle between competing bourgeoisies
for markets:
Among American Negroes there is no developing industrial
bourgeoisie, hindered in its economic development the
struggle of which (for its free economic development) for the
winning of internal markets and for the removal of obstacles
-• standing in the path of economic progress, could give these
national movements a progressive character. 12
But the national question, as Stalin pointed out, had undergone
changes from that earlier period when it first appeared as part of
the bourgeois revolution. Now, in the period of socialist revo­
lution, it was part of the struggle of the proletariat:
It is quite evident that the main point here is not that the
bourgeoisie of one nationality is beating, or may beat, the
bourgeoisie of another nationality in the competitive struggle,
but that the imperialist group of the ruling nationality is
exploiting and oppressing the bulk of the masses, above all
the peasant masses, of the colonies and dependent nation­
alities and that, by oppressing and exploiting them, it is
drawing them into the struggle against imperialism, converting
them into allies of the proletarian revolution. 13
This was in sharp contrast to the formulation put forward by
Sik and espoused by Huiswood. Sik, I contended, made the
ideological factor of "racism" more important than the social
question itself. Thus, in asserting the primacy of racial factors in
the question, Sik and Huiswood reduced the Black liberation
struggle to a struggle against racial ideology. They saw only the
 MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVIET UNION 325

bourgeois assimilationist trend, "a striving towards intermingling

and amalgamation, towards full social equality" in the struggle
and not the potential national revolutionary trend ofthe masses. 14
The Black liberation struggle was reduced to a feeble bourgeois
liberal protest against racism and racist ideology, divorced from its
economic roots, and to be resolved through education and
humanitarian uplift.
Feeling that it would add some clarity to the situation, I ended
my piece with the serious economic and historical analysis of the
question that Sik and Huiswood had so assiduously avoided. As I
saw it, the evolution of American Blacks as an oppressed nation
was the result of the unfinished bourgeois democratic revolution
of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
The advent of imperialism froze the Blacks in their post­
Reconstruction position-landless, semi-slaves in the South. It
permanently blocked the road to fusion of Blacks and whites into
one nation on the basis of equality under capitalism. The struggle
for genuine equality was thenceforth ultimately bound in the
South to take a national revolutionary and socialist revolutionary
direction. This position defined the status of Blacks in the north as
an unassimilable national minority, as the shadow of the plan­
tation fell upon them throughout the country.
I think Huiswood was won over by my argument; at least I saw
nothing more in the Party press trumpeting Sik's "race" theories.
In looking back on the thing now, I think it was a sort of skirmish
in the war to carry out a revolutionary program on the Black
national question. As long as the Party leadership vacillated in
carrying out the line of the Sixth Congress, such old and
reactionary theories were bound to persist.
I must say, however, that things were not standing still at home.
While progress in the struggle was slow, it was progress never­
theless. Amid a great upsurge in the workers' movement, the Party
was beginning to implement the line of the Sixth Congress, though
there was still some vacillation.
Our biggest thrill that spring had been the nationwide demon­
strations of the unemployed led by the Party and the TUUL on
March 6, 1930. Over one and a quarter million workers responded
326 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

to the Party's call in over a dozen cities coast to coast. Hundreds of

workers and Party leaders were arrested. William Z. Foster,
Robert Minor, Israel Amter and Harry Raymond were sentenced
to three years in jail for leading a demonstration of 110,000 in New
York's Union Square. 15 They served at least a year of these
sentences.
The Party also led large and militant May Day demonstrations
in several cities. All this clearly indicated that the Party was
becoming a leader of the masses, as more and more people were
thrown into struggle by the deepening economic crisis and the
capitalist offensive.
The Party chalked up an astounding success in its recruitment
drive. In a period of two or three months the Party recruited into
its ranks over 6,000 new members, 90% from basic industry and
1,000 of whom were Blacks. 16 A considerable number of the latter
has come from the disintegrating Garvey movement.
In the midst of this upsurge the Seventh Convention of the U.S.
Party convened in New York on June 22, 1930, and Nasanov and I
followed the proceedings closely. The Party's estimate of the
economic crisis and perspectives for the future were discussed in
detail, emphasizing the need to defeat the right deviation in the
Party.
As summarized by Browder, then General Secretary, the
convention observed "that the economic crisis shows the stabil­
ization of capitalism approaching its end, that it brings close the
realization of war, and that it will in many countries be trans­
formed into a political crisis, and that the working class will be
more and more unable to find any path except that of revolu­
tionary struggle." At the same time, the convention recognized the
need to struggle against the "leftist" concept of the crisis as the
"automatic bearer of revolution."t 7
Internally the Party was in a qualitatively different position
than it had been at the time of the Sixth Convention in 1929. It had
broken away from the crippling factionalism that had all but
paralyzed its work. It was now consolidating its forces on the basis
of the decisions of the CI and had seized the initiative in the
growing revolutionary trend in the country.
 MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVIET UNION 327

There were a score of Black delegates ( 17%) present and for the
first time the Afro-American question was characterized as "the
problem for our Party." 18 While it was evident that important
advances had been made in the work, the convention brought out
that "this could not be credited to the clarity of understanding of
the Party as a whole," 19 and that a "proper orientation is
lacking." 20
Much discussion and debate did not clear up this confusion.
Browder, for instance, denigrated the slogan of self-determination
by making the Black rebellion contingent upon a revolutionary
situation in the whole country. "The transformation of this slogan
into one of action is conditioned upon the maturing of a
revolutionary situation for American capitalist society." 21 Overall,
however, we felt the convention represented progress in terms of
work among U .S. Blacks.
My three-year term at the Lenin School was drawing toward a
close in June 1930. I began thinking about home and what awaited
me on my return. I had little organizational experience in the Party
before coming to the Soviet Union, and now began to wonder
what type of work I would be doing.
But I was to find that Nasanov had other immediate plans for
me. He felt that I should stay for a few months longer and work
with the CL It was felt (I presumed by Kuusinen and others) that
the Comintern should intervene once more on the Black question.
Clearly the brief resolution adopted at the Sixth Congress two
years previous was not sufficient. Now a more detailed statement
of the question was needed. They had in mind another Cl
Commission on the question that would meet after the Seventh
Convention of the U .S. Party-one set up to discuss and work out
such a statement when all the proceedings from that convention
were available. The convention would undoubtedly point up
remaining areas of confusion.
"Wouldn't it be best for you to stay, Harry?" asked Nasanov.
"Eventually everything will work out," he said, "but it would be
better for you to return with a new Cl resolution. That way you'll
be off to a good start. lf you left now, you might get battered about
in the fights there."
328 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

TUE RILU'S FIFTH CONGRESS

The Fifth Congress of the Red International of Labor Unions

(RILU) was to convene in Moscow August 15, 1930. Delegates
started arriving several weeks early. The U.S. delegation, thirty
strong, included seven Blacks-the largest number ever to attend
an RILU Congress. They had come to Moscow via Hamburg
where they had participated together with Africans and West
Indian blacks in the founding conference of the International
Trade Union Committee ofNegro Workers, initiated by theRILU.
The Hamburg delegation was led by James Ford, head of the
Negro Department of theTrade Union Unity League, a member of
the executive committee of the RILU, and provisional chairman
and chief organizer of the Hamburg Conference. His co-worker
and assistant was George Padmore, also a TUUL national
organizer. 22
The U.S. delegation included: Harold Williams, KUTVA
graduate and a member of the railroad workers union in Chicago;
Helen McClain, a Philadelphia needle trades worker; lke Haw­
kins, a Pennsylvania coal miner; and Arthur Murphy, a Penn­
sylvania steelworker. Of the delegation I only knew Ford and
Padmore, and I hastened to make the acquaintance of the other
delegates.
They were a young, enthusiastic group, fresh from struggles in
their respective industries in which they had played leading roles. I
was especially impressed by the young Black woman from
Philadelphia, Helen McClain. She was a natura] leader, lively,
attractive, humorous and the center of attention.
The delegates filled me in on news from home and related what
had happened at the Hamburg Conference. The conference had
been in preparation for nearly a year. A provisional committee had
been set up under the chairmanship of Jimmy Ford. It was
originally scheduled to be held in London, metropolis of the
world's greatest colonial power. But it appeared that the con­
ference organizers had reckoned without their hosts.
The preparations came under the scrutiny of His Majesty's
 MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVIET UNION 329

Labor Government, headed by Ramsay MacDonald, whose

Colonial Secretary was the well known Fabian Socialist, Sydney
Webb. They would not allow the conference to meet in London
and at the last minute, delegates and organizers moved it to
Hamburg, Germany. After some delay it opened on July 7, 1929.
There were seventeen regular delegates and three fraternal (non­
voting) delegates representing 20,000 workers in seven countries.
Besides the U.S. delegates, there were delegates from Jamaica,
Nigeria, Gambia, the Gold Coast (now Ghana), the former
German colonies of the Cameroons (now Cameroon) and South
Africa. The South African delegate was a white trade unionist, an
active fighter for black-white unity in the trade union movement,
who was acting as a proxy for a black trade unionist whom the
apartheid government had denied a passport.
The conference lasted three days. There was an interchange of
experiences; reports by Ford, Padmore and Patterson (the last a
fraternal delegate from the Anti-Imperialist League). A number of
resolutions were adopted and a permanent organization formed­
the International Trade Union Committee ofNegro Workers. An
executive board was elected, including Ford, Hawkins, McClain
and Padmore from the U.S.; Kouyate from French West Africa;
Frank MacCaulay from Nigeria; Albert Nzula from South Africa;
G. Small of Gambia; and G. Reid of Jamaica. Representatives
from Haiti, Liberia and East Africa were to be added.
A monthly publication, The Negro Worker, wasestablished with
Padmore as the editor. Headquarters of the organization were set
up in Hamburg. Many black sailors came into that international
port-the second !argest in Europe-and the organization's
literature later was circulated there by these sailors throughout
Africa.
The International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers
was the first attempt to bring together black workers on a world
scale. Though the founding conference was small, it was histor­
ically important, because it was the first time Black workers from
Africa and the Americas had gotten together. It was a wedge into
black Africa which hitherto, with the exception of South Africa,
had been isolated from the world revolutionary movement.
330 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

The main effort of the organization was to promote trade union

organization in Africa and the West Indies, linking them up with
the world revolutionary trade union movement led by the RILU.
Black workers in the U.S. were to play a vanguard role in this
endeavor because of their greater political and organizational
experience, the result of their position as an oppressed people in
the heartland of the most advanced capitalist country.
The Fifth Congress of the RILU met in the Dom Soyuzov
(House of the Unions)-meeting place for most of the inter­
national congresses held in Moscow. I attended a number of
sessions of the congress, along with delegates from fifty-five
countries. As this was also the Tenth Anniversary of the RILU,
business sessions were accompanied by a number of festivities.
Our Soviet hosts seemed determined to make it a memorable
occasion.
Qne of the things I remember hest about the congress was the
presence of a dozen or so veterans of the 1871 Paris Commune­
now old men in their seventies and eighties. As I remember, they
wore uniforms-red caps, red-lined blue capes and short white
canvas leggings. At the opening celebration, one of the men on
seeing us rushed up to embrace me, welcoming us as "my
brothers," fighting "for the world commune."
When the congress opened, the Moscow press published an
article by RILU leader A. Lozovsky. He listed the main tasks
of the congress:
Closer to the masses by means ofthe united front from below,
combat Right opportunism and 'left' sectarianism, the actual
leadership of the economic mass struggle of the proletariat,
aid for the weakest sections of the world proletariat, closer
contact of the colonial slaves with the working class of the
capitalist countries and the proletariat of the Soviet Union. 23
The RILU had come to this approach through years of struggle
which Lozovsky had summarized in an article published two
weeks before the congress. 24 When the RILU was formed in 1920,
the main errors came from "left" anarcho-syndicalist tendencies.
But in later years, especially after the Ninth Plenum of the ECCI
and the Fourth RILU Congress in 1928, the main <langer came
 MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVJET UNION 331

from the right. By 1930, open right opposition to the decisions of

these meetings had been defeated and remaining right tendencies,
though still very dangerous, were under attack.
Lozovsky wamed, however, that in the course of the fight
against right opportunist tendencies and for the line of "class
against class" and independent leadership of economic struggles,
left-sectarian tendencies had cropped up, involving the <langer of
alienation from the masses. This left tendency was one which
lumped together the social-fascist (reformist) leaders and the
workers who followed them. Not knowing how to work in
reformist trade unions for the realization of the "united front from
below," they shouted "leftist" slogans such as "permanent general
strike," and "armed strikes," all of which remained mere words.
Finally, Lozovsky pointed to the RILU's weaknesses:
The most important of these faults are: lagging behind the
mass, and the disproportion between political influence and
organizational consolidation of this influence.. .In spite of all
this, the RILU has accomplished a great work in uniting,
rallying and ideologically welding together the forces of the
international revolutionary movement. 25
The congress only lasted about ten days; I attended a number of
sessions and had the chance to hear Lozovsky, Padmore and
James Ford, who reported on the Hamburg Conference.
The conference broke down into working commissions; each
national delegation met to discuss their respective problems. After
the congress adjoumed, the delegates were taken on tours of the
Soviet Union, the Dnieperstroy Dam, the Stalingrad plants and
other sights.

THE 1930 RESOLUTION

The Negro Commission of the CI convened in late August,

under the chairmanship of Otto Kuusinen. Members of the
commission included: Earl Browder, James Ford, Bill Dunne,
William Weinstone, William Patterson, Mingulian (head of the
Anglo-American Secretariat), Mikhailov (Cl rep to the U.S.
332 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Party), Nasanov, myself and several Black students from the Lenin
School and KUTVA .26
Kuusinen was well versed in the problems of the U.S. Party and
its work among Blacks. Prior to the commission, and in prepara­
tion for it, he had talked on numerous occasions with Nasano.v and
myself as well as with leading U.S. comrades present in Moscow.
He had also received a report from Mikhailov who had recently
returned from a visit to the U.S.
He immediately got down to the business at hand. As I
remember, he commended the U.S. Party on its recent progress in
Afro-American work and its struggle against white chauvinism.
This was reflected in the faet that the Party in the last year had
recruited over 1,000 Blacks into its ranks.
However, he observed, despite this advance, the pre-convention
discussion preceding the Seventh Convention of the Party and the
con_:vention itself revealed that there was still much confusion on
the question. This faet had been admitted by the leading American
comrades themselves. Looking over the materials from the
discussion on the question, it was quite clear, he noted, that the
Party had not yet overcome all underestimation of the slogan of
the right of self-determination. There were still large areas of
unclarity on the question generally.
Kuusinen then proceeded to pinpoint these areas as: a false
counterposing of the slogan of "social equality" and "the right of
self-determination" and the lack of understanding of their inter­
relationship. The U.S. convention had raised, but not answered,
the following questions: Should the right of self-determination be
considered only a slogan of propaganda or one of action? Should
separatist tendencies among Blacks be supported or opposed?
Should the area of Black concentration in the South be regarded as
a colony or as an integral part of the national economy of the
United States? Could a revolutionary uprising occur in the South
independent of the revolutionary movement in the country as a
whole?
Kuusinen suggested the discussion center on these areas of
unclarity without excluding any other questions comrades might
want to raise. After the discussion, a new resolution should be
 MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVIET UNION 333

drafted addressing itself to these questions. I noticed the bitterness

and acrimony that had characterized earlier meetings were absent
from the discussions that followed. Freed from factional con­
siderations, it was evident that everyone was honestly seeking
clarity on the question.
After a few days of discussion, Kuusinen himself undertook to
draft a resolution. Further discussion followed, but on the whole
there was agreement. After a few minor changes it was adopted by
the commission and eventually became the resolution of the
American Party on the Black national question.
The resolution proceeded straight to the heart of the contro­
versial issues. It reasserted the position of the Sixth Congress
which defined U.S. Blacks as an oppressed nation. lmplicitly, it
rejected the position of Sik and others with their one-sided
emphasis on race as the primary factor in Black oppression.
Stressing instead the basic social and economic factors, it defined
it as "a question of an oppressed nation which is in a peculiar and
extraordinarily distressing situation of national oppression, not
only in view of the problem of racial distinctions (marked
differences in the color of skin, etc.), but above all, because of
considerable social antagonisms (remnants of slavery)."
The resolution struck out at the tendency to counterpose the
slogans of "social equality" and the "right of self-determination"
and dealt in detail with their interrelationship. In this respect, it
pointed out the necessity of making a clear distinction between the
north and the South in the application of these slogans-between
the oppressed Black nation in the South and the national minority
in the north.
Equality, the resolution contended, could only be obtained by
the.continuous fight for abolition "of all forms of economic and
political oppression of the Negroes, as well as their social
exclusion, the insults perpetrated against them and their segrega­
tion. This is to be obtained by constant struggle by the white and
Black workers for effective legal protection for Blacks in all
fields, as well as actual enforcement of their equality and
combating of every expression of Negrophobia. One of the First
Communist slogans is: Death for Negro lynching!" 27
334 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

The demand for equality, the resolution said, "applies to all

Negroes, in the North as well as in the South." In the north it
embraced all, or almost all, the special needs of the masses of
Blacks. This, however, was not so in respect to the South, where
the situation of Blacks was that of an oppressed nation. Here, the
resolution held, "the main Communist slogan must be: The right
of self-determination of the Negroes in the Black Belt. ''28
In the South, the attainment of full equality involved the
question of political power needed for its enforcement and this
could be construed in no other manner than political power in the
bands of the Black masses of peasants and workers of that region.
This in turn could only be achieved through the fulfillment of the
main slogan of the right of self-determination.
This did not mean that the slogan of equality was not applicable
to the South where Blacks suffered "the glaring lack of all
equality." But here it applied to the most urgent partial or
immediate demands of the Black masses. The two slogans were
thus closely connected; the winning of self-determination in the
South was the prerequisite for full equality in the north.
Anticipating the possibility of autonomous demands in the
north, the resolution added:
The struggle for the equal rights of the Negroes does not in
any way exclude recognition and support for the Negroes'
rights to their own special schools, government organs, etc.,
wherever the Negro masses put forward such national
demands of their own accord. 29
The resolution emphasized that -the question was a "national
question in the U.S., not only in the South but also in the N orth."
It went on to say that "The struggle for equal rights for the Negroes
is in faet one of the most important parts of the proletarian class
struggle in the United States." White workers must:
march at the head on this struggle. They must everywhere
make a breach in the walls of segregation and "Jim-Crowism"
which have been set up by bourgeois slave-market morality ...
white workers must boldly jump at the throat of the 100
per cent bandits who strike a Negro in the face. This struggle
will be the test of the real international solidarity of the
American white workers. 30
 MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVJET UNION 335

The resolution rejected the characterization of the Black Belt

(the area of Black concentration in the South) as a colony. Such
characterization, it contended, could only be based on "artificially
construed analogies, and would create superfluous difficulties for
the clarification of ideas." However, it warned, "It would be
nonetheless false to try to make a fundamental distinction between
the character of national oppression to which the colonial peoples
are subjected and the yoke of other oppressed nations."
The resolution asserted that the Black Belt "is not in itself, either
economically or politically, such a united whole as to warrant its
being called a special colony of the United States." Nor on the
other band, was it "such an integral part of the whole United States
as any other part of the country."
For one thing, industrialization of the Black Belt, in contrast to
most colonies, was not in conflict with the interests of the ruling
U.S. imperialists. Therefore, expansion of industry in the Black
Belt would "in no way bring a solution to the question of living
conditions of the oppressed Negro majority, or to the agrarian
question, which lies at the basis of the national question."
Industrialization in the area would only sharpen the contra­
dietions in that it would bring forth "the most important driving
force of the national revolution, the black working-class."31
The resolution lists three fundamental slogans of the liberation
movement in the South: I) The right of self-determination-this
slogan, however, can be carried out only in connection with two
other basic slogans. 2) Revolutionary land reform. (The resolution
pointed out that "landed property in the bands of white American
exploiters is the most important basis of the entire system of
national oppression.") The agrarian revolution must be completed
by th� confiscation of the landed property of white landlords and
capitalists in favor of the masses of Black farmers. 3) The
establishment of the state unity of the Black Belt. The resolution
called for the political and geographic unity of the Black Belt, that
is, the bringing together of Black majority areas in one govern­
mental administrative unit. This would include a significant white
minority. The resolution assails the idea of a nation-state exclu­
sively inhabited by Blacks or the transportation of Blacks to Africa.
336 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Any such attempt "to isolate and transport the Negroes," the
resolution warned, "would have the most damaging effect upon
their interests. Above all, it would violate the right of the Negro
farmers in the Black Belt not only to their present residences and
their land, but also to the land owned by the white landlords and
cultivated by Negro labor."
The right of self-determination means, according to the resolu­
tion, the unlimited right of Blacks in the region to exercise, if they
so choose, governmental, legislative and judicial authority over
the entire territory and to decide upon the relations between their
territory and other nations, including the United States. This
would mean the overthrow of the class rule of the U.S. imperialists
upon whose power the local landlords and capitalists depended.
The right of self-determination, therefore, included the full
freedom of separation for the Black nation. The resolution
contended that "if it desires to separate it must be free to do so;
but if it prefers to remain federated with the United States, it must
also be free to do that." 32 This, the resolution stated, was the
correct meaning of self-determination. This right must be fought
for as a "free democratic right" whether the U.S. was still a
capitalist state or whether the proletarian state had been estab­
lished.
But the right of self-determination must not be construed as
identical with secession. The resolution quoted Lenin:

We demand freedom of separation, real right to self-determi­

nation certainly not in arder to recommend "separation," but
on the contrary, in arder to facilitate and accelerate the
democratic rapprochement and unification of nations. 33

The resolution noted that separatist trends in the Black

movement should not be supported "indiscriminately and without
criticism." There were reactionary separatist trends as well as
national revolutionary trends. An example of the former, it was
pointed out, was Garvey's African utopia of an isolated nation­
state consisting of Blacks alone. Politically, this was a diversion
from the struggle against U.S. imperialism.
 MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVJET UNION 337

Even if the situation does not yet warrant the raising of the
question of uprising, one should not limit oneself at present to
propaganda for the demand: 'Right to self-determination,'
but should organize mass actions such as demonstrations,
strikes, tax-boycott-movements, etc. 34
The resolution enjoined communists to stand in the forefront of
the fight for national liberation and to fight for the hegemony of
the Black proletariat in the national struggle. It outlined the
Party's tasks in building revolutionary organizations in the South,
organizing proletarian and peasant self-defense against the KKK
and other like r:eactionaries.
Final success in this struggle was possible only if supported by
mass actions of Black and white proletarians throughout the
country. "Only a victorious proletarian revolution will finally
decide the agrarian question and the national question in the
South of the United States, in the interests of the predominating
mass of the Negro population in the country." 35
It spoke directly against those who held that the Black rebellion
was contingent upon the maturing of the revolutionary situation in
the country as a whole or that it could only develop at the same
pace as the overall class struggle. This assumption, widespread in
the Party at the time, reflected an underestimation of the
inherently explosive character of the liberation struggle in the
South.
Lenin defined national rebellion as mass resistance to oppres­
sion. "Every aet of national oppression calls forth resistance," he
wrote. And further that "the tendency of every aet of resistance
on the part of the oppressed peoples is the national uprising. " 36
The entire thrust of the resolution was to prepare the Party for
any contingency:
Whether the rebellion of the Negroes is to be the outcome of a
general revolutionary situation in the United States, whether
it is to originate in the whirlpool of decisive fights for power
by the working-class, for proletarian dictatorship, or whether
on the contrary, the Negro rebellion will be the prelude of
gigantic struggles for power by the American proletariat
cannot be foretold now. But in either contingency, it is
338 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

essential for the Communist Party to make an energetic

beginning already now with the organization of joint mass
struggles of white and black workers against Negro oppres­
sion. This alone will enable us toget rid of the bourgeois white
chauvinism which is polluting the ranks of the white workers
of America, to overcome the distrust of the Negro masses ...
and to win over to our side these millions ofNegroes as active
fellow fighters in the struggle for the overthrow of bourgeois
power throughout America. 37

INA

The time for my departure was approaching. I thought of Ina

and the future of our marriage. She had been much in my mind
these last days in Moscow as I reflected back on our three happy
yeijrs together.
Despite my busy schedule at the school, we managed to spend
most weekends together at her mother's apartment on Malaya
Bronaya, a short distance from the school. It was Ina who had
introduced me to the cultural life of the Soviet capital. Toget her we
attended theaters, movies, concerts at the Conservatory of Music,
and Moscow ballets and operas at the Bolshoi Theater. We often
visited the Park of Culture and Rest, a wooded area across from
the Kremlin along the Moscow River. It combined restaurants,
theaters and amusements. Exhibitions of all sorts were held there
as well. Other times we went boating on the Moscow River.
Ina had given up her ballet school studies a year or so before.
She was now attending the lnstitute of Foreign Languages where
she was studying ];:nglish. She displayed a great aptitude for
languages and her English was quite good. After only a year of
study she had begun to read American literature.
Though not a member of the Communist Party, she was what
they called a "non-Party social activist"; that is, sympathetic to the
Party and actively supporting its aims of building socialism.
As the time for my departure drew near, we earnestly discussed
the future of our marriage. We had agreed that ·it should not
be terminated with my departure. Our idea was that we would
 MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVIET UNION 339

eventually get Ina to the States. Of course, I anticipated same

difficulties, but to my mind they were not insurmountable. For ane
thing, we were-by mutual choice-unencum bered by children.
Ina was a friendly, outgoing person and I felt she would have
little trouble adjusting to a new environment and would be
accepted by the Black community in any of the big urban centers of
the north. I would undoubtedly be assigned to national Afro­
American work at the center in New York City on my return.
After all, even professional revolutionaries were not homeless
itinerants of the old Wobbly tradition. Many were married and
had families, even in situations where both were full-time pro­
fessional revolutionaries.
So as we saw it, our separation was to be temporary. We agreed
that once settled in my future work, perhaps in a year or so, I
would either send for Ina or return myself to bring her back
to the States.
Just befare my departure, an incident occurred which forcibly
brought home to me the contrast between the socialist world which
I was leaving and the racist world which I was about to re-enter.
The incident occurred in Stalingrad, one of the new buge
manufacturing cities of the Soviet Union. The location was
Tractorstroi, a basic unit of the Five Year Plan with a capacity of
50,000 tractors a year. The plant stretched fifteen miles along the
Volga River. They had brought over about three hundred and fifty
highly skilled white mechanics from the United States, who­
together with their families-formed a small American colony.
They had their own restaurants supplied with the hest food,
tobacco and wines that the Soviets could furnish.
Into this situation stepped a Iane Black toolmaker, Robert
Robinson. A native of Jamaica and a naturalized U.S. citizen,
Robinson was a graduate of Cass Technical High School in De­
troit. He had come to Moscow under a on�-year contract to instruct
young Soviet workers in the Stalingrad plant in the art of tool­
grinding. He had formerly been employed by the Ford, Motor
Company.
On the morning of his arrival in Stalingrad he was shown into
the American dining room. He sat down at a table for breakfast
340 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

before starting work where he was immediately insulted, beaten up

and thrown out of the restaurant by two of his white American
fellow workers. This attempt to transplant American racism to
Soviet soil was met with outrage. It was made a political issue of
high order by the Soviet trade unions and Party organizations.
Factory meetings were called throughout the Soviet Union
which denounced this crime and expressed the outrage of Soviet
workers. They adopted resolutions which were sent to Trac­
torstroi. The slogan of the day became, "American technique yes!
American race prejudice no!" It was given the widest publicity; the
culprits were arrested immediately, not for assault and battery but
for white chauvinsim, a social crime and therefore far more
serious.
A mass public trial, with delegations sent from factories all over
the country, was held. The white technicians were sentenced to two
years imprisonment which was commuted to deportation to the
U n1ted States.
Pravda, Izvestia and all of the provincial papers carried
editorials summing up the lessons of the trial. In the build_ing
up of our industries, they said, we expected many foreign
workers to come to the country on contract to help fulfill the Five
Year Plan. They would inevitably bring with them their prejudices
from the capitalist world. Thus it was necessary for the Soviet
workers to maintain vigilance against all forms of racism and
nationalism which must be sternly rebuffed.
Robinson himself remained in the Soviet Union where he
became a citizen and eventually an engineer. Later he was a deputy
to the Moscow Soviets.
I remember the Robinson incident well. At the time it occurred,
some of us from the school were in a restaurant. A group of
Russians seated near us pointed to us and exchanged comments.
"You heard about that shameful thing that happened at
Tractorstoi?"
Our very presence reminded them of the incident. People were
very sympathetic to us.
The incident was a dramatic affirmation by Soviet workers of
their country's position on the question of race prejudice.
 MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVIET UNION 341

Just a few days later, Ina, her mother and fellow students from
the school accompanied me down to the White Russian Station,
where I entrained for Berlin. From there, after a short stopover, I
journeyed to Paris and then embarked at LeHavre for home.
The long voyage gave me pienty of time for reflection on my stay
in the Soviet Union. I thought of how I would put into practice
some of the lessons learned during my four-and-a-half-year
stay there.
The initial theoretical framework had been set up-now began
the difficult task of testing it in practice. How would we build a
national revolutionary movement of Blacks in close alliance with
the revolutionary working class movement? What would be the
problems in organizing Blacks? What resistance to the Cl position
would I find within the Party's ranks? These were but a few of the
questions that passed through my mind as I headed home.
 Chapter 12

Return Home:
White Chauvinism Under Fire
Put one more "s" in the USA
To make it Soviets;
Put one more "s" in the USA
Oh! We'/1 live to see it yet!
When the land be/ongs to the farmers
And the factories to the working men,
The USA when we get control
Wi/1 be the USSA then!

Langston Hughes 1

I arrived in New York in early November 1930. After four and a

half years in the Soviet Union, everything seemed quite strange.
While passing through customs I lit up a cigarette. A cop snarled at
me out of the corner of his mouth, "No smoking here, fella." I was
so startled by his rude tone that the cigarette dropped from my
lips.
Out in the street I caught a taxi to the national office of the
Party, which was then located on East 125th Street in Harlem. I
looked at the people along the way. Despair seemed written on
their faces; I don't believe I saw a smile all the way uptown. What a
contrast to the gay and laughing crowds in Moscow and Lenin­
grad! I had arrived in the first year of the Great Depression; my
own depression deepened as we drove through Harlem. I was
overwhelmed by Harlem's shabbiness and the expression of
 WHITE CHAUVINISM UNDER FIRE 343

hopelessness on the faces of the people.

Arriving at the office, I was greeted by Earl Browder and my old
friend Bob Minor. They introduced me to Jack Stachel, a Party
leader and national organizer for the TUUL; and Ben Arnis, a
Black comrade who was then in charge of Afro-American work.
All four men were discussing last minute plans for the Anti­
Lynching Conference called by the American Negro Labor
Congress. It was to be held in St. Louis on November 15, a couple
days later.
The Party's plan, as I gathered, was to use this occasion to launch
a new organization-the League of Struggle for Negro Rights.
This new organization was to replace the now practically defunct
ANLC which had proved inadequate and sectarian. The ANLC
had been the subject of sharp criticism as early as the Sixth World
Congress in 1928.
The idea of the new organization had been discussed at the
Party's convention in July. There had also been some discussion at
the Negro Commission in the Comintern. The LSNR was
conceived as the nucleus of a united front movement around the
Party's program for Black liberation. The Liberator was to be
carried over from the ANLC as the official publication of the new
organization.
After greeting me, the comrades continued the discussion. I was
just in time to participate in the conference and was given the task
of writing a draft manifesto and program for the LSNR. I was
asked if I had anything to say. I expressed happiness at being back
home after such a long absence, and said that I would do my hest to
carry out the new responsibility. I was also happy to hear about the
expected Southern delegation to the conference, which reflected
Party work in the South, and made some remarks about the need
for an agrarian program for the Blacks in the South.
I noticed that as I spoke some of the comrades were looking at
me curiously, as if puzzled or amused. I wondered about it at the
time, but I was to find out why only after the meeting. The YCI
representative, a young Russian who had been sitting in on the
meeting, said, "Harry, you've got a strong Russian accent in your
Eng!ish! If I'd not been looking directly at you I would have sworn
344 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

some Russian immigrant was speaking." Of course, I reflected; I

had been unconsciously rolling my "r's," a habit that was to stick
with me for many years.
I traveled to St. Louis via Detroit and Chicago, in order to see
my family-my three aunts, of whom I was very fond, my sister
Eppa, and nephew David. I chose to trave! by bus in order to get a
close up look at the country and the people.
The blight of unemployment and hunger was evident every­
where. It gave the lie to Hoover's slogan of "prosperity is right
around the corner." People on the bus were friendly and related
their experiences. They seemed hopeless and confused, regarding
the Depression as some sort of "natura! disaster." They com­
plained about inadequate relief and evictions. From the bus
windows I could see Hoovervilles on the outskirts of many
towns-vacant lot comrimnities of shacks, made from discarded
boards and boxes and inhabited by homeless families.
f stopped over in Detroit to see Clarence Hathaway, my old
Lenin School friend, who was then district organizer. We went
into a restaurant downtown on Woodward, a couple of blocks
from the Party office. We both ordered ham and eggs and after
waiting for what seemed an interminable period, our orders were
finally brought to the table. I started to eat, but gagged and spil out
the first mouthful on my plate.
"What's the matter?" Clarence asked.
"This stuff is as salty as brine!" I said in amazement.
"Yeah?" he said incredulously. "Mine seems to be all right." He
tasted some of mine and immediately spat it out, then called the
waiter indignantly.
"What's the matter?" the waiter asked.
"My friend's food is so salty it's inedible."
The waiter, with an evil leer, said, "Well, that's the hest we can
do," and walked away.
It was only then that it struck me that this was their way of
discouraging Black patronage. I'd been out of the country so long
that I'd forgotten a lot of these things. Clarence and I stalked out of
the restaurant, and there was a silence between us. He said, "Let's
go to another restaurant in the Black neighborhood."
 WHITE CHAUVINISM UNDER FIRE 345

"I'm not hungry now, I've lost my appetite." I replied. "Cla­

rence, this is your district, you know. You've sure got a lot of work
to do!"
I got the bus to Chicago, still angry, and in this mood wrote the
first draft of the manifesto and program of the conference. I
poured all my anger into the resolution and the whole thing came
together very quickly.
I arrived in Chicago. This great industrial center was hard hit by
the crisis, with plants and mills partially closed. There was as yet
no public welfare, only soup lines and private relief. Blacks were
hardest hit of all.
My elderly aunts, respectable law-abiding people and deeply
religious, were forced to sell moonshine whiskey in order to make
ends meet. They told me this in an apologetic, shamefaced way­
"Everybody's got to do something to get by." This really got to me.
I called on old friends and they all wanted to know about my
experiences in the Soviet Union. I was interviewed by Lucius
Harper of the Chicago De/ender who was an old friend of the
family. I don't remember if the interview was ever published,
because I left right afterwards for St. Louis.
I arrived in St. Louis on November 15, the opening day of the
conference, and met up with Otto who was a delegate to the
meeting. He had been working in the South (probably Atlanta),
and he told me of his experiences there and about his near lynching
in Gastonia.
I was happy to see so many of my old comrades like Richard
B. Moore and Otto Huiswood. Then there was Cyril Briggs. I was
anxious to make his acquaintance as I had been in the Chicago
post of his African Blood Brotherhood and was a reader of the
Crusader magazine and his numerous articles in the Daily Worker.
There was also Herbert Newton who had been a student at
K UTV A and was now back in the thick of the struggle. He was the
only Black member of the "Atlanta Six," a group of communist
organizers charged under Georgia's Insurrection Aet and facing
possible electrocution. They had been arrested at an anti-lynching
and unemployed demonstration in Atlanta. (The other five
defendants were Henry Story, Ann Burlack, Mary Dalton, M.H.
346 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Powers and Joe Carr.) Newton and his co-defendants were

released on bail as a result of protest all over the country and were
now part of the Southern delegation to the conference. Ben
Careathers of Pittsburgh, Hathaway, Browder and Baker were
some of the Party leaders present among the delegates. But there
were many new faces at the conference-comrades with whom I
was to work in coming years.
The convention was called by the ANLC as a national
conference against lynching. In 1930 alone there were thirty-eight
lynchings, thirty-six Blacks and two whites. The conference wa.s to
be transformed into the founding convention of the League of
Struggle for Negro Rights.
The gathering opened with a small but enthusiastic mass
meeting. lts declared purpose as stated in the Daily Worker
(November 4, 1930) was "to build a powerful fighting mass
movement and a militant newspaper to lead the Negro masses in
struggle against oppression and for thefr demands for full political
and social equality and the right of self-determination for Negro
majorities in the South." In the spirit of working class solidarity
which characterized the entire conference, a presidium of Black
and Southern white workers was elected at this session.
The first business session opened on November 15 with forty­
four Black and thirty-four white delegates in attendance. A
rousing welcome was given the sixteen-member Southern dele­
gation which was led by Mary Dalton-a young white comrade, a
National Textile Workers Union organizer and one of theAtlanta
Six. Otto Huiswood made the report on the economic and political
situation and Herbert Newton reported on organization. The
delegates continueq to arrive and by November 17, they numbered
a hundred-twenty-seventy-three Blacks and forty-seven whites.
The conference then adopted a name for the new organization­
the League of Struggle for Negro Rights (LSNR). Upon arrival I
had submitted my draft of the manifesto for the league to the
Resolutions Committee where it was discussed and approved. The
manifesto-a popularization of the Party program for full Black
liberation-was now dramatically proclaimed by Mary Dalton
amid the continuous applause of the delegates. It declared that
 WHITE CHAUVINISM UNDER FIRE 347

U.S. Blacks were an oppressed nation struggling against U.S.

imperialism and called for unity of Black and white workers in the
fight against the common oppressor. It called for complete
political equality, an end to oppression and lynching, to be
obtained through self-determination of the Black nation in the
South, the confiscation of the land in favor of Black and white soil­
tillers, and state unity of the Black majority area. This could be
achieved fully only through socialism.
The immediate program demanded abolition of all forms of
discrimination, disenfranchisement, anti-marriage laws and Jim
Crow. It urged the establishment of a united trade union
movement to include Black workers on the basis of complete
equality as an essential step in cementing real fraternal solidarity
between Black and white workers on the basis of common
interests. It called for "mass violation of all Jim Crow laws," and
"death to the lynehers," the banning of the KKK and all extra-legal
terrorist organizations, the liquidation of debts and mortgages of
the poor farmers. It urged members to organize LSNR chapters in
communities throughout the country and to build the Liberator as
the official organ for the new organization.
Mary's speech was met with rousing cheers and a standing
ovation. A national council was elected of which I was a mernber;
Ben Arnis was chosen national secretary. The Comrnunist Party,
through Earl Browder, pledged support in mobilizing white
masses for the Black liberation struggle.
The meeting adjourned late on th� night of November 19. We
stood around the hall talking until about two in the morning. Ben
Arnis, Otto and myself left the hall with a Jewish couple who had
put us up during the conference. They lived in a middle class white
neighborhood and had driven us to and from the conference.
Driving home, the conference successfully completed, we were all
on top of the world.
The conference had been especially stimulating for me as it was
the first I had attended since my return home.
We pulled up in an alley behind their home to put the car in their
garage. Otto, Ben and I walked the short distance to the street and
waited while they locked up. As we stood talking a squad car
348 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

crtiised by. Its occupants, four white plainclothesmen, were

immediately suspicious of three Black guys coming out of an alley
in white St. Louis in the middle of the night.
The squad car stopped and the four of them got out. One of
them hailed us, "What are you niggers doing here?''
"We're waiting for our friends; we're delegates from a conven­
tion. Our friends are putting away their car; we're staying with
them," Ben replied.
We were under a hig street light and I could see the cops' faces as
they stared hostilely at us. Fortunately at that moment our friends
came up. They sized up the situation immediately and intervened
for us. They explained we were their friends-they even showed
the convention badges we all had. "We live just around the corner;
they're staying with us," they said.
The cop in charge seemed satisfied with the explanation and
tumed to his friends, saying, "Okay, let's go."
A little, mean-eyed cop standing next to Otto seemed disap­
pointed at this turn of events, that he would be deprived of the
pleasure of shooting or beating up niggers. I figured him as one of
those kind that carved notches on his gun for the Blacks he had
killed. Looking at Otto he said, "This nigger here seems like a bad
nigger to me; you're a bad nigger, ain'tcha?"
I was standing right next to Otto and knowing his temper, I kept
pulling on his sleeve. Otto muttered something like, "Oh, not so
bad."
"Yes, you are, you're a bad nigger," the cop responded, trying to
bait him. But the head cop urged his partners to leave. Reluctantly
they all turned away and got back in their car.
The incident had a so bering effect, cutting through the euphoria
of the evening and bringing us back to solid ground. It would have
been ironic for us to be the first victims of the police brutality
against which we had invei�hed at the congress!
I returned to New York via Chicago, revisiting my aunts and
sister. My Father, now living with a niece in Elgin, Illinois, came
into the city to meet me. Age had caught up with him and
his hair had grayed. He was still working as ajanitor. I was glad to
see him but I felt sad too-we had so little in common.
 WHITE CHAUVINISM UNDER FIRE 349

All he saw for Otto and me was trouble. He was still a Booker T.
Washington man and he didn't think the issue of freedom could be
forced. To fight would only cause us grief.

HARLEM AND YOKINEN:

WHITE CHAUVINISM ON TRIAL

Back in New York I was temporarily assigned to the national

office of the TUUL and put on its payroll. The position, as I
remember, was a nominal one and most of my work was with the
Negro Department of the Party's New York District, of which I was
soon to become head. My salary was twenty-five dollars a week
which, in those days, was quite adequate.
The twenty-five dollars was theoretical, however, for often there
was not enough money in the till to pay the national office staff. In
such cases, we would divide up what there was or if there was
nothing, go without. There was no such thing as payment of back
wages; if you missed one pay day that was it. It was all fair enough.
No Party functionary went hungry in New York-one could run
up a bill at the restaurant on Union Square where the management
was friendly to the Party. We were also invited to eat with different
comrades. Several of us functionaries stayed for awhile in the town
apartment of a comrade who lived in Croton-on-Hudson. We were
never bothered by the problem of rent.
My associates in the district included Black comrades like Steve
Kingston and Tom Truesdale, as well as Peters, a Hungarian who
was organizational secretary, and Alberto Moreau, who was in
charge of agit-prop. Jack Stachel was then in charge of the
national TUUL office. Foster, the chairman, was still injail for his
part in the unemployment demonstration ofMarch6, 1930, as was
Israel Amter, the district organizer of New York. JackJohnstone
and Alfred Wagenknecht, TUUL board members, were always on
hand in the office.
New York was a strange city to me. Before my recent arrival
from Moscow, I had been in the city only once. That was upon my
return from France after the First World War. New York's Black
350 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

community, Harlem, was different from what I had known on

Chicago's Southside. Blacks in New York worked largely in
service jobs as domestics and janitors, hotel, hospital and laundry
workers, as railroad porters and dining car waiters. Some worked
in light industry like the needle trades, but there were few Blacks in
basic industry as in Chicago.
Harlem's ethnic composition included a large segment of West
Indian immigrants. I found them to be the most militant section of
the Black population. Racism, American-style, was a sharp
contrast to the more subtle racism of the West Indies and the new
immigrants reacted strongly. They drew on the West lndies' long
tradition of anti-imperialist struggle, and it was no accident that
they comprised a large proportion of our first revolutionary
cadres.
The world's largest Black community, Harlem was recognized
as the cultural capital of Black America. It was the home of the
Black renaissance. Harlem was the stronghold of Black reformism
and bourgeois nationalism-the NAACP and the Urban League
had their national headquarters there. The Garvey movement was
bom there and remnants still survived all around Harlem.
I had always felt building a revolutionary movement, which
meant building unity among Blacks and forging alliances with
white workers, was more difficult here in New York than in an
industrial center such as Chicago. But the crisis of the Depression
had been sort of a catalyst. U nemployed Councils were built,
uniting Blacks and whites, even in New York. There were marches
on city hall and movements against evictions and police brutality.
Branches of the LSNR were built in Harlem and Brooklyn.
Harlem was soon to become a powerful center of the Black
liberation movement.
Throughout the country the co,mmunist movement was growing
among Blacks. Many hundreds were recruited directly into the
Communist Party and thousands into mass organizations influ­
enced by the Party; U nemployed Councils, trade unions, etc. This
tremendous advance was accompanied, however, by a wave of
racist manifestations and tendencies in the Party and mass organi­
zations. This clearly reflected the stepped-up racist offensive of the
 WHITE CHAUVINISM UNDER FIRE 351

employers, aimed directly at halting the growing unity and

maintaining the division between Blacks and whites.
The mass entrance of Blacks into the revolutionary movement
flushed out hitherto hidden areas of white chauvinism. For
example, there was the situation in the needle trades where over
8,000 Blacks now worked. Some officials of that union-among
them Party members-failed to support the special demands of the
growing number of Blacks coming into the industry.
In some shops, Black workers received lower wages than
whites for the same work. The shop committees in those places
resisted pulling a strike on the issue of equal pay for equal work.
Maude White, recently returned from three years' study in the
Soviet Union, was assigned head of the Needle Trades Union
department. She was shocked by this flagrant violation of TUUL
principles and even more so by the complacency of union leaders,
among whom were a number of comrades.
But white supremacist attitudes in their crudest form had
cropped up in a number of the language clubs and cooperatives.
These aften resulted in outright discrimination against Blacks. The
language clubs (ethnic organizations of nationalities in the U.S.)
had formerly been part of the language federations affiliated to the
Party.
Since the late twenties as part of its bolshevization campaign,
the Party had shifted to organizations based on the workplace and
street branches and had cut out the language branches entirely.2
Party fractions within the language clubs and cooperatives
remained, however.
There was an incident at the Lithuanian cooperative restaurant
in Chicago where comrades had refused to serve Black delegates to
an unemployed conference meeting in the hall above. This was
done on the plea that "it would hurt business" if Blacks were
served. The restaurant workers suggested other places to eat and
gave the Black delegates money for food. There was also a scandal
in Gary where the Russian cooperative restaurant refused to hire
Black workers.
But most recent was the incident in New York at the Finnish Hall
in Harlem itself. The Finnish Hall had been established in an area
352 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

originally settled by Finns in East Harlem around Fifth Avenue

and 126th Street. Now this neighborhood was becoming pre­
dominantly Black, and the hall was being engulfed by the Black
community. The hall had a pool room and gymnasium, and
sponsored many cultural, sports and educational activities. One of
its major attractions was the famous Finnish baths.
Several Black workers attended a dance at the Finnish Workers
Hall. Instead of receiving the welcome they expected, they were
pushed into a corner and barely escaped being ejected. The care­
taker, August Yokinen, was a communist. When faced with the
question of why he had not come to the aid of his Black comrades,
Yokinen said he agreed with those who wanted to expel the Blacks.
Apart from these flagrant manifestations of white supremacy,
the white chauvinist resistance to work among Blacks took a more
subtle and dangerous form. It was reflected in a tendency to regard
the LSNR branches as a substitute for the Party in the field of
Afro-American work. The practice was widespread on the part of
local Party organizations to refer all issues concerning Blacks to
the LSNR; to regard it as a sort of clearinghouse for this work,
thereby absolving the Party from responsibility in this field.
The list of white racist manifestations was long and growing;
clearly a crisis in the Party's mass work was building up. Further
advance required a renewed drive, a counter-offensive on the
question. The Party's very existence as an effective revolutionary
force was at stake.
The Party's Negro Commission-comprising the leading com­
rades in the work-was first to feel the pressure. Harlem was up in
arms; complaints poured in from the districts. It was clear that
something had to be done.
As a member of the Party's National Negro Commission, I felt
much of this first band, as did the other members of the
commission. Our chairman was B.D. Arnis, an articulate and
aggressive man with considerable organizational ability. But he
was relatively new in the Party and perhaps a bit unsure of himself
in dealing with older, veteran revolutionaries.
He raised the question for the Politburo to intervene directly
and push the districts to take a more aggressive stand against white
Harry Haywood, speakingat 78th birthday celebration, Chicago 1976
Harry Haywood's mother, Mrs. Harriet Thorpe Hall (above left),
and Jour of her sis ters
'Hil' "Heil Figh ters" ofth eall-Black 369th Infantry, 93rd
/li1•ision in Worl d War I

Sixty-four members of Black 24th lnfantry court-martialed in 1917

by all-white tribunal on charges of mutiny and murder
 Victory in Angelo Herndon case celebrated in New
York. Herndon, center; Robert Minor and James
Ford on Herndon's right

Eight of the nine Scottsboro Boys NAACP

La.rge communist-led demonstration in support of Scottsboro
Boys, December 9, 1933, New York City
 u
0
'-
0

Mass meeting of the International Labor Defense,

which organized thousands of people in support of
Scottsboro Boys, Sacco and Vanzetti, and other
frame-up victims
Left, New York City police attacking
peaceful rally of 8,000 jobless workers,
February 15, 1936
Below, unemployed workers in Cleve­
land, Ohio, receiving daily allotment
of oranges, May 1938
Left, Harry Haywood with
French journalist Leon
Mousinac during Spanish
Civil War

Below, 1967 reunion of vet­

erans of Spanish Civil War
in Mexico. From left: Hay­
wood, David Siqueiros,
Louis Crane, Judson Briggs
and Bill Mil/er
 ,•I hove, Paul Robeson sur­
rounded by body guards
ll'hile singing anti-fascist
.wngs in Peekskill, N. Y.,
/1)49
u,,tow, Paul Robeson at
MJth Birthday Celebration,
( 'hicago

Syd Harris
Communist-led May Day demonstrations. Above, 1935; below, 1934;
opposite page, 1930 THE BETTMANN ARCHIYE
 William Z. Foster, former general sec­
retary and chairman ofthe Communist
Party

National leadership of CPUSA prior to 1957 national convention, From left:

James E. Jackson, Eugene Dennis, Max Weiss, Ben Davis (in rear), John
Gates, Claude Lightfoot, Sid Stein, Carl Winter, and Fred Fine
M11.uive Civil Rights march in Washington, D. C., September 28, 1963.
"Following this event, mass rejection of peaceful democratic integration
lll'rnme apparent in the Krowing wave of ghetto rebellions."

Hsinhua News Agency

llistoric meeting of Black liberation leaders, W.E.B. and Shirley Graham
I J11hois, with Mao Tsetung, chairman of the Communist Party of China,
( Jc-tober 1, 1962
 Haywood and wife, Gwen, with newborn
son, Haywood, Jr.

Vie Stunrl
Harry Haywood visits with Al Murphy, former secretary of the Alabama
Sharecroppers Union, 1977
 WHITE CHAUVINISM UNDER FIRE 353

s11premacy. But Arnis made no headway with the Politburo.

Briggs, Maude White and I then drew up a document listing the
vurious incidents of white chauvinism; we demanded the Politburo
tuke decisive action. We presented our document at a Politburo
meeting in January.
Present at the meeting were Earl Browder, B. D. Arnis, Rose
Wortis, Clarence Hathaway (then editor of the Daily Worker) and
nthers. Briggs and I spoke first. Briggs was sore as heil-so angry
that his usual stutter disappeared. Maude spoke last, dealing with
t hc needle trades situation and resistance to the demands of the
Black workers. She became so emotionally upset she burst into
tcars and asked to be relieved of her responsibilities in the needle
trades unless she were given more support.
An awkward silence settled over the room at Maude's outburst.
After what seemed an interminable time, Browder broke the
silence-though I can't recall what he said. Hathaway spoke up,
calling for· some dramatic action to help resolve the crisis. He
rroposed a public trial of those involved in the incident at the
Finnish Hall. His proposal was seized upon immediately as
something concrete. A committee was set up to work with the
district in organizing such a trial, including Hathaway, Arnis and
myself as members.
A renewed campaign throughout the Party against white
chauvinism and for unity of Black and white workers got
11 nderway as a result of this meeting. A campaign of enlightenment
rcsulted which was tied to organizational and disciplinary mea­
sures against those guilty of racist acts. A number of expulsions
took place. Resolutions were adopted in all districts summarizing
the results of the campaign. For example the February 19, 1931,
/)aily Worker carried a resolution of the New York District
Bureau, "Close Ranks Against Chauvinist Influences."
A number of hard-hitting articles were also published in the
Party press, including that of the language groups. This was all tied
to the mobilization for the Yokinen trial scheduled for March l; it
was also made part of the National Day of Action ofUnemployed
on February 25, when marches on state capitals were scheduled.
Our committee for the trial held a meeting with the communist
354 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

fraction of the Finnish Club with Yokinen present. The members

were self-critical and agreed that they had acted wrongly in not
throwing out the racist elements at the dance. But Yokinen not only
justified his position, he even carried it further and argued that if
Blacks were allowed to enter the club and pool room, they would
soon be coming into the bath. And he for one did not want to bathe
with Blacks.
The Yokinen trial took place on Sunday afternoon March 1,
1931, in the New Harlem Casino at 116th Street and Lenox
Avenue, the very heart of Harlem.
That morning I attended a meeting of the steering committee
responsible to the New York District for the conduct of the trial.
Tight organization was required because the entire trial was to
ta,ke place in less than four hours that afternoon. The trial had
received wide publicity in both the bourgeois press and the Black
uress. Our plans called for Wagenknecht, national TUUL organi­
zer and unemployed leader, to be chairman and judge. Clarence
Hathaway would try the case for the Party. Attorney for the
defense would be Richard B. Moore, head of the Negro Depart­
ment of the ILD.
I arrived at the New Harlem Casino early. It was a large hall
where dances were usually held, but it was already crowded. Over
two thousand people jammed the hall, most went without seats.
Hundreds of Blacks, including women with babies in their arms,
were among them. Party workers moved up and down the aisles
selling magazines and buttons. Banners around the room read,
"Race Inferioritv Is a White Ruling Class Lie! Smash Jim Crow
Laws and Practices!"
Alfred Wagenknecht, a white-haired veteran revolutionary,
called the court to order. Selection of a jury of fourteen, seven
whites and seven Blacks, was then begun. Nominations were made
and I was one of the jurors elected.
Hathaway, the prosecutor, stepped forward to present the case.
He was a forceful speaker, emphasizing his points with his right
band which had several fingers missing, a legacy from his old
machinist trade. In a lengthy address, often interrupted by
applause, he described Yokinen's crime, outlined the communist
 WHITE CHAUVINISM UNDER FIRE 355

position on the Afro-American question, and demanded Yo­

k inen's expulsion for the crime of white chauvinism.
"Comrade Yokinen," declared Hathaway, "not only justified
the hostility shown to the Negro workers who attended the dance,
hut he went even further. He claimed that if they were admitted to
lhe club, they might go further and enter the pool room and even
the bath house, and that he did not wish to bathe in the same tub
used by N egroes.
"Comrade Yokinen made formal acceptance of the communist
principle of equal rights, but he was not willing to accept its
substance.
"The view Comrade Yokinen showed," Hathaway pointed out,
"is the same view persistently put forth among the workers by
capitalists. Everywhere, in church, in the press and in schools, you
see this conscious effort to cultivate race prejudice. The capitalists
know that if they can develop feeling against the Negro among the
white workers they can oppress and exploit the Negroes and
weaken the unity of Negro and white workers. The theories
cxpressed by Comrade Y okinen play into the hands of the
capitalist class and make him actually an agent of the bourgeoisie,"
Hathaway said.
"The Communist Party," he emphasized, "is committed to
abolishing all customs which prevent Negroes from enjoying full
equality with whites in every way."
The whole courtroom was attentive to Hathaway's presenta­
tion; their attention now turned to Richard Moore who spoke for
the defense. The fine Black orator admitted the guilt of his client
and that he had committed "a grievous crime." Moore further
contended that Yokinen was not the only guilty person. He had
realized the seriousness of his offense and now wanted to correct
his errors in practice.
"It is the vicious bourgeois system, the damnable capitalist
system which preaches corruption and discrimination which is the
real criminal," Moore shouted. "Middle class opportunism per­
meated the mind of Yokinen and caused him to object to Negroes
using the club for fear white people would stay away and the club
would suffer economically."
356 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Moore continued, "Let us not yell for the blood of Yokinen, but
examine ourselves and see how far we have contributed to this
thing of which Yokinen was guilty. We must not make a paschal
lamb of Yokinen. We must win him back. Expulsion from the
Communist Party is worse than death at the hands of the
bourgeoisie."
The audience broke into loud cheers when Moore, with his
bands clasped over his head, shouted, "I would rather my head be
severed by the lynehers than to be expelled from the Communist
International! We must not destroy Comrade Yokinen," pleaded
Moore, "We must save him for the communist movement."
Moore's plea was greeted by prolonged applause.
Yokinen submitted a full confession, reading it in Finnish. He
admitted to having been influenced by white chauvinism, the
ideology of imperialism.
� "I refute and condemn my previous attitude" .I want to prove in
action that I no more have the slightest white chauvinistic
tendencies. I ask this workers' court not to deprive me of the
opportunity to further carry on my activity for the Communist
Party and for the working class."
Our jury then retired to return half an hour later with the
verdict. Thomas Mitchell, the Black foreman, announced the
verdict. Yokinen was guilty. He should be fprthwith expelled from
the Party, but might be readmitted after he had expiated his crime
and proved his worthiness by the performance of a number of
tasks.
These were as follows: 1) To go immediately to the Finnish Hall,
call a mass meeting and give a report of the trial, couched in such
-terms as to destroy white chauvinistic tendencies in the club; 2) To
'carry on in the club a persistent struggle for the admittance of
Black workers and the granting to them offull privileges, including
use of the poolroom, bathhouse and restaurant; 3) To join the
LSNR and sell an adequate number of copies of the Liberator; 4)
To lead a demonstration against a certain Harlem restaurant
which barred Blacks; and 5) To take a leading part in all the
movements and activities aimed at doing away with discrimination
of any sort against Blacks.
 WHITE CHAUVINISM UNDER FIRE 357

After it had all been explained to Yokinen in Finnish, he

solemnly nodded his head and said, "I will do it, I did wrong at the
dub."
The trial ended with the audience singing the "Internationale,"
clcnched fists held high.
As I watched the crowd swarm from the hall it dawned on me
I hat I had witnessed and participated in a historie event in the
hattle for Black rights. The impact of the trial was tremendous
throughout the country. The most important newspapers carried
full stories and photos of the proceedings. 3 The trial represented a
hrcakthrough in understanding thc importance of the struggle of
the Afro-American people. It was the first time the revolutionary
mavement clearly and openly declared war on this pillar of
American imperialism.
As for Yokinen, he conscientiously carried out his pledge made
lo the workers' court. He became a familiar and popular figure on
I he streets of Harlem, in demonstrations of the unemployed, for
the Scottsboro boys and against the Jim Crow policies of a local
cafeteria. After six months, he was readmitted to the Party as ane
of the staunchest fighters for our program.
These activities of Y okinen, including his attitude at the trial,
cvoked the wrath of the racist government and its Immigration
l>epartment, and finally resulted in his deportation. Although in
the country thirteen years, Yokinen had never taken out U .S.
citizenship and faced deportation proceedings on charges of
belonging to the Communist Party. We were all surprised to hear
that he was arrested by immigration inspectors the day after his
trial. The International Labor Defense carried on a campaign on
his behalf which failed to prevent his deportation several
months later. 4
The Yokinen trial was a significant turning point in the Party's
work and came as the culmination of a lang period of ideological
struggle over the line of the Sixth Congress. I always felt that it had
a cleansing effect on the Party-heightened the consciousness of
the cadre and cleared the deck, so to speak, of the most blatantly
chauvinist practices within the Party. The trial was a living
political demonstration of our program on the Afro-Amer�can
358 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

question and had tremendous repercussions on the Black libera­

tion front as a whole-for the first time, the Communist Party was
seen by the broad masses of Blacks as a serious contender for
hegemony of the movement.
Thus, the basis was laid for our revolutionary leadership in the
great battles of the thirties. It was directly as a result of the
campaign around the Yokinen trial that the Party was able to take
up the case of the Scottsboro Boys and build it into a great
international movement. Hundreds ·of thousands of people were
mobilized in a militant struggle against one of the cornerstones of
capitalist oppression of Blacks-the institution of lynching.

SCOTTSBORO

� I followed the Scottsboro issue closely from the beginning. On

March 25, 1931, a freight train crowded with young people
hoboing from Chattanooga to Memphis in search of work, passed
through Paint Rock, Alabama. Nine Black youths were pulled off
by the local sheriff and his deputies, charged with raping two white
girls who happened to be riding the same freight train. The nine
were: Charles Weems, age twenty; Clarence Norris, nineteen;
Haywood Patterson, seventeen; Ozie Powell, fourteen; Eugene
Williams, thirteen; Olen Montgomery, seventeen; Andy Wright,
eighteen; Willie Roberson, fifteen; and Roy Wright, thirteen.
The situation was made to order for the local henchmen of
Alabama's ruling oligarchy. The economic crisis had struck deeply
into the entire region of northern Alabama, an area of mainly
small, family-size farms and a few textile mills. Many in its largely
white population were facing evictions and repossession of tools
and livestock by the banks. In the textile mills, lay-offs were
throwing many out of work. But the sizable Black population in
the area suffered even greater hardships.
Moving with lightning speed, the local authorities of Paint
Rock lost no time in exploiting the case. The boys were taken to
Scottsboro (the county seat), where they were arraigned, indicted,
tried and found guilty of rape in a period of less than three weeks.
 WHITE CHAUVINISM UNDER FIRE 359

The trial began on April sixth and ended on the tenth, with the
scntencing of eight boys to death in the electric chair. The case of
I he ninth victim, Roy W right, was declared a mistrial. The
prosecution had requested life imprisonment in view of his youth
(he was thirteen), but the jury returned deadlocked with seven
jurors insisting on the death penalty. 5
The trial was carried through in a lynch atmosphere. On the day
it opened, mobs of white natives from thesurrounding countryside
und towns surged around the courthouse. A band was playing
"There'll Be A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight." The National
Guard had been called out, ostensibly to preserve order and
prevent the mob from attacking the boys. One of the youths,
however, was bayonetted by a guardsman.
It was the new style, legal lynching carried through with the
cooperation of the courts and law enforcement agencies. It was
intended to guarantee to the mob the same results as would be
obtained in an old-fashioned burning and hanging in a public
square-the death of the victims.
The courtroom farce at Scottsboro was a part of a wave of racist
terror sweeping the South which had resulted in ten known
lynchings in the past three months. Clearly its purpose was to
"keep the nigger in his place," to prevent unity of Blacks and poor
whites; in other words, to divert the unrest of Black and white
workers into channels of interracial strife.
This aim received open and brutal expression by the governor of
Texas, Ross Sterling, an arrogant spokesman of the racist rulers of
the South. Speaking of a case in his state, he stated, "It may bethat
this boy is innocent. But it is sometimes necessary to bum down a
house in order to save a village." 6
The Chattanooga Negro Ministers' Alliance retained Stephen
R. Roddy, reportedly a member of the Ku Klux Klan, as defense
attorney. His defense amounted to little more than pleading for
life imprisonment instead of the death penalty. The NAACP kept
a low profile on the case as they were not sure the boys were
innocent and they wanted to avoid the possibility of the asso­
ciation being identified with mass rapists. This was their official
justification for holding back from the case.
360 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

The N.A.A.C.P. is not an organization to de/end Black

criminals. We are not in thefield to condone rape, murder and
theft because it is done by Black men. .. When we hear that
eight colored men have raped two white girls in Alabama, we
are not first in the field to defend them. lf they are guilty and
have a fair trial the case is none of our business. 7
It was only when confronted with the dispatch of the ILD and
the communists in taking up the case, and with thc widespread
outcry against the legal lynching in all sections of the Black
population, that the NAACP belatedly tried to enter the case and
force the communists out.
We communists viewed the case in much broader, class terms.
First, we assumed the boys were innocent-victims of a typical
racist frame-up. Second, it was a lynehers' court-no one, inno­
cent or guilty, could have a fair trial in such a situation.
" From the beginning we called for mass protest against the social
crime being acted out by Wall Street's Bourbon henchmen in the
South. On April 2, the Daily Worker called for protests to free the
Boys. Again on April 4, the Southern Worker carried an article
that characterized the case as a crude frame-up.
I remember distinctly how I became involved in the case. I was
sitting in the Party's district office on Twelfth Street. I had been
reading the newspapers which were filled with stories of the trial in
Scottsboro. It seemed things were going badly there. The first
group of boys had already been sentenced to death in the electric
chair. I was trying to figure out what our next step should be. It
was clear that if we did not take over the defense of at least some of
the boys, they were doomed. Suddenly Sol Harper burst in on
me.
If there was one person who, before anyone else, understood the
significance of the Scottsboro case and what the role of the Party
should be, it was Sol. Sol Harper was a tall, rangy, stoop­
shouldered Black comrade about thirty-five at the time, with
prematurely graying hair. He combined the qualities of a dedicated
communist with the skills of an expert investigative reporter. He
seemed to have an inexhaustible store of information about
current issues and knew everything that was happening or was
 WHITE CHAUVINISM UNDER FIRE 361

ahout to happen on the Black rights front. He always carried a

brief case stuffed with clippings from current newspapers and
magazines. When I first arrived in New York it was Sol who guided
me through Harlem, explaining what was happening on the streets
and introducing me to countless people. One always felt that Sol
had his finger on the pulse of the people. He knew what they were
thinking and how they would respond to any event.
I had never seen him so agitated as he was that morning.
"What's the Party going to do?" he demanded. The NAACP was
sclling these boys out, they were going to the chair, and the Black
community was up in arms. "We have to step in now," Sol
declared, "We must take over the legal defense. Send our lawyers
down and get them to line up the boys and their parents."
Sol got through to me that it was time for a decision. As soon as
he left I went up to the national office on the ninth floor of the
huilding to talk with Arnis and enlisted his support. Together we
went to see Bob Minor in the next office. Bob had just been
released from prison after serving one year for his leadership in the
March 6 Union Square demonstration against unemployment and
for relief.
Bob was keenly sensitive on the Afro-American question and
saw "the great mass of Negro people" as one of the greatest and
most effecive forces for the revolutionary overturn in the United
States. He had just finished reading the accounts of the trial and
had arrived at the same conclusion we had: the Party had to move
in on the legal defense.
The three of us went to speak with Browder. He too had been
reading about the trial and had just received a first hand report
from Scottsboro where the legal lynching was taking place.
Browder agreed that we must aet quickly.
We immediately called a meeting with the ILD and the decision
to enter the case was made. the ILD moved with dispatch. Joseph
Brodsky, chief lawyer for the organization, and his associate,
Irving Schwab, went immediately to Birmingham and Chatta­
nooga where they got the consent of the parents and boys to enter
the defense. Allen Taub, another ILD attorney who was already in
Chattanooga, engaged the services of a local lawyer, George W.
362 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Chamlee.
The ILD had now gained control of the case. On April 10, 1933,
the day of the sentencing, the Central Committee issued a
statement in the Daily Workerexposing the case as a "court house
lynching" being carried out by the "Southern white ruling class." It
called upon "all working class and Negro organizations to adopt
strong resolutions of protest and to wire these to the Governor of
Alabama." But wires to such capitalist officials alone, it went on to
say, "will do no good; you must organize such at greatest possible
speed mass meetings and militant mass demonstrations against
this crime."
The statement concluded with the call to build a united front of
"all working people and farming masses of this country" and put
forward the slogans, "Death penalty for lynehers!" and "Stop the
legal lynching at Scottsboro!"
On May 23, Bob Minor, Arnis and I left New York to attend the
All-Southern Scottsboro Defense Conference which was to rneet
on May 24 in Chattanooga. Minor represented the Communist
Party, Arnis spoke as Secretary of the LSNR, and I represented the
TUUL.
Upon arrival in Chattanooga, we rnet with local cornrades and
Tom Johnson, the Party's Southern organizer. The four of us
formed a steering cornmittee for the conference and set up a
command post in the home of a local Black cornrade. Tom gave us
the run down on preparations and expectations for the conference.
The atmosphere was tense. Local newspapers had sought to
whip up hostility against the meeting, screaming with protests
against the new carpetbag invasion from the north. The chief of
police assured the white comrnunity that his forces were alerted
and would take action against any attempt to disrupt the racist
status quo.
Torn was not even sure that the conference would be allowed to
meet. We learned that police harassment had prevented the arrival
of the Alabama delegation; most of them had been picked up by
Birmingham police as they were getting into assembled cars to
drive to the conference. Since it was early morning, before sunrise,
they were charged with a violation of the Birmingham curfew laws.
 WHITE CHAUVINISM UNDER FIRE 363

They were later released without fines, but too late to attend the
conference. I was disappointed for I had expected my brother Otto
would be part of the Alabama delegation.
Our fear that the police might try to disrupt the conference by
arresting its leaders was well grounded. We adopted security
measures to prevent this. All of us on the steering committee took
turns going to the conference hall one person at a time. When one
returned another would go. We adhered to this plan throughout
the conference so that the whole steering committee was. never
present in the hall at any one time.
It was at this conference that I met Angelo Herndon for the first
time. Herndon was to become the victim of a frame-up in Atlanta
just a year later. I remember the enthusiasm and militancy of the
two hundred delegates, especially of the local people. Other
delegates told me that when Arnis spoke he brought people to their
feet as he called on Blacks everywhere to fight for the lives of the
nine Scottsboro Boys. In this spirit, he invoked the memory of Nat
Turner, Frederick Douglass and other heroes in the days of
slavery. Bob Minor, as I understand, also gave an impressive
speech. I too spoke, delivering greetings and support from the
TUUL.
The conference ended without incident. We were all enthusi­
astic-it was the first conference against lynching to be held in the
South. Bob, Ben, Tom and I were exhilarated and dropped our
security precautions prematurely. We walked down to the con­
ference hall and stood talking on the sidewalk, less than a block
away from the conference. As we stood watching the delegates
leave we congratulated each other on the success of the conference.
A patrol wagon swooped down upon us and the four of us were
arrested and charged with "blocking the sidewalk." We spent the
night in jail and next morning Chamlee, our Scottsboro attorney,
got us out with a ten dollar fine each.
 Chapter 13

Class W arfare in the Mines

In June 1931, the TUUL sent me to Pittsburgh to work ;is an

organizer in a strike led by the National Miners Union (NMU), a
TUUL affiliate. It was the largest strike the TUUL had led
up to that point and involved some 42,000 coal miners in
the Pittsburgh area (eastern Ohio, northern West Virginia and
western Pennsylvania), 6,000 of whom were Blacks. This strike
was a part of the whole upsurge of working class activityled bythe
Communist Party during this period. 1
The NMU was founded in 1928 by members of the rank-and-file
Save-the-Union Committee of the United Mine Workers of
America (UMWA). John Watt was elected president, William
Boyce vice-president, and Pat Toohey secretary-treasurer. When
the TUUL was formed in 1929, the NMU affiliated with the new
revolutionary labor organization.
lts founding immediately followed the defeat of the UMWA in
the bituminous coar strike of 1927, the result of the reactionary
policies of John L. Lewis. After a strike which lasted over a year
and despite the efforts of the Save-the-Union Committee, Lewis
signed a separate agreement for the Illinois district. This move left
the men in the Pittsburgh area with nothing to do but go back to
work.
Almost overnight all the gains of the past thirty years of bitter
struggle against the mine operators had been wiped out.Splits and
dual unions developed throughout the mine fields where the union
 CLASS WARFARE IN THE MINES 365

had once been strong. Conditions of the miners deteriorated very

rapidly. 2
Upon arriving in Pittsburgh, I proceeded immediately to the
Yugoslav Hall where a meeting of the Central Strike Committee
was proceeding. Representatives from all fields had assembled to
vote on the strike and issue the general strike call. Foster, Jack
.Johnstone, Alfred Wagenknecht and Jack Stachel, from the
national TUUL office, were all there and all spoke. But most
impressive to me were the speeches of the organizers from the coal
lields.
lke Hawkins, veteran Black miner whom I had met as a delegate
to the Fifth RILU Congress, and Tom Meyerscough, who had
made the "cold turkey" speech at the American Commission of
the Comintern in early 1929, spoke of the miserable conditions in
the coal fields and the determination of the miners to fight back. It
was a fight for survival dramatically reflected in the strike slogan
"Fight Against Starvation!" To this the miners added another, ·'As
Well Starve Fighting as to Starve Working in the Mines!"
I was assigned as union organizer to the Pricedale region, about
thirty miles south af Pittsburgh. The region included some af the
!argest mines of the Pittsburgh Coal Company, the biggest of all
the coal companies. I arrived in town on a late Sunday afternoon
in the midst of a hig open air meeting. It seemed that the whole
town had turned out. I was delighted to find my friend Bill Dunne
there.
He had arrived that morning and was one of the few leaders
whom I had not seen at the Central Strike Committee meeting in
Pittsburgh. He had been sent on a tour of the fields to pep up the
morale of the strikers. A veteran of the copper miners' struggles in
Butte, Montana, and of the coal miners' strike in Illinois, he was a
skilled orator who was able to speak authoritatively on the issues.
I, on the other hand, knew nothing of the mining industry. On
the train down from Pittsburgh, I had carefully read the strike call,
acquainted myself with the miners' vernacular and committed the
demands to memory. These included an increase in pay, the eight­
hour day and recognition af the NMU.
I was introduced by Cutt Grant, the chairman of the local strike
366 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

committee. I repeated verbatim what I had learned from the call

and summarized the discussion of the strike committee in
Pittsburgh. My remarks were on the whole well received. But I had
quickly noticed that only a few Black miners were at the meeting. I
had been informed that the Pricedale Mine had a large Black force.
Where were they?
It seemed that while Blacks were the backbone of the strike in
the immediate areas around Pittsburgh (Library, for example),
they had not responded well to the strike in this region. I was later
to learn from some Black miners that the probable cause for this
was that Blacks around Pittsburgh had come up from the South
earlier. They were older in the mines and had become fairly well
integrated into the mine force. Many had obtained official posts in
the NMU locals. This had its ironical side.
In many locals Blacks worked with recent European immi­
grants. In some places the latter were even the majority. But Blacks
were elected to union positions-president, vice-president or
secretary-because they were the only ones who could speak
English! In Pricedale, however, Blacks had come into the mines
later, most of them brought in as strikebreakers, as late as 1927.
Against this background, the difficulties that confronted me as a
union leader in the area were obvious. I, a Black man, found
myself the leader of a mass of white miners with strong racial
prejudices. They didn't understand why the Blacks had not come
out on strike. They seemed to expect that Black miners should
forget about racist incidents that occured during the last strike,job
discrimination in the mines and segregation in the company
patches (areas where the mines built company-owned housing and
company stores).
Cutt Grant, a slightly built wiry figure, was a strong and
courageous fighter of many mine battles and a recognized rank­
and-file leader. He was also afflicted with the white chauvinist
illness. I remember how his face fell when I stepped on the
platform and Bill Dunne introduced me as the NMU organizer.
There was a sharp contrast between his enthusiastic introduction
of Dunne and his apologetic tone in introducing me.
I must say,however, the attitude of the white miners was cordial
 CLASS WARFARE IN THE MINES 367

und even friendly to me. I was a "Union Nigger" and therefore

different from their Black fellow miners. But I overheard mutter­
ings, "Why don't those damn niggers come out?" And I knew that ·
lhcy expected me to do something about getting them out. It was
my first experience in such a situation.
There was a sizable number of South Slavs in the area,
including Adam Getto, a young second generation American, who
wns the Party organizer. He immediately took me in tow,
introduced me to his father, mother, aunts and cousins. While the
elderly Slavs spoke little or no English, we were able to com­
municate as I spoke Russian to them and they spoke Croatian to
mc, a kindred Slav tongue.
I soon became known throughout the area as the Black Slav. It
felt good to know I had some sort of a base-however tenuous-in
Ilte Yugoslav community, which included a sizable number of the
miners in the area. The ethnic picture in my section included a
minority of Anglo-Irish (old timers in the mines, many of whom
ltnd come from the South), a sizable number of South Slavs and
Ilte Blacks.
I became immersed in the work of the strike. Our immediate
t nrget was to close down the Pricedale Mine. Every day there were
picket lines. Finally we called a special day. Every shop in the town
dosed; all the small merchants turned out for the picket line. The
I i ne was led by Cutt Grant, Getto and myself. The state police were
nlso out in force.
They were a hardbitten lot-each looked like a one-man army
with 30-30 Springfield rifles in their saddle holsters, .45 colts, long
riot clubs and helmets. I sized them up as ex-Marines and former
Army noncoms. As I passed by, I overheard the corporal say to
nne of his men, "See that nigger there-he's the union leader. Keep
1111 eye on himl"-trying to scare me off.
In addition to the sta.te police, there were the Coal and lron
Police, private cops employed by the coal companies. They carried
on a campaign of terror in the company patches and around the
mines. Just a few days before I arrived, they had smashed a
pieket line at Pricedale using tear gas, clubs and machine guns.
Three miners were shot. It was the "worst rioting in Western
368 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Pennsylvania bituminous fields in nine years." 3

The Black miners were not responding to our organizing efforts,
however, and the Pricedale Mine stayed open. It occurred to methat
I might use the Scotts boro issue as a handle. I tal ked it over with
Getto and Grant, suggesting that a meeting supporting the
Scottsboro Defense be called jointly by the National Miners
Union and the League of Struggle for Negro Rights. There was no
LSNR in the field, but I felt that as national secretary, I had the
authority to use the name.
I suggested we try to get hold of the IL D's famous Black orator,
Richard B. Moore, who was touring the country on behalf of the
Scottsboro Boys. I also suggested we issue a speciål leaflet to the
Black miners, advertising the meeting, asking them to C<?me out
and hear the latest on the Scottsboro Boys. They agreed, and we
put out a leaflet which also included the special demands of the
Black miners against discrimination.
The meeting_ was held on a hot Sunday afternoon, under a large
tree in Fairdale, a neighboring town where our strike headquarters
were set up. Several thousand people-miners and their families­
turned out, and for the first time Black faces were among them. It
seemed the entire Black community had come out.
Richard B. Moore was at his best; he spoke for over two hours
about the international situation, the crisis, unemployment,
Scottsboro and the miners' strike. He linked them all up together
and was frequently interrupted by applause, as his ideas struck
home with the audience. He ended with a rousing plea for unity of
Black and white miners in the strike. People were just spellbound.
Cutt Grant came over to me, eyes moist with emotion. He could
hardly speak. "My! I've never heard a speaker like that before."
Moore's speech seemed to have purged Grant of his white
chauvinism. I believe he joined the Party the next day, and tbe
Black miners at Pricedale joined the strike.

MURDER IN TUE COALFIELDS

Every weekend Getto and I would go to Pittsburgh to attend a

 CLASS W ARFARE IN THE MINES 369

Central Strike Committee meeting. Often Cutt Grant would

accompany us. Organizers from all the fields would be present.
We'd get the latest news of the strike, how it was proceeding in
other fields, report our own situation and receive new instructions.
We would communicate this to the miners in our region on our
return.
Returning one Monday morning, I crossed the bridge at
Monessen, and was met by some miners from my section. "Have
you heard what happened?" they said, rushing up to me.
They informed me that the company goons-the Coal and lron
Police-killed Filipovich right on his front porch, with his whole
family watching.
I was shocked. Filipovich was an ex-miner who had become a
small storekeeper. His store was right across the street from the
Pricedale company patch. He and his wife and several children
lived above the store and we had our miners' relief station in his
basement. Everyone knew him as a strong partisan of the miners
and he was well liked by all, except the company thugs who were
out to get him.
We proceeded to Fairdale, but could only get within several
blocks of the store. There were crowds of miners and their families
milling around and I found out exactly what had happened.
Filipovich and his family had been sitting on their porch the
evening before when some company thugs had come out and fired
point blank at him from the company patch across the street. He
had jumped up and rushed his family through the door, shouting,
"Don't kill the children!" It was then that he was shot, though none
of his children were hurt.
The reaction was tremendous anger throughout the coalfields at
this cold blooded murder. At the funeral, miners, their families
and sympathizers gathered from all the coal fields around. A
Yugoslav priest conducted the service and Adam Getto gave the
culogy.
The anger of the people was so strong, it was clear the operators
couldn't get away with it this time. The state prosecutor was forced
to try the case; the killers were found guilty and sentenced to long
prison terms.
370 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

The last hold-out mines in our area were two near Bentlyville,
Charleroi and Hillman. They were situated on a hill outside the
town limits,just off a public highway. Everytime we had attempted
to picket these mines, the coal and iron thugs would mount
machine guns across the road, thus blocking our attempts to close
them down. We all knew this crude violation of the rights of the
miners could only take place with the collusion of the state police
who were curiously absent on such occasions. Over several weeks
we planned and organized for an attack to break through this
blockade.
With the help of the Central Strike Committee, we mobilized
miners from neighboring coal fields for a march on these mines.
The morning of the march thousands of miners and their wives
assembled at the foot of the hill leading up to the mines. The coal
and iron thugs had placed across the road three machine guns,
which glistened in the morning sun. Cutt Grant, Getto and myself
were to lead the march.
While we were gathering, the state police, who had been
conspicuously absent in past confrontations with gunmen, made
their appearance in the person of a young lieutenant and a sergeant
who drove up in a car.
Standing on the running board, the lieutenant warned us:
"Don't march up that hill, you'll all be killed. Don't follow your
leaders," he said, pointing at Adam, Cutt and me. "They are
Russian communists, trying to lead you into a trap."
Voices from the crowd responded, "lsn't this a public road?
What right have they to block it? Why don't you clear them off it?
Let's march," they shouted. The crowd surged forth, with Cutt,
Getto and myself in the lead.
"Here I am," I thought, "over the top again, but in another kind
of war this time-against the enemy at home." No weapons, no
artillery support; just militant and determined miners. Some had
clubs, others picked up rocks, and a few, I'm sure, had handguns
concealed under their coats, despite our efforts to discourage
them. So we began the march slowly up the hill, expecting at any
moment to be blown apart by the company thugs who now had the
three machine guns pointing directly at us.
 CLASS WARFARE IN THE MINES 371

Thc atmosphere was tense with expectancy. We got about fifty

f rrt from them, when they suddenly picked up their guns and
movcd them to the side of the road, back onto company property.
It hud all been a bluff. We surged past with a deafening "hurrah"
11nd cstablished our picket lines on the public road in front of the
mines. Bentlyville mines were struck that day. Now, all the mines
In our section were on strike. The mines were closed tight for
1u•vcral months, during which the miners had excellent morale and
lløhting spirit.
A back-to-work movement started slowly in the fourth month
111' t he strike. At first, it was scarcely perceptible, but when more
1111d more miners failed to show up at local strike committee
meetings, it was clear that demoralization was setting in. Behind
I his was the stark faet of starvation for the miners and their
lnmilies. The relief efforts headed by Wagenknecht were inad­
rquate to maintain a long drawn-out strike.
Gctto, an old hand in the minefields, warned me of what to
rxpcct. As the feeling that the strike is being lost grows, it is often
nccompanied by terroristic actions, particularly among the young
mi ncrs-blowing up tipples, wrecking property and buildings.
We organizers and some of the more militant miners, however,
w�rc reluctant to admit defeat. At the beginning of the back-to­
work movement, many rank-and-file leaders and even union
lll'ganizers continued to give rosy reports at the Central Strike
< 'nmmittee meetings.
"Y es, a few scabs are crawling back, but the main mass of miners
nrc solid in support of the strike."
Then the Comintern representative, the German Ewart, appear­
rd at a meeting of the communist fraction of the strike committee. 4
As I recall, he kept insisting on exact information on the back-to­
work movement. Clearly, he was suspicious of the glowing reports
from many comrades. He stressed that if the trend was there and
ørowing, that we must be prepared for a "strategic retreat."
Retreat! Such a word was strictly taboo. Some organizers
looked at him as though he were a scab and argued, "That's just
what the operators would like us to do!"
Even Foster seemed unfamiliar with the idea of voluntary
372 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

retreat. The term was evidently not in his lexicon of strike strategy.
If we are facing defeat, we should go down fighting-this seemed
to be the common opinion. But Ewart quickly pointed out that if
we chose this course, we would find all our militants outside of the
mines, blacklisted, and our union destroyed.
On the other band, if we recognized our defeat, understood that
the miners simply could not stay out any longer, we would be able
to keep our militants in the mines, prevent ourselves from
becoming isolated, and regroup our forces to fight again. The logie
of this position was unassailable and after several meetings we
were won over.
We returned to the fields and called meetings of the strikers. The
position made sense to them. But our action was not taken soon
enough. Thousands of our hest miners had already been locked
out.
-• But the rank-and-file movement among miners did not end.
Early in 1932, 8,000 miners in the Kentucky fields went out
under the leadership of the NMU. This historie strike was
carried out under conditions of guerrilla warfare. After bitter
struggle, in which many were killed, this strike was also
broken.

SUMMA TION OF THE STRIKE

The twelve-week miners strike ended in a defeat for the

workers. The failure of the Party, and especially Party leader­
ship, to summarize the strike and thoroughly master the lessons
learned from it, contributed to the demise of the NMU, a red
trade union.
The strike was carried out at a time when the mining industry
itself was in the throes of deep crisis, mass unemployment
prevailed and starvation was an immediate reality for thousands of
miners and class fighters. The economic crisis was nationwide but
the mining regions of western Pennsylvania were particularly hard
hit.
 CLASS WARFARE IN THE MINES 373

As a resolution of the ECCI summarized it, under these

conditions the Party should have been feverishly working to
prepare for the miners' strike, building local organizations of the
Party and of the red trade unions. 5 Some effort was made in this
direction immediately before the strike, but on the whole, the
Party organization was in a weak and neglected state when the
strike did break out.
This situation was aggravated by the faet that after the strike
began, our leadership was unaware of the necessity and impor­
tance of strengthening, extending and building local Party and
trade union organizations as the backbone of successful strike
strategy.
Many leading comrades were brought in to aid in the struggle,
but mainly the higher levels of the strike apparatus were strength­
ened, while the local levels were almost entirely neglected. Because
the strike leadership did not make the building of local organiza­
tions an urgent priority, it did not realize that we were in danger of
becoming isolated from the broad masses of strikers.
U nderlying these mistakes was a lack of clarity on the basic line
guiding the Party's work in this struggle. The key obstacle was the
inability to link up the task of developing the Party with the
no less urgent task of doing everything possible to win the
miners' strike. Our work during the strike suffere4 from separating
these tasks and emphasizing one at the expense of the other. Our
main objective, simply put, was to revolutionize the striking
miners-to show, by our actions in the strike, and through
propaganda and agitation, that it is the communists who advo­
cated and carried through the correct strike strategy and tactics.
Material success is not always possible in a strike and is not an
absolute prerequisite for determining the success or failure of a
strike. At the same time, it must never be forgotten that there can
be no political success in a strike without a serious struggle for the
material improvement of the strikers. The strike leadership did not
see it was pursuing an entirely one-sided course when it insisted on
"holding out to the last man."
The result of these errors was the failure of the strike committee
to lead an orderly and well organized retreat. The strike committee
374 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

was not linked closely enough with the miners in the fields. This
close and intimate connection was one thing that would have
enabled the leadership to take measures in sufficiently good time
to prepare for the possibility of a strategic retreat. Instead, the
leaders continued to listen to the optimistic and honey-coated
reports of its traveling representatives and discouraged rank-and­
file miners from expressing their doubts about continuing the
strike by labeling al1 such miners as scabs. This existed to such an
extent that the strike leadership did not even notice that at the end
of the strike, we were "leading" a minority of the workers.
In the end, the miners simply could not stay out any longer
because of the widespread starvation and police terror. The Party's
refusal to organize for the possibility of a retreat left us isolated,
and to a certain extent discredited. Thousands of the most
militant and courageous fighters were locked out (blacklisted and
ewcted) by the coal operators. The NMU was decimated by the
coal operators, and thenceforward, we were unable to build it into
a powerful, independent union.

LEADING THE PARTY'S AFRO-AMERICAN WORK

I returned to New York from the miners' strike in September

193L Shortly thereafter, I was coopted to the Central Committee
with the privilege of sitting in on meetings of the Politburo. B.D.
Arnis, the former head of the Negro Department, was sent to Ohio
and I was named to fill his position. In my new job, a large part of
my time was devoted to the Scottsboro campaign, which was a
major effort of the Party in the Black liberation struggle.
It is diffi.cult to fully assess the tremendous impåct Scottsboro
had on the Party's political development in that period. Every area
of work-every mass organization we were involved in-was
strengthened by our participation in this defense campaign.
Through our militant working class policy, we were able to win
workers of all nationalities to take up the special demands of Black
people embodied in the Scottsboro defense. I'll never forg�t how
the immigrant workers in the Needle Trades Union would sing
 CLASS W ARFARE IN THE MINES 375

"Scottsboro Boys Shall Not Die" in their various Eastern Euro­

pean and Yiddish accents.
In the South, the movement awakened the great mass of the
Black peasantry and resulted in the building of the militant.
Sharecroppers Union, which embraced thousands of land-starved
Black croppers and poor farmers. Scottsboro helped pave the way
for the growth of the Unemployed Councils and the CIO. The
International Labor Defense (ILD), which had been initiated by
the Party in 1925 to fight for the freedom of political prisoners like
Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, became the main mass
organization in Scottsboro. 6 The Mooney case and others like it
were linked to the Scottsboro frame-up and became instrumental
in winning white workers to the fight for the freedom of the
Scottsboro Boys.
Scottsboro marked the first real bid of the Party and the Black
working class for leadership in the Black liberation struggle.
Within the national movement, Black workers emerged as a force
independent of the reformists and greatly strengthened by their
role as part of the working class generally. By the end of 1931, we
had effectively won hegemony in the defense efforts. Although the
NAACP did not formally withdraw from the defense until
.January 1932, we were already in de facto control, the boys and
their parents having signed up with the ILD.
The thrust of our policy, emphasizing the primacy of mass
struggle for the freedom of the boys, had succeeded to a large
cxtent in discrediting and isolating the reformist-liberal NAACP
leadership. This faet, however, did not mean that the right
reformist danger of compromise and capitulation in the Black
freedom movement had been eliminated. On the contrary, its
proponents continued to probe our positions seeking weak spots
which they could exploit to stage a comeback.
Within the Party, these influences were reflected in the under­
cstimation of the objective class role of the reformist leadership as
un agency of the white ruling class within the Black movement.
lJ nderlying this was the tendency to ignore class differences in the
Black community, the naive and anti-Marxist assumption that all
Blacks as members of art oppressed nation were revolutionary
376 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

or potentially so.
This attitude persisted despite the treachery of the NAACP
leaders in the Scottsboro struggle. In practice, it was manifested in
the tendency to rely on local Black leaders, particularly the clergy,
in the building of local united fronts and the failure to involve the
masses below. Often within these united fronts the Party failed to
place elementary conditions for struggle against the ruling class as
the basis for unity and thus failed to maintain the independent
role of the Party, its freedom of action and propaganda.
This struggle against the right reformist danger was often made
more difficult by left sectarian errors, manifested primarily in a
resistance to building the broadest possible united front.
As head of the Negro Department, I felt it was my job to push
the fight against reformism in the Black community and its
reflections in the Party. This I felt was essential, not only to the
Scottsboro struggle, but also to secure our long-term strategic
objective, winning of the hegemony of Black workers in the
liberation struggle. I pursued this line in speeches, lectures, in
training classes for Party cadres, and in my writings during this
period.7
In those days the South was cortsidered the main concentration
point for the development of the Black liberation movement. As
head of the national Negro Department and Central Committee
representative to the South, I was expected to follow closely the
development of the Party's work in that region. It was theref9re
·necessary to acquaint myself with its practical as well as theoretical
problems. My plan was to spend at least three or four months a
year in the South.
My first trip South was to Charlotte, North Carolina, in the
spring of 1932. Charlotte, located near the foothills of the
Piedmont, was the geographical center of the growing Southern
textile industry. The industry had grown up as the result of the
runaway shops from New England-hent on tapping the cheap
labor supply of poverty-stricken white farmers fleeing the uplands.
Gastonia, the scene of the historie strike in the spring of 1929,
which had been led by the Party and TUUL, was only twenty miles
from Charlotte.
 CLASS W ARFARE IN THE MINES 377

< 'harlotte was also the headquarters of the Party's North

( 'nrolina District. At the time of my visit, it was quiet, but there
Wt'rc stirrings in the mills around the area, rumblings of a new
wnvc of strikes which were to break out the foliowing July.
l I ncmployment was the main issue among both Black and white
workcrs. Unemployment was growing as a result of the inhuman
"NI rctch-out" (speed-up) system. Blacks were still a minority in the
mi lis, working only in clean-up jobs, sweeping and janitorial work.
Thcy were the lowest of the low.
The Party had carried through some demonstrations for
uncmployment relief. Some of the stalwarts from the Gastonia
Nlrike who had been locked out of the mills had moved into
< 'hnrlotte-providing the backbone of the Party in Charlotte, at
lrnst among whites. The Party had won sympathy among Blacks
IIN II result of the Scottsboro issue and its strong position against
cliscrimination in the shops. An ILD branch had been set up and
lhcrc was a good Scottsboro movement in town.
The Party was partially underground, and its members worked
In the Unemployed Councils, ILD and the National Textile Union
( w h ich had never really recovered after the Gastonia defeat). There
wns an unemployed headquarters downtown which consisted of
1111 office and a fairly large hall where the ILD also held meetings.
Pnrty meetings were generally small and held in the homes of
l'mnrades.
Most of the top Party leadership was from the north. Richards,
lhc district organizer, was of Finnish-American extraction and
huiled from Wisconsin, where he had formerly been D.O. Amy
Schecter was a Jewish cockney. Bom in London, she was a college
rd ucated intellectual, but she still retained a thick cockney accent.
Shc was one of the original Gastonia Seven who were charged with
I hc murder of the chief of police. (Their case was finally won in the
Supreme Court.) There was also Dave Doran of the YCL. He later
hccame political commissar of the Lincoln Brigade and was killed
on the Aragon front in Spain. The outstanding local comrade was
11 steadfast Black woman, Ann Withers.
My visit to Charlotte was brief. I sat in on a few meetings in the
district, discussing preparations for marches on the issue of
378 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

unemployment relief and the upcoming election campaign. I then

returned to New York and reported on my visit.
 Chapter 14

Reunion in Moscow
Nineteen thirty-two was a presidential election year. We
rommunists greeted it as an opportunity to popularize our
program before the millions of people impoverished by the
N'onomic crisis and ruling class offensive, as well as to stimulate
1111d strengthen all the campaigns the Party was engaged in.
By this time, the Party had built considerable influence among
I hc masses through an increasingly successful struggle against
1 i�ht dangers. We concentrated a good deal of attention on the
Nlrnggle for unemployment insurance and immediate relief. Hun­
"rr marches on state capitals had taken place throughout the
l'll11ntry, culminating with nationwide marches on Washington in
I >cccmber of 1931 and 1932.
In the struggle of employed workers, the Party found itself
lncrcasingly at loggerheads with William Green and the AFL. For
lnHlance, he supported Hoover's wage-cut policies against which
wr had waged many successful Qattles. In direct defiance of the
A FL's no-strike pledge, the Party and the TUUL were leading
111 rikes in the Kentucky mines and the needle trades.
Poor and middle farmers were then revolting against wide-
111ncad evictions and foreclosures throughout the midwest, and in
I >rccmber 1932 farmers from across the country held a National
l(dicf Conference in Washington. As a result, the Farmer's
Nntional Committee of Action was set up-raising such demands
101 no forced sales or evictions of poor farmers, cash relief,
380 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

reduction in rents and taxes, and an end to the oppression of Afro­

American people. 1
With mass demonstrations and meetings throughout the coun­
try to free the Scottsboro Boys, the Party was becoming a
respected leader among Blacks. We also helped organize the
National Bonus March in July 1932. Some 25,000 veterans
marched to Washington, demanding adjusted service pay; stand­
ing against the danger of imperialist war and for the defense of the
Soviet Union and the Chinese people.
We began preparing for the presidential campaign early in 1932,
nominating a national slate of William Z. Foster for president and
James W. Ford for vice-president. Ford was called back from
Germany where he had been chairman of the International Trade
Union Committee of Negro Workers. I had been briefly consid­
ered for vice-president, but it was felt generally that my appear­
ance was too youthful.
Though the Party's vote was small-about 103,000-we used
the campaign to broadly publicize our minimum and maximum
programs. 2 We had a slate of congressional candidates, among
whom were many Blacks. The Party was on the ballot in forty
states and conducted an aggressive campaign. Hundreds of mass
meetings were held throughout the country, seven million leaflets
distributed and one million pamphlets sold-all this in the face of
vicious police harassment and repression. I don't really believe
that the final vote was an accurate reflection of the Party's
influence at that time-particularly in the South, where the Black
masses were almost entirely disenfranchised.
In the summer of 1932, nineteen-year-old Angelo Herndon, a
YCL member, was arrested in Atlanta, Georgia. Herndon was
charged with "incitement to insurrection" under an old 1861
fugitive slave statute. Much of what I learned was from my brother
Otto who was in Atlanta at the time and worked actively in the
campaign.
That June, the Fulton County Commissioners had announced
that there was no more money for relief. After all, there was no
need for relief, they said-there was no one in the city of Atlanta
who was starving. Then they invited any stray soul who might be
 REUNION IN MOSCOW 381

hungry to come to their offices and they would investigate the

situation.
The Communist Party and the Unemployed Councils immed­
iately took them up on their offer. They mobilized 1,000 people­
Black and white ---:-to come to the county courthouse and demand
relief. The meeting itself was historic-the first time that such a
large meeting of Black and white workers had taken place in the
South.
Herndon described its significance in his autobiography: "It
was a demonstration of the Southern worker's power. Like a giant
that had been lying asleep for a long time, he now began to stir." 3
Atlanta's ruling circles were appropriately alarmed and the next
day they found $6,000 for relief.
One week later, Angelo Herndon was arrested. His trial was an
example of Georgia lynchjustice and the local rulers through their
newspapers were to use it to sensationalize the "red Jew" scare for
many years to come. I think the prosecutor's remarks sum up the
situation pretty well.
Falling to his knees, the Reverend Hudson told thejury that he
expected them to arrive at a verdict that would "automatically
send this damnable anarchistic Bolsheviki to his death by
electrocution." The good reverend said that this would satisfy
God and the "daughters of the state officials can walk the streets
safely. Stamp this thing out now with a conviction." 4
Hudson didn't get everything he asked for, but Herndon was
sentenced to eighteen to twenty years. Before he was sentenced,
however, young Herndon told the court: "You may succeed in
killing one, two, even a score of working-class organizers. But you
cannot kill the working class." 5
In the beginning stages of the case, the ILD had immed­
iately taken charge of the defense, which was then in the hands of a
young Black Atlanta attorney, Ben Davis, Jr. The case was linked
up with the Scottsboro struggle as a symbol of the racist
persecution of Blacks.
A long legal battle ensued. Mass meetings and buge petition
campaigns were launched as part of the defense effort. The case
was fought through to the Supreme Court, which at first sustained
382 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

the conviction, but ultimately reversed it ·by a five to four decision.

Herndon, out on bail, was finally freed in 1937.
As soon as we had received word of Herndon's arrest, we began
planning a nationwide defense campaign. The Negro Department
was responsible for developing and carrying out a campaign in
support of the ILD. As part of this effort I made plans to go to
Atlanta to see the situation first band.
Shortly before I was to leave, however, Browder called me into
his office and informed me that he h.ad just received a Cl request
that the American Party send three delegates to attend the Twelfth
Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist Inter­
national. Browder as ked ifl would like to go; the meeting was to be
in Moscow in early September. He said that he was aware of my
desire to bring my wife Ina to the United States, and he suggested
that this might be a good opportunity. I, of course, enthusiastically
aireed. Just a few days later, I was aboard ship-bound for the
Soviet Union-with the other two delegates, Bob Minor and
Henry Puro (a Finnish-American comrade).
We arrived in Moscow in mid-August and I had a joyous
reunion with Ina.Not long after our arrival, the Twelfth Plenum of
the ECCI convened as scheduled. Its purpose was to analyse the
current international situation and check the work of the Comin­
tern sections, the affiliated parties.
The tone was set in the resolution on the international sit­
uation. It noted that capitalist stabilization had ended, that we
were well along in the third period, and that although a revo­
lutionary upsurge was developing in a number of countries, a
revolutionary situation had not yet arisen in any important
capitalist country. The resolution stressed the danger of war and the
"preparation for a counter-revolutionary war against the USSR."
The enemy, it declared, was both fascism and social-fascism
(social democracy), which stood for the maintenance and strength­
ening of capitalism. "Only by directing the main blow against
social democracy, this social mainstay of the bourgeoisie," it said,
"will it be possible to strike at and defeat the chief class enemy of
the proletariat-the bourgeoisie."6
In the United States there had already been mass
 REUNION IN MOSCOW 383

demonstrations of the unemployed, the veterans' march and the

Nlrike struggles against wage cuts. The resolution called upon the
ll .S. Party to continue to strengthen its efforts in mobilizing the
masses, and towards this end to "concentrate chiefly on the strug­
�lc: 1. for social insurance, against wage cuts, for immediate assis­
t u nce for the unemployed; 2. for assistance for the ruined farmers;
.'. for equal rights of the Negroes and the right of self-determina-
1 ion for the Black Belt." It urged the defense of the Chinese people
ngainst foreign aggression and defense of the Soviet Union.
There was nothing new in all this. The Party was in agreement
with all these points and had taken part in discussions which led to
t he formulation of his speech.
I visited the Lenin School where I reported on the
Afro-American work in the Party. The student body was com­
plctely new to me; there were a number of American Black
students as well as several South Africans. One was Nzula, the
Nccretary of the South African Communist Party, a brilliant young
Zulu communist. Unfortunately Nzula died of pneumonia shortly
ufter I left.
In Moscow I also met members of the Black and white film
group who had come to the Soviet Union at the invitation of the
Mezhrabpom (Soviet film industry). The twenty-two young men
11 nd women were there to film a story about race and class relations
in the Southern United States. Among them were the novelist and
poet Langston Hughes; Louise Thompson (now Louise Thomp­
son Patterson), secretary of the Committee for the Defense of
Political Prisoners and a former social worker and teacher; Ted
Poston, a New York journalist; Loren Miller, a young west coast
intellectual, later a lawyer and judge; and Henry Moon, a writer
who later became publicity director of the NAACP. They seemed
to be having a good time among the hospitable Russians who went
out of their way to show them courtesy.
After a stay of several months and a number of attempts to get
started, the movie · was called off. The reason, according to
Mezhrabpom officials, was the inadequacy of the scenario. It was
not worthy of the kind of picture they had hoped to make, nor were
the actors quite what they expected.
384 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

They were a group of intellectuals, not a genuine worker among

them and only one professional actor. Most were from the north
and knew little or nothing about the South. Some members of the
group, however, contended that the reasons for canct.ling the
project were political-that the Soviets were backing away from
the project in order to curry favor with the U.S. government.
They claimed that equal rights were being sacrificed and the
Soviets were betraying Blacks in exchange for diplomatic relations
with the United States. At the time, the two countries were about
to establish diplomatic relations, and a film depicting racial
relations in the U.S. might be considered a violation of the
proposed treaty of recognition which enjoined both parties to
refrain from hostile propaganda against the other.
This charge was picked up, embellished and hurled throughout
the world by the capitalist press. Added to it were accounts of
"ppor Blacks stranded in Moscow." The New York Tribune
headlined a story "Negroes Adrift in 'Unde Tom's' Russian
Cabin-Harlem Expeditionary Unit is Stranded in Moscow."7
A couple of years later when George Padmore left his post as
editor of the Negro Worker (organ of the International Trade
Union Committee of Negro Workers in Hamburg), he made use of
this incident to try to bolster his flimsy charge that the Communist
International had deserted the African liberation struggles.
These charges were false. According to Langston Hughes, the
group was on contract and continued to receive their salaries­
higher than any of them had ever earned before. They were staying
in a luxurious hotel, were wined and dined by the Russians, and
were also invited by the theatrical union on a pleasure trip to the
Black Sea to visit the resorts of the Crimea and the Caucasus.
Langston Hughes also supported the Russians with respect to
the inadequacy of the script. In faet, it was he who called their
attention to it. He had read the script, written by a well-known
Soviet scenarist whose knowledge of contemporary Black lif e was
limited to the very few books on the subject which had been
translated into Russian. He had evidently studied these and put
together what he thought was a highly dramatic story of race
relations in the United States.
 REUNION IN MOSCOW 385

The result, said Hughes, "was a script improbable to the point

of ludicrousness. It was so interwoven with major and minor
impossibilities and improbabilities that it would have seemed like
n burlesque on the screen." He told studio officials that in his
opinion, "no plausible film could possibly be made from it since, in
general, the script was so mistakenly conceived that it was beyond
revision. " 8
Mezhrabpom informed the group that they would be paid in full
for the duration of their contracts and that transportation via
London, Paris or Berlin back to the U.S. would be available
whenever they wished to depart. With regard to the future, three
choices were offered: exit visas at any time, an extended tour of the
Soviet Union before leaving, or permanent residence and jobs for
nny who desired to remain. All were invited to stay in the USSR as
long as they wished.
Langston remained a year, visiting republics in central Asia and
traveling in various parts of the Soviet Union. Two members of the
group stayed permanently. Wayland Rudd, the actor, appeared in
Moscow theaters and performed for the troops at the front during
World War II. Lloyd Patterson, a scene designer who was a
graduate of Hampton Institute in Virginia, married a Russian
woman and stayed in the Soviet Union where he died during the
Nazi invasion of Moscow. His wife, Vera, also a scene designer,
was a friend of Ina's.
Romer Smith, a former postal employee from Minneapolis,
stayed in the Soviet Union until the beginning ofWorld Warll. He
got a contract with the Russian postal service and introduced the
first special delivery to Moscow.
While I was there, Mother Wright (mother of one of the
Scottsboro Boys) was on a tour of Russia and spoke to a whole
series of mass rallies, culminating in a buge demonstration and
parade of tens of thousands of Soviet workers in Moscow. They
went through the main streets of Moscow with placards and
banners: "Free the Scottsboro Boys!" "Down with U.S. Impe­
rialism!" and "The Soviet Union-Friend of the Oppressed
Blacks." This enthusiastic support of the Russians for the
Scottsboro Boys further belied these slanders.
386 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

One day I dropped in at the Bolshoi Moscow Hotel to visit some

members of the film group. Entering the lobby I saw my old
K UTVA schoolmate Golden and we ran into a Russian embrace.
He had gone back to the States in 1928 and had now returned to
the Soviet Union with a new wife, a Polish-American woman.
They had settled in Tashkent in central Asia, where he was
professor of English literature at the university. His wife also
taught there and they had a baby daughter.
Golden told me what had happened to him in the past
years. Back in the U.S., he had found it difficult to fit into
Party work. "I was neither an organizer nor an agitator and
I felt I was too old to acquire these qualities," he said.
(He was then about forty) "As you know, I never had any Party
experience before coming to Russia."
He felt that he could, perhaps, eventually become a teacher of
Marxian political economy. "You know I was good at that," he
said. He was in faet, an extremely modest and retiring fellow, not
one to blow his own horn. I would say the comrades in the States
did not know of his qualifications in this respect. He had worked
awhile as the manager ofthe Party restaurant in New York. Then
he was sent as organizer to Pittsburgh, but, as he himself admitted,
did a poor job there.
He was a loyal communist, however, and it occurred to him that
there was one thing he could do for the Soviet Union and that was
to organize a group of Black technicians to go there to work.
Approaching his old teacher at Tuskegee, the famed Dr. George
Washington Carver, he solicited his aid in getting together a group
of agricultural specialists to go to the Soviet Union. Dr. Carver
seemed enthusiastic about the project and immediately sought
volunteers from among his former students.
They eventually got together a group of nine agricultural
specialists, agronomists and agricultural chemists. There was also
one young civil engineer, Charles Young, the son of Colonel
Young-West Point graduate and highest ranking Black officer in
the U.S. Army at the beginning of World War I.
The whole group signed contracts through the Amtorg (Soviet
trading organization in the U.S.). Led by Golden, they left for the
 REUNION IN MOSCOW 387

USSR. Otto told me he saw them off when they sailed from New
York. He asked Golden when he was coming back. Repeating a
vcrse of the once-popular song, Golden replied, "I'll be back when
I hc elephants roost in the trees."
Golden died in Tashkentjust before World War Il. In addition
lo his work as a professor, he was at that time a member of the city
Soviet. He must have been a very popular man because we heard
lhat the whole town turned out for his funeral.
Most of the young Black technicians remained permanently,
murried and had families in the Soviet Union. One became head of
lhc }argest state poultry farm in the Soviet Union and another,
Sutton, an agricultural chemist from San Antonio, Texas, in­
vcnted a process for producing rope from rice straw.
My desire to bring Ina back to the States was made known to the
nppropriate authorities. We had no trouble at all. She was
immediately given an exit visa. Naturally, her mother was sorry to
hc separated from her only child, but she approved of Ina's
lcaving-saying she wanted her daughter to be happy.
We left Moscow for Riga, site of the nearest American embassy
(the Soviet Union was not recognized by the U.S. at this time).
Arriving in Riga we proceeded at once to the American embassy
lo get the necessary papers which would allow Ina to enter the
l l nited States as my wife and become a permanent resident. At the
lime, I thought there was a possibility of getting immediate
upproval so she could come through with me. I knew that t]lis had
happened in some cases, but I was quickly disabused of this naive
hope.
At the embassy I was subjected to a quiz; the ambassador
himself took part in the questioning. I could tel1 by his accent that
hc was a polite Southern gentleman. Behind the mask, I could
Hense the hostility towards me. I told them I was a writer and had
spent time in the Soviet Union a couple of years before. There I ·
had met Ina, and we had gotten married. Now I had returned to
bring her back with me. They asked me all sorts of questions about
lhc Soviet Union-how I liked it, what it was like. I gave general
nnswers. It was clear they knew all along who I was.
Finally I was told that they didn't handle visas from that office
388 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

in this connection. I would have to go back to the United States

and apply through the Immigration Department to bring Ina in.
They assured me I would have no problem. I should leave Ina in
Riga. This, they said, was the normal procedure. The ambassador,
keeping up the friendly facade, bade me goodbye in a polite way
and wished me luck.
Fortunately, we had friends in Riga. The Armenian Vartanyan,
a member of the YCI, had given us the name of his uncle, a wealthy
doctor in the city, who had his own health sanitarium. Ina could
stay there as a guest as long as she wanted.
The city of Riga was a notorious spy center. A listening post for
the U.S., it was the nearest place to gather information on the
Soviet Union for U.S. intelligence. Many of the anti-Soviet
"experts" were centered there, and the city served as a lie factory.
For example, they reported twenty million people had starved to
death in famines in 1932. I was there that year, and while I saw
some tightening of the belt as a result of the bad harvest, there was
no starvation. Then there was even cruder stuff about the
"nationalization of women" -all invented by newspapermen in
the bars in Riga.9
I was in Riga just three or four days and regretfully left Ina with
the doctor and his family. He assured me everything would be all
right. We went to the station where I caught the train for Berlin;
Ina and I embraced, and she watched as the train pulled out. I
never saw her again.
From Berlin I went to Bremerhaven and got passage home on
the liner Bremen. Immediately on arrival in the States I went to the
Immigration office on Ellis Island to apply for a visa for Ina. Here
they were quite rude. One guy asked me, "Who is she-a
communist? We're not letting any communists in, you know."
I said, "No. She's just a Soviet citizen." They gave me an
application to fill out.
I then asked when I could hear from them and they told me it
would be a month or so. "Why does it take so long?" I asked.
They said they had to investigate.
I kept in close touch with Ina assuring her that things would turn
out all right. I also called the Immigration Department, con-
 REUNION IN MOSCOW 389

11t11ntly inquiring about the application.

After several months, I became convinced my application for
lnu's visa was being deliberately obstructed by the Immigration
I >cpartment itself. So I started my own campaign, assisted by my
fricnd William Patterson, then national secretary of the In­
ternational Labor Defense. We felt the best way to get results was
lo threaten the immigration authorities with public exposure-it
wns a clear case of discrimination against a Black man!
We enlisted the support of several liberals, including the
( 'ommittee for the Defense of Political Prisoners headed by Rabbi
Benjamin Goldstein and Malcolm Cowley of the American Civil
l.iberties Union. They addressed a telegram to the commissioner
of immigration in Washington, demanding to know the reasons
for the delay and denouncing this inhuman treatment. "Is it
hccause she is white and Mr. Hall is Negro?" they asked.
We got an immediate reply from the commissioner himself. He
ilcnied the delay had anything to do with racial discrimination and
1111id he would like to see Mr. Hall down in Washington so we could
lnlk the matter over.
Pat and I went down to the office of the commissioner in
Washington. Patterson, as my attorney, was on the offensive and
lnunched right in. But the commissioner told him to hold back.
Thcre's no discrimination here, he told us, but of course, we're not
�oing to let any communists in. We objected, saying she was not a
l'ommunist, just a citizen of the Soviet Union.
Then the commissioner raised the question of my previous
murriage. They as yet had no proof of the termination of that
marriage. I replied that that was no problem; I would get the proof
lur them.
Shortly after I had arrived in Moscow in 1926, I had gotten a
let ter from my sister Eppa. She told me she had run into Hazel, my
former wife. Hazel had told her she had divorced me, was
1·cmarried and had some children. So I assumed there would be no
trouble getting confirmation of the divorce.
I immediately went to Chicago and saw my sister. She repeated
what she had written to me, told me where Hazel was living and
lhcn took me there to see her. I explained to Hazel that I needed to
390 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

get confirmation of our divorce. But she said she hadn't divorced
me.
"What do you mean'r' I asked, amazed.
"You know, it's against my religion. My church doesn't approve
of divorces," she said.
I was astounded. Here she was living with someone else and with
children, but she couldn't approve of divorce!
I wrote Ina, telling her what had transpired and told her I
thought the hest thing to do was for her to go back to Moscow. I
would get a divorce as quickly as I could and then go back.
But I got bogged down in work. There was no money for a
divorce, and no guarantee that even with the divorce, I would
be able to get Ina into the country. I felt very sad about this and we
did exchange letters for a time, but I was unable to get back to the
Soviet Union in the thirties and we eventually lost contact. I later
heard from friends who had visited Moscow that she had
�remarried.
 Chapter 15

Sharecroppers with Guns:

Organizing the Black Belt

In the spring of 1933, Haywood Patterson of the Scottsboro

Boys was declared guilty by a court in Decatur, Alabama.
Following his conviction, a wave of indignation swept Black
communities across the country. Mass protest rallies, deinon­
Ntrations of all sorts and parades culminated in the Free the
Scottsboro Boys March on Washington on May 7-9, 1933.
The right <langer took concrete form when the ILD leadership
nllowed themselves to be suckered into an agreement with the
NAACP leadership. These leaders made overtures to the ILD,
offering to help raise funds for the mounting legal defense
cxpenses and particularly for those of the Patterson appeal.
This offer, however, was made with conditions which amounted
to giving the NAACP veto power over all expenditures of defense
funds, and thus over defense activities. It was a ploy which would
nllow NAACP leaders such as Joel Spingarn and Walter White to
rcgain their position in the defense campaign and appear before
the masses as leaders in this campaign.
Since the beginning of the campaign two years before, the
Spingarn-White crowd had used every possible means to wrest the
dcfense from the ILD. Their efforts were in vain, but they
continued to attack-not the lynehers-but the defense. For
cxample, shortly after the Patterson verdict, the NAACP board of
directors stated that the only hope for the boys was to "remove
... the additional burden of communism." 1
392 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Now these leaders, largely discredited and isolated, attempted

to get back into the defense. The sharp rise in the movement under
the leadership of the ILD, which followed the Patterson verdict,
forced them to make a tactical retreat. Realizing they had
misjudged the temper of the masses they now attempted to regain a
place within the defense in order to more effectively sabotage it. To
this end they made overtures to the ILD, offering to help raise
funds.
In an ILD staff meeting which I attended as head of the Party's
Negro Department, the NAACP offer was discussed favorably by
most of the staff. George Maurer, who played a leading role in
organizing the Scottsboro defense, and myself were the only ones
to object. William Patterson, national secretary, argued that there
was no alternative if the organization were to gain the financial
support we needed for the Haywood Patterson appeal and the
future trials of the other boys. 2 As I recall, our objections were to
no avail and the agreement was carried through. 3
The deal was obviously set up by $amuel Leibowitz, one of
America's leading criminal lawyers, who had become quite well
known for his defense of certain gangster types. He had volun­
teered his services free of charge to the ILD and was accepted as
the chief defense lawyer in the trial ofHaywood Patterson. He won
national acclaim by his brilliant conduct of the defense and
emerged as a hero of that trial. On his return to New York from
Decatur, Alabama, more than 3,000 peopJe poured out ofHarlem
to greet him at Pennsylvania Station.
Leibowitz was a man of great personal ambition. (He later
became a justice of the New York Supreme Court.) He was clearly
uncomfortable in the company of revolutionaries and sought to
avoid too close identification with the ILD. He brought the ILD
and the NAACP together, ostensibly to achieve unity, but in
reality to weaken the hold of the ILD on the defense and pave the
way for an eventual takeover by the NAACP leadership.
The ILD went on to compound this original mistake. They not
only accepted the deal but hailed the NAACP leaders for their
"changed attitude." In faet, the agreement reflected no change of
heart by NAACP leaders. They continued to draw a line between
 SHARECROPPERS WITH GUNS 393

dcfense in the courts and the mass movement. They tried to

�·onfine their support to the courts and moved to sabotage the mass
dcfense movement, both from within and from without. They
l'cfused to support the Free the Scottsboro Boys March on
Washington, but this proved to be a serious blunder for the already
crisis-ridden and isolated NAACP.
Shortly before the march on Washington, our right opportunist
mistakes were continued in the Scottsboro Action Committee, a
hrnad united front which was under the leadership of the ILD. The
NAACP had become largely discredited and "left" reformists like
William H. (Kid) Davis, publisher of the Amsterdam News, tried to
step into the vacuum. Davis, along with Black politicians who
scrved as fronts for New York's Tammany Hall, attempted to set
up a new so-called non-partisan defense committee for the
purpose of the march. This was part of their effort to seize the
lcadership of the growing mass movement that was calling for a
march on Washington. Davis attempted to divert it from a mass
march into a committee of representative citizens who would
present a petition to the president.
At the beginning of this move, the Scottsboro Action Commit­
tce tailed after the reformists. They failed at first to see through the
lcft rhetoric of the grou p's criticisms of the NAA CP. But within a
short time, we corrected this mistake and regained leadership of
the movement. We did the actual organization and formulation of
the proposals for the march, which went over successfully.
I participated in the organization of the march on Washington
along with Patterson, Ford and others-helping to prepare the
program and working out technical details. The march involved
people mainly from the cities of the eastern seabord; there hadn't
been time to organize a truly national demonstration. The demand
of the march was "Freedom for the Scottsboro Boys," which was
lied in with demands in the area of civil rights: an end to
discrimination in voting, jury service, schools, housing, public
nccommodations, trade unions and the death penalty for
lynching. 4
These demands were summed up in the Bill of Rights put
forward by the LSNR. The 3,000 marchers, led by Ruby Bates,
394 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Mrs. Jane Patterson ( mother of Haywood Patterson) and William

Patterson of the ILD, demanded to meet with President
Roosevelt. 5 Roosevelt was in conference with Dr. Hajalmar
Schacht, the special German envoy, and refused to meet the
marchers.
We did visit various congressmen who all said it was a matter for
the courts, they could do nothing. Oscar DePriest, a Black
congressman from the Thompson machine in Chicago, showed his
true colors-declaring that we weren't going to get him into this
mess! We left the petitions with Louis Howe, the president's
secretary; saw Vice-President Garner and the Speaker of the
House. We then paraded through the streets of Washington and
headed home.
After the march, the Politburo of the Party reviewed the
Scottsboro campaign since the Patterson verdict. The right
mistakes before the march arose from a basic misconception of the
un:hed front. Behind this was the idea that a united front meant
unity with everybody, under any conditions. Involved here was a
definite underestimation of the class role of the Black reformist
leaders as agents of the ruling class in the ranks of the Afro­
American people. Their influence could only be destroyed in the
course of building a united front with the masses from below. It
was the same as the situation in the labor movement with regard to
the labor bureaucracy.
We decided that a resolution should be developed in the light of
our discussions; the Negro Department was given the task of
drafting such a resolution. We summed up these mistakes in a
resolution which was adopted by the Politburo. In its criticism
of the ILD's deal with the NAACP, the resolution stated that the
ILD should have offered the NAACP a "straight forward and
clear proposal of mass struggle and mobilization of the masses
against the capitalist frame-up courts and Jim-Crow legal sys­
tem."
If the NAACP had accepted this program, it would have clearly
discredited their past policy of relying on the courts. "If they had
refused such an offer, this also would have cleared the issues before
the eyes of the masses."
 SHARECROPPERS WITH GUNS 395

The resolution went on further to state:

In such a broad mass struggle as that of the Scottsboro
conscious agents of the ruling bourgeoisie endeavor to come
into the united front for the purpose of smashing the mass
movement and thus servingthe bourgeoisie....lt is necessary...
to warn the masses constantly of the class role of these
elements .... Under all conditions it is necessary to maintain the
independent role of the Party and of the revolutionary forces
in such a united front both in regard to our agitation and our
actions. 6

SOUTHERN TOUR

Our hne, projecting the question of U.S. Blacks as essentially

that of an oppressed nation, called for making the South the
"center of gravity" for work among them. Though I had spent a
brief period in North Carolina, it was not the deep Black Belt
South, the focus of the Party's concentration. I was eager to visit
the area, to see how our theory regarding the national question and
the role of the "Black peasantry" were being worked out in
practice.
The opportunity came in the early part of 1933. In consultation
with the Alabama district organizer, Nat Ross; Elizabeth Lawson,
acting editor of the Southern Worker (the Party's Southern news­
paper); and Al Murphy, secretary of the Sharecroppers Union(all
of whom were in New York at the time), it was decided that I
should spend several weeks in the Alabama district.
Arriving in Birmingham, I had no difficulty in finding the hotel
where the comrades had arranged for me to stop. It was on Fourth
Avenue, downtown in a small Black business area, near the
Birmingham World, the city's Black weekly.
When I registered, the owner and desk clerk said, "Oh, yes, Mr.
Haywood. We've been expecting you. Your friends will be here
shortly."
I was shown to my room and a few minutes later two young
Black comrades, Rosea Hudson and Joe Howard, came to my
396 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

room. Both were unemployed steel workers. They had been

assigned as my liaisons to the local Party organization.
In Birmingham, the South's greatest industrial center, the ruling
white supremacist oligarchy expressed the interest oflocal capital­
ist Black Belt planters of the adjacent counties, local represen­
tatives of northern based industrial and financial corporations.
Most of these latter merged socially with their Southern counter­
parts. At the top of the corporate list was the gigantic United States
Steel Corporation, sprawling over a section of the town itself. The
Gentlemen's Agreement of 1877 remained in full force.
The principle enunciated by Judge Taney in the Dred Scott
decision that the Black has no rights that the white man is bound to
respect was still fully operative. Jim Crow laws in public places
were strictly enforced. The purpose of it all was to preserve a
cheap, subservient, divided and unorganized labor force of
degraded, disenfranchised Blacks and poverty-ridden whites. The
latter were psychologically compensated by being accepted as
members of a superior race.
In Birmingham, racism was all-pervasive and blatant. One could
feel it in the atmosphere. Birmingham was a mean town, a place
where the police periodically shot down Black people to "keep
them in line," the latter being mostly young and unemployed.
When we walked down the street, Hosea and Joe told me, "If
you expect to work down here, you gotta look like the rest of us.
You gotta cut out that fast walking with your head up in the air­
or these crackers'll spot you. Get that slouch in your walk. Look
scared, as if you are about to run," he joked. These were hig tough
men talking now. Of course they were kidding-still, there was a
grain of truth in these remarks.
Now a new element had entered the picture-the Communist
Party. Formed in 1930 by organizers from the north, the Party in
Birmingham took the first steps towards building a union of steel
workers, laying the groundwork for building the CIO Steel
Workers Union in 1935. It had initiated a movement of unem­
ployed which organized a demonstration of 7,000 people on the
steps of the Jefferson County Courthouse in November 1932. 7
Though the numbers were not large, the Party grew rapidly
 SHARECROPPERS WITH GUNS 397

du ring the 1932 election campaign. Three hundred Blacks and fifty
whites gathered to greet William Z. Foster at an election rally.
l•oster, however, failed to appear because of illness. Thefollowing
wcek, 400 Blacks and 300 whites attended a meeting to hear
llathaway; this meeting was broken up by vigilantes throwing
Ntink bombs from galleries. There were also a number of mass
meetings called on the Scottsboro issue, including one of 3,000
pcople at the Black Masonic Temple.
The Party had chosen Birmingham as the center for its drive
into the deep South and as the logical jump-off place for the
development of a movement among the small Black farm opera­
tors.
The most dramatic struggle was the movement of tenants,
Hharecroppers and farm laborers centered in Tallapoosa County,
Houtheast of Birmingham. The area bordered on the Black Belt
plantation region and resembled the latter in respect to farm
vnlues, types of tenancy and racial composition. The first local of
thc Sharecroppers Union was organized there in 1931. That was
hcfore the Federal Relief Crop Reduction Program had been
instituted. The small owners, tenants, croppers and farm laborers
wcre hit the hardest by the crisis. Merchants and bankers had
rcfused to "furnish" or provide them credit. Mortgages left them at
the mercy of their creditors. Small operators lived under constant
th reat of foreclosure and eviction. The wages for farm laborers ran
ns low as fifty cents a day for men and twenty-five cents for
women. 8
The close proximity to the Party organization in Birmingham
fucilitated the organization of these poor farmers in the area. A
number of them had worked in mines north ofBirmingham and in
Htcel plants and factories in the city itself, returning to the land to
cke out a living during the Depression. There was a continuous
movement to and from the city, and those who didn't make the
move themselves had close relatives who did so. Thus the
dcvelopment of the sharecroppers' struggle in Aiabama, in contra�t
to other regions of the Black Belt where oppression was equally
intense (for example, South Carolina or Mississippi), took a more
organized and consciously revolutionary form. This accounts for
398 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

what struck me as the relatively high political development of

union members.
Local farmers sent a letter to the Southern Worker in Chatta­
nooga, asking that organizers be sent to help them build a union.
The Party responded and sent several people, among them Mack
Coad, a Black steelworker. Coad, arriving at the scene, met with
the Gray brothers--Ralph and Tom-and other local leaders. It
was decided that a meeting should be called for July 16, at Mary's
Church near Camp Hill, to protest the Scottsboro convictions.
lncluded in the agenda of the meeting would be plans for
organizing a union around the minimum demands of the tenants.
The most immediate aim was to force the landlords to increase the
quantity of "furnishings" through the winter, and double the
wages of the plantation laborers. A last minute arrangement
committee of the leaders met the night before, on July 15.
• The county sheriff and local gentry were aware of the defiant
moods among the sharecroppers. The sheriff had been tipped off
by a local stoolpigeon that an outside agitator was in the area and
that radical meetings were being held. The same stoolpigeon
informed them about the meeting of leaders onJuly 15. He and his
deputies, seeking the "outsider," raided the meeting. They found
that they were all from Tallapoosa County, and they convinced the
sheriff that the meeting was just a harmless get-together and that
they knew nothing about an outside organizer.
The next night, July 16, the sheriff and his deputies approached
the meeting, where they were confronted by Ralph Gray, who had
been posted as a picket. Shots were exchanged in which both Gray
and the sheriff were wounded. The sheriff and his deputies fled
back to town, where a posse was formed amidst cries of
"communist-instigated Negro rebellion," and a manhunt began.
In the ensuing battle, five Blacks were wounded in addition to
Ralph Gray. A Black cropper helped carry him to his home, where
Coad and several other armed Blacks had gathered. The posse
approached Gray's home and a battle ensued. The croppers, faced
with overwhelming odds, decided to disperse. Gray, however,
refused to be removed to safety and insisted upon "dying in his
own home." The croppers insisted that Coad must flee and helped
 SHARECROPPERS WITH GUNS 399

him to escape to Atlanta. Gray's home was riddled with hullets by

I hc posse and when they broke in, he was found dead.
In addition to the wounded, thirty more Blacks were finally
rnunded up and arrested in the manhunt that followed.
The brutal repression following Camp Hill did not crush the
movement; the union regrouped underground and continued to
J(l"OW. By spring 1932, the union claimed 500 members, mainly in
Tullapoosa and Chambers Counties.
In December 1932, there were shoot-outs in Reeltown in
Tallapoosa County involving Cliff James, a union leader in the
11 rea. The sheriff had tried to serve a writ of attachment on James's
livcstock as a result of his landlord's refusing him an extension on a
ycar's rent.
The sharecroppers elected a committee to meet the sheriff and
when the latter arrived to seize the property, he found union
mcmbers armed and barricaded in the house. In the ensuing
huttles, the sheriff and two deputies were wounØed, one share­
l�ropper killed and several wounded, including James and Milo
Hcntley. The sharecroppers scattered through the woods. James
nnd Bentley made it to Tuskegee Institute, where according to
Ncveral accounts, a Black doctor turned them over to the sheriff.
They were then taken to Kilby Prison where both men with their
wounds untreated were forced to sleep on the cold floor; both
Nubsequently died from exposure. 9
This shoot-out was followed by mob action and violence
c,cceeding that of the previous year after the Camp Hill affair. A
posse of more than 500 men went on a manhunt for Black farm
operators and "communist agitators." Mobs raided homes of
union members; several were reported to have been killed or
beaten. Many union members fled to the woods for safety and the
number of Blacks killed in the four-day rioting was not known.
I was told that some white farmers had bidden Blacks in their
homes during the rampages of the sheriffs mobs. At the time, I was
told by someone that the racists had trouble getting enough men
for their posses from Tallapoosa County and had to go outside
t hc county to recruit vigilantes. 10
The bodies of the two men were laid out in Birmingham, draped
400 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

in broad red ribbons decorated by the hammer and sickle. The

Daily Worker reported:
Day and night, a guard of honor, composed of Negr9 and
white workers, stood at attention by the coffins. The funeral
home was filled with flowers and wreaths ....Thousands of
workers filed past the coffins to pay tribute to the martyred
leaders of the sharecroppers. 11
Some 3,000 people attended the funeral, 150 of whom were whites.
Again terror failed to suppress the union. Despite the arrest of
some of its most active members, union members and sym­
pathizers poured into Dadeville (the county seat) before dawn on
the day of the trial of those arrested. The courtroom was filled and
the crowd overflowed into the square. On the second day of the
trial, roadblocks were put up and whites filled the courthouse to
prevent Blacks from attending. Nevertheless, Blacks came along
the by-passes and across streams, demanding to be seated. The
judge was put on the spot and requested the whites to clear half the
courtroom. The trial resulted in the sentencing and conviction of
those accused. •2
The union nevertheless continued to grow and by 1933 had
3,000 members, including a few whites. lts membership and
influence was extending to neighboring counties. The shoot-outs
at Camp Hill and Reeltown brought into focus the explosive
character of the struggle of the region's Black soil tillers. It revealed
that the fight for even the smallest demands by the sharecroppers
and tenants could lead to armed conflict. In faet, any demand that
would give Blacks a voice in renting and determining wages was
regarded as insurrectionary by the local gentry.
It was this explosive feature which distinguished the movement
of Black soil tillers from that of the white farmers in the rest of the
country or even the South itself. The demands of the Blacks were
more revolutionary than those of the whites for they represented
the demands of the agrarian and democratic revolutions, left
unfinished by the betrayal of Reconstruction.
Following all this in New York, I was eager to visit Alabama and
the sharecroppers. I was curious to know how the union had
grown in the face of all that terror. What were the methods of
 SHARECROPPERS WITH GUNS 401

mganization they used? Al Murphy told me to go down to the area

ilsclf.
Murphy was a tall, jet-hued Black, an ex-steelworker and the
most important organizer of the sharecroppers. Soft-spoken and
modest to the point of self-effacement, he had given me a rundown
011 the Sharecroppers Union, playing down his own role and
,lisclaiming credit for its achievements. Murphy was a self­
rducated Marxist, a genuine worker-intellectual.
He praised the local leaders and their high level of political
tlcvelopment. He said the people built the organization from their
own experience and that the croppers had a tradition of under­
p,round organization. Any people who had experienced that kind
of oppression, he said, would have done the same thing.
Discussing the matter with local comrades in Birmingham. it
was agreed that I should go to Tallapoosa County, but I had to
wait for them to arrange security. The ·opportunity came when
I .cm Harris and Hal Ware, leaders of the Party's national farm
work, passed through Birmingham on their way to an executive
hoard meeting of the Sharecroppers Union. They were heading for
I >adeville.
We left Birmingham at dusk, driving at night so as not to attract
nttention. The car was a Chevrolet coupe-the two-door model
with a fold-down rumble seat in the back. I sat in the rumble seat.
When we got to Dadeville it was dark. Hal turned to me saying,
"You'd better pull down the top of the rumble seat over you." I
hastily complied as we were in enemy territory and didn't want to
nttract attention.
We soon passed the lights of Dadeville. A short distance out, we
came to a farmhouse and stopped. This was Tommy Gray's place.
H e was a small independent farm operator and like most of his
fcllow operators in the area, he was deeply in debt. Greeted by
Gray who had expected us, we went into the house. He had met
Hal and Lem at the Farmers' National Relief Conference the
ycar before. He took our coats and put them in the bedroom which
looked like a small arsenal.
There were guns of all kinds-shotguns, rifles and pistols.
Sharecroppers were coming to the meeting armed and left their
402 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

guns withtheir coats when they came in. Everyone came and left at
night; the meeting lasted, as I remember, two days. There were
fifteen or twenty people there, members of the executive board. I
was impressed by the efficient manner in which Gray conducted
the meeting; they were an impressive group overall.
I was introduced as a member of the Party's Central Committee.
As I recall, I spoke about the international situation and the
Scottsboro and Herndon cases. Hal and Lem said a few words
about the farmers' movement in other parts of the country and the
follow up of the National Farmers Conference.
I was most impressed by the reports of the leaders of locals
about their areas. They described conditions, how they were
preparing for a strike, and gave reports on different landlords. I
was also impressed that they could spread a leaflet over four
counties inside of fifteen minutes. They had a tight underground
organization.
I learned there of an attempt to assassinate Tommy Gray. It
seemed that Tommy was fishing at the creek, when he heard a shot
and a hullet whizzed past his ear. He turned quickly and saw a man
running whom he recognized as Charles Harris, a cropper and
union member. The union had set up a committee to investigate
the incident and they brought a report back at the meeting I
attended. One of the reporters told the group that they had visited
the accused man and uncovered other information. He had
evidently been hired by somebody from the town, a sheriff or
landlord, to kill Tommy Gray. They had bribed the man with a
promise not to call his loan in if he would do their work.
A discussion followed the report, as people wondered what to
do with the turncoat. Some argued he should be permanently got .
rid of. But other, cooler heads, argued that this would only play
right into the hands of the sheriff. He would use it as an excuse to
come down on the whole group. The sober point of view prevailed.
It was decict'ed a committee would visit the man and tel1 him to get
out of the area; if he didn't, then they would deal with him. I heard
later that this tactic was successful, and the man and his family left
after the delegation's visit.
I left Dadeville in high spirits, more than ever convinced of the
 SHARECROPPERS WITH GUNS 403

,·111-rcctness of our line; that the Black Belt peasantry under the
lrudcrship of the working class and the Communist Party was the
motor of Black rebellion in the deep South. I felt that the
Shurecroppers Union was definitely a prototype for the future
m�anization of the Black, landless, debt-ridden and racially
pct'sccuted farmers of the area.
The union continued to grow after I left. By the fall of 1935, it
dnimed 12,000 members, including some poor whites; 2,500 of
lhcsc were scattered in Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia and North
( 'nrolina. In 1936 it was liquidated-a victim of Browderism.
On my return trip to the national office in New York from
Hirmingham, I decided to stop over in Atlanta for a few days. This
would be a chance for me to check on the. Party's activities in'this
lmportant city and to see Ben Davis, Jr. Ben was the young Black
ntlorney who had courageously and dramatically defended An-
11clo Herndon in the famous "insurrection" case. It was this case
which brought young Davis national attention. Along with
Scottsboro, it had become a symbol of the fight for Black rights.
As I neared Atlanta, I tried to recall what I knew of Ben.
Alt hough we had never met, I had learned about his background
from friends who were active with him in the Hemdon defense.
llcn's father was a self-made man from a poor Georgia family. He
hnd worked his way into prominence and some wealth in Atlanta,
nnd was high in the councils of the Republican Party, once having
,u:rved as a national committeeman. An old-style Republican in
t he tradition of Frederick Douglass, he was a determined fighter
for civil rights, voting, education and opportunity for Black
husiness.
He had become owner and publisher of the Atlanta Inde-
11mdent, an influential Black newspaper. He was also the district
11rand secretary of the Negro Odd Fellows, the largest fraternal
order in the state. From this position, he was able to build the
lrnposing Odd Fellows business block on Auburn Avenue. Ben
Senior had had ambitious plans for his only son. He had sent him
lo cxclusive New England schools-Amherst and Harvard Law
School. But the Depression had interrupted these plans.
The Depression had an especially devastating effect on the Black
404 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

community. Not only were poor and working class Blacks driven
into deeper poverty, but the small and growing Black middle class,
which was already on marginal foundations, was almost complete­
ly wiped out. Ben Davis, Sr., became a victim of the Depression. He
lost the newspaper and the business block passed into the hands of
an insurance company.
Coupled with economic decline was the inauguration of Hoo­
ver's "Southern Strategy'' of replacing Black Republicans with a
lily-white faction. Ben Senior was removed from his post as
Republican national committeeman, with a corresponding loss of
his powers of patronage.
Y oung Davis returned from his Ivy League education to find
this devastated situation. A young Black attorney in the South was
forced to work in a very narrow field. It was unheard of for a Black
to argue a case against a white attorney. This left Ben Junior with
drafting deeds, wills, contracts, divorces and other such matters
relating only to Blacks-a severely restricted arena for his Harvard
Law School training. Ben hung up his shingle in the old
Odd Fellows building, and soon formed a partnership with
another Black attorney, John Geer.
He was soon dissatisfied and angry; however, as his frustration
grew, he found himself "challenged by the thought of what could
be done if one put up a reaJly tough fight for the constitutional
rights of Negroes in a Georgia court." 13
The Herndon case provided Ben withjust such an opportunity.
Effectively employing a working class policy in the trials, Ben
conducted a militant and aggressive defense. He appeared before
the court as a tribune for Blacks and poor whites against
Georgia's white supremacist oligarchy. The trial had been a high
point of class militancy.
Arriving in Atlanta by car on a Sunday morning, I went directly
to the Davis home. Ben, his father and sister (his mother had died
the year before) lived in a large house on Boulevard off Auburn
Avenue in a Black middle class neighborhood. The family's past
affluence was evident by the five-car garage in the rear of the
house. I was warmly greeted by Ben, who had been expecting me.
He was a huge, dark-skinned young man. Six feet two inches tall
 SHARECROPPERS WITH GUNS 405

with the bull shoulders of a football lineman, a position he had

played at Amherst.
Ben showed me into their large living room. We had a long talk
before his father and sister joined us. He filled me in on what was
happening in Atlanta. By this time he had joined the Party and a
considerable movement had developed around the Herndon case.
An ILD office and organization had been established. The Party
was still quite small, though there were a number of white
members.
The next day Ben took me down to his office on the fifth floor of
the Odd Fellows building. He spoke about the threats against him
by the authorities and the Ku Klux Klan, which was virtually an
arm of the state. Men took off their police uniforms to put on the
robes of the Klan. He talked of the hounding and the threats as a
result of his fight in the court.
He showed me a hole in the door between his office and an
adjoining room. Just a few weeks after the trial, he was sitting at
his desk and noticed a kind of tube sticking out of the hole in the
door. Ben went up to examine it and discovered it was the barrel of
an empty revolver which was set up against the door. He pulled a
paper out of the barrel and read the message: "The Ku Klux Klan
rides again. Georgia is no place for bad niggers and red commu­
nists. Next time we'll shoot."
He also told me about what had happened downtown, at the
1 LD office on Peachtree Street. A white comrade, the wife of ILD
attorney Irving Schwab, was in charge of the office. Ben came into
the office, which was in a white neighborhood downtown, fairly
often. Once, as he was coming out of the door, a whole gang was
waiting for him. He thought they were from the neighboring
offices in the building. He was backed up against the wall, into a
corner. No one touched him, but they shouted at him, calling him a
nigger son-of-a-bitch, threatening to get him or run him out of
town.
With the jailing of Angelo Herndon, the authorities assumed
they had disposed of one enemy. They now found themselves faced
with another one-Ben Davis. In addition, the Atlanta movement
had begun to grow. There were mass meetings around the
406 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Scottsboro and Herndon cases which had drawn many Blacks.

The ILD was militant and growing along with a small but active
Communist Party. While I was in Atlanta, I visited a meeting or
two of the ILD and the Party. I recall a Party meeting that was held
in the home of the Leathers, an old white Southern working class
family, long active in radical politics.
There seemed to be about three generations of the Leathers
living in that house. This included Nannie Washburn who was
then a young mother. Otto had recruited her into the Party and she
played a leading role in the Herndon and Scottsboro defense. She
was to remain active in the struggle long after the Party's desertion
of the South. Jailed in the civil rights and anti-war movements,
Mrs. Washburn remains today a staunch fighter in the cause of
proletarian revolution.
I was worried about Ben Davis, about his safety. I didn't think
the threats were idle-they could be carried out-especially after
the 'trial, when there was a lull in the movement. Worries I had had
in New York about the situation in the South were home out by
what I now heard in Atlanta. The more I thought about the matter,
the more I felt Ben should be pulled out of there-for a time,
anyway.
I had-sized him up as an up-and-coming young communist, with
great leadership potential. He would be a good addition to our
growing body of cadres-we didn't need another martyr, we
needed living activists. He was such a dynamic aggressive person;
if we got him to the center and national work, he would develop
more fully as a communist.
So upon my return to New York, I presented my opinions to the
Politburo-we should draw him out of Atlanta. He agreed to
come to New York, where he was first made editor of the
Liberator, relieving Maude White; he later worked on the Daily
Worker. He became a city councilman in the forties and a member
of the Politburo of the Party after Browder's demise.
He grew into an important Party leader with whom I was to
have strong political differences in later years.
In March 1934, I was back in Birmingham, Alabama. On my
previous visit Nat Ross, the district organizer, had talked about
 SHARECROPPERS WITH GUNS 407

building the revolutionary movement in Memphis, along with

New Orleans, the great financial and commercial center of the
lower Mississippi Valley. I had agreed on the necessity of such a
step.
Memphis, however, would be a hard nut to crack. Twice the
Party had tried to build an organization there. Twice our
organizers had been run out of the town by the Memphis police.
First it was Tom Johnson, then I believe, Mack Coad.
In those days Memphis had the reputation of being the murder
capital of the nation. It boasted the country's highest homicide rate
and had attained the distinction by police murders of Blacks. 14 In
this respect, it was worse than in Birmingham where the growth of
the communist movement had resulted in curbing P<?lice killings,
to some extent.
In Memphis, the police were unrestrained; it was open season on
Blacks, especially on weekends. Victims were usually among the
lowest strata, unemployed, friendless and homeless migrants from
the countryside seeking employment in the city. They fell into the
catch-all category of vagrants, persons with no visible means of
support.
Clearly a breakthrough in Memphis required careful planning
and most of all, capable organizers. Now, according to Nat, these
requisites were present. He had received word from members of a
Jewish branch of the International Workers Order (IWO) in
Memphis that they were willing to subsidize an International
Labor Defense organizer. The IWO was a left-wing insurance
organizåtion among whose members were a number of communist
and Party sympathizers. I knew the organization, but did not
know it had a branch in Memphis.
Nat also informed me that there were two young comrades from
New York available for the project-Forshay, an ILD organizer,
and Boris Israel, a young communist journalist w ho was writing a
series of articles on the South for the New Masses. Israel offered to
accompany Forshay.
"N ow," Nat said, "if we could only find a good Negro comrade."
"When do we leave?" I asked.
He looked at me with feigned surprise and said, "You really
408 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

think you should go, Harry? And that it would be alright with the
Central Committee?''
"Of course," I replied. I was anxious to undertake this
assignment, my first organizing job in the South. I could stay there
a little while to help get things started and help make contacts with
the Black population.
I was then introduced to the young comrades and at midnight
we were on our way to Memphis.
My two young friends, who shared the driving, were in the front
seat. When I woke up it was dawn with the Mississippi countryside
all around.
It was Saturday morning and we passed a number of trucks
loaded with Black sharecroppers and their families, apparently on
their way to buy "stores" in Oxford. Some of the trucks were
driven by white Simon Legree-looking characters, whom I
a§sumed to be plantation riding bosses or planters.
We drew up to the gas station to fill our tank, just outside of
Oxford. The attendant, a native cracker type, peered in at me with
an expression of curiosity on his face. Then, as if he had figured it
all out, he drawled, "What're yo-all doin' with that boy-taking
him home?"
"Yeah," said Boris, with a mock Mississippi drawl, "takin' him
on home."
Then turning to me the guy said, "Yo glad to be home, boy? "
Falling into my "field-nigger" drawl, I replied "Yahza, cap'n, I
shore am."
We pulled away and drove through the town of Oxford, passing
the old state capitol and courthouse, dating from ante-bellum
times. (Oxford's only claim to farne was that it was the home of
William Faulkner and the University of Mississippi, "Ole Miss.")
A short distance out of town, we pulled up at the home of a
comrade named Ufe, whose address had been given us by Ross.
Ufe's wife and sister-in-law were the owners of a small plantation.
As a young man, he had emigrated from his native Denmark
and settled in the South, where he married into a former
slaveholding family. By this time, the plantation had been hard hit
by the crisis and mortgaged up to the hilt. There were, I believe,
 SHARECROPPERS WITH GUNS 409

live sharecroppers on the place. I was to learn that they considered

lJfe a fair-minded man. Their contracts included the right to sell
their own crop and the right to plant gardens. The homes were
cquipped with electricity and running water. Recruited by Ufe
himself, they were all members of the Sharecroppers Union.
Despite his wife, Ufe had never imbibed the white supremacist
doctrine and he insisted that he was not a planter but a farm
manager. A member of the Socialist Party of Denmark, he had
begun to read socialist papers in the U.S., then the Daily Worker,
and was finally recruited into the Party by the Birmingham
comrades.
I pondered this unusual story which I had heard from Ross and
others as we entered the driveway to his home. It was an old run­
down ante-bellum structure with columns and all. Ufe, a small wiry
man, had been expecting us, and led us into the big living room
where a dozen or so sharecroppers and field bands were sitting
before a large open fireplace. It was March cold and a huge log was
burning. Ufe introduced us to the sharecroppers.
As we talked, I told them about my visit to Dadeville and other
things in the outside world. They all listened attentively. We had
supper and stayed overnight. His wife was strangely absent,
although I'd seen her puttering around in the kitchen.
We left the next morning for Memphis. Arriving there in the
afternoon, we drove directly to the house of a J ewish friend, where
the IWO was meeting. Our hostess interrupted the meeting,
introduced us, and suggested that the matter COJ\Cerning our visit
be discussed presently, under "good and welfare."
Israel, Forshay and I sat in an adjoining room to wait. I picked
up a newspaper lying on the table, I believe it was the Commercial
Appeal, one of the city's big dailies. A front-page article-no more
than three or four paragraphs long-caught my attention. It was a
story about a young Black man named Levon Carlock who had
been killed by police the night before, after allegedly attempting to
rape a white woman.
According to the story he had been shot while attempting to
escape the scene of the crime. The article listed prominently the
names of the officers involved and also the name and address of the
410 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

alleged rape victim. The murder of Blacks by the police had

apparently become such a routine matter that the latter didn't
bother to present even a plausible story.
I passed the paper over to Israel and Forshay, exclaiming,
"Here's our issue! Let's get to work."
After reading it, they simultaneously declared, "Jesus Christl
That's made to order."
By this time, the meeting in the adjoining room had come to our
point on the agenda. I looked over the group. They were middle
class people, storekeepers and the like, several professionals, and,
as I later learned, one wealthy jeweler. I was surprised that the
majority of the group were young couples, some of them bom in
the South and speaking with Southern drawls. They were very
definitely revolutionary in sentiment.
Some were readers of the Freiheit (the Yiddish language
communist daily) and the Daily Worker. Several of them, I was to
learn, had participated in the two previous attempts to form a
revolutionary organization in Memphis. They represented the left
wing of the Jewish community in Memphis and reflected the
hatred of an entire community for Boss Crump's reigning political
machine in Memphis. Crump was not only a rabid racist, but a
Jew-hater as well.
As regarded our mission, there was nothing much to be said. We
had come there at their invitation. So they proceeded to the
immediate question of the subsidy for Forshay, as the ILD
organizer. They had agreed on a salary of sixteen dollars a week,
with room and board. He was to stay with the jeweler, who had a
large house.
Boris also was to stay with Forshay at the jeweler's and I with a
young couple-storekeepers who lived close to the Black neigh-·
borhood. That settled, I informed the group about the news article
concerning the alleged rape.
Their response was "this happens every day" -it was a common
thing. They described the beating and killing of Blacks in the
station house, of young Black boys disappearing after they were
taken to the station by police, about Blacks being beaten
unconscious right out on the street.
 SHARECROPPERS WITH GUNS 411

We were anxious to pick up on the issue while it was hot. We

sent Boris Israel to check on the story while Forshay and I
remained at the house, where we set up temporary headquarters.
We were quite fortunate to have on our team a man
like Boris, with his experience and training as an investigative
reporter.
Several hours later he returned, having uncovered a shocking
story of racism, murder and police brutality. He had gone directly
to the address of the "rape victim," whom he had found to be a
prostitute living in the red light district that adjoined the Black
neighborhood. Interviewing her, he had found gaping irregu­
larities in her obviously rehearsed story. At first she had talked
openly, unrestrainedly about her "horrendous experience." Then
suddenly she clammed up, blurting out, "The police cap'n said I
was not to talk to anybody." Tuen she closed the door on Boris.
Boris then interviewed the widow of the murdered man. She
lived in a rooming house not far from the scene. She was just a slip
of a girl-sixteen she said-but looked even younger. The incident
had left her in a state of shock. She was being consoled by an older
woman, who turned out to be a maid who lived in the whorehouse.
She began to tel1 her story. She and her seventeen-year-old hus­
band, Levon Carlock, were newly married and had just come up
from Mississippi, where both their families were ruined share­
croppers. She had gotten a job as a maid in one of the white
whorehouses. Levon, who was still unemployed, would come to
pick her up every•night at about 2:00 A.M. and escort her home.
On the night of the tragedy, he had been waiting out in the street
for her as usual, when the police officers shot him down.
Overcome by grief, Mrs. Carlock then burst into tears and
could no longer continue. At this point, the older woman
led Boris into another room and continued the story. She
had seen the whole incident from a second-story window above the
alley.
She said four policemen had tak en Levon around into the alley.
She had heard noises and cursing, cries of "you Black son-of-a­
bitch." "You're the nigger that raped that white woman:" They
were beating the poor youth unmercifully with their clubs and
412 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

fists, she said.

Levon kept protesting that he had come to take his wife home.
Then, one of the officers appeared escorting a white woman. She
said, "I recognized her as one of the prostitutes that lives across the
street."
Then the officers asked the woman if Levon was the one that
had tried to rape her, and she said "Yeah, he's the one." Then she
went back to her house.
They started beating Levon again, knocking him to the ground
and pulling out their revolvers. Levon begged for his life, but it did
no good. "They shot him down in cold blood, right there in the
alley," she said. As they turned and walked away, one of the cops
said, "You know that nigger son-of-a-bitch is still alive?" I guess
they heard moaning. They stopped, and one of the officers went
over and pointed his pistol at Levon's head and blew his brains
out right there in the alley. Then a short time later, a Black
undertaker came and took his body. The police must have had him
laying in wait.
Mrs. Carlock had heard some of this, but hadn't seen it. She had
fainted and after she had come to, was hysterical. We kept her in
the house overnight; the landlady gave her. some pills. In the
morning, I went with her to the undertaker to identify Levon's
body. Later we got the maid to put her story in an affidavit.
Well, there it was. A perfect issue!
Hoping through such a mass campaign that we could build a
Party organization in Memphis, we immediately began our
campaign to stir up Memphis. We knew that the issue would take
hold of the Black population and we hoped to take advantage of
the anti-Crump sentiment among whites to win some of them to
our side.
We set out to build a broad united front, under the auspices of
the LSNR, which I represented, and the ILD. Then and there we
worked out a leaflet, slogans and plan of action. Our slogans were:
"Stop Police Murder of Negroes in Memphis!" "Levon Carlock
Must Be the Last!"
We called for immediate expulsion of the officers involved, their
arrest and prosecution on charges of first degree murder and
 SHARECROPPERS WITH GUNS 413

indemnity to the widow. Our program of action called for the

establishment of block and neighborhood committees and mass
protest meetings.
The slogans caught fire. Within two or three weeks we had a
considerable movement going. Outside of our Jewish friends, we
knew no one in Memphis, but they introduced us to their few
acquaintances among Blacks. Our most important contact was the
editor of the Memphis World, Memphis's Black newspaper, and
his staff. They were sympathetic and wanted something to be done
nbout the murders. Theo we met with a number of lower echelon
lcaders-ministers, educators, lodge leaders and a few business­
men. We soon had an ad hoc committee going, while we stayed in
the background. A number of meetings were called at which Mrs.
Carlock appeared, and some neighborhood or block committees
were set up as a result.
At the beginning, we had contacted the national office of the
11,D and informed P.atterson of our plans. We called for a nation­
wide support campaign, linked up with the Scottsboro and
11 erndon campaigns. The national office gave us a green light to go
uhead with our plans and get a local (white) lawyer to prosecute
our case against the police.
A rain of telegrams from across the country poured into the
Mcmphis mayor's office and the Memphis World carried news of
thc campaign. Our Jewish friends succeeded in getting a local
luwyer, a white anti-Crump man. "He didn't care so much
11hout ·Negroes, but he sure hated Crump!" they said.
The campaign spread. Its effectiveness was confirmed by two
lncidents. Our friends on the World kept us informed about
rvcrything going on in the community. They told us that a
delegation of Uncle Tom leaders had gone to see the mayor. They
were alarmed by the threat our campaign posed to their leader­
Nhi p-they were unable to keep the Blacks in line. They pleaded for
11t least some token concession on the part of the police. For
rxnmple, a statement from the mayor to the effect that an
lnvcstigation would be held. Something they could use to counter
I hc "red invasion" of the Black community.
The mayor not only refused to budge, but told the delegation
414 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

that the police were doing their duty-and they had better do
theirs! The city and police, he asserted, would brook no rebellion
from the niggers-and you'd better tel1 your folk that, tool
As regards the "red invasion," the mayor said that he was
aware that there were a dozen or so reds in the city and that they
would be taken care of when the time came. They were apparently
waiting for a lull in the movement to move in.
It was also through the World people that we met Robert E,
Lee, a lieutenant of Bob Church, the. Black Republican National
Committeeman from Memphis. Lee himself was a prominent
man in the community. He sought us out to inform us (in
private) that Bob Church liked what we were doing and wanted
us to keep it up. He evidently felt that our campaign strengthened
his position vis-a-vis Boss Crump.
Daisy Lampkin, national field secretary of the NAACP, came
tq Memphis in the midst of our campaign. She came there to help
the local branch in its annual membership drive and was unaware
of the growing movement initiated by the ILD. The whole thing
was quite an unpleasant surprise for the woman. The Party and the
ILD had had run-ins with her regarding Scottsboro, and she be­
came frantic when she found out about our work in Memphis. Her
campaign was low key; conducted under the abstract slogans of
"Equal justice and opportunity," which carefully avoided the
burning issue of police murders right under our noses.
The NAACP was in an embarrassing spot. They called a mass
meeting in one of the largest churches in connection with their
membership drive campaign. We invaded it, with Mrs. Carlock
dressed in mourning black, and demanded a place on the platform
for her. As I remember, she was given the platform and she spoke
of the murder, asking for help from the NAACP to prevent
anything of this sort from happening again. She proposed a united
front of the NAACP, ILD and LSNR against police brutality. The
chairman passed it off by referring it to the local board. But after
the meeting, Lee told us later, the proposal failed to pass the board
by only one vote-he personally had voted for it.
This was to be the beginning of a downturn in our fortunes.
Next was the disappearance of our star witness, the maid who
 SHARECROPPERS WITH GUNS 415

wmkcd at the whorehouse. The local attorney asked us to bring

hl'I up to his office, but when we went to get her, she had gone. She
dhln't work there anymore. We speculated that the police had
h liht cned her into leaving town after we sent the affidavit she had
•lvcn us to the national office and they had published it-either in
I hr / >aily Worker or the Labor De/ender. We had a weak reed in
1hr first place, since she was vulnerable herself to a frame-up.
Thc legal side of the case was important, but now our attorney
WIIN hclpless without a witness. Without the legal case, we couldn't
krrp up with the public campaign and it began to lose momentum.
Thc situation was becoming threatening. The cops were getting
1011dy to move in. We discussed this with·our friends and they said
wr'd made a hell of a good fight, but it would be better to send
111111cone else in, now that we were known. So the three ofus went
III to the office of the Memphis World and the editor said we were
lul'ky, we had just missed the four cops who were looking for us.
Wc decided it was time to leave town. We first decided to go by
1hr tclegraph station to pickup some money Patterson had wired
1111. Forshay and Israel went in to get the money. I stood outside
wuiting for them. Two cops came up and looked at the Alabama
lkrnsc plate on the car.
Thcn Forshay and Israel came out of the office-Boris took in
I hr scene in a glance. He jumped into the car and shouted at me,
"( 'ome on, Sam! Let's get out of heah."
"Yassuh," I drawled, and climbed in the back. We kept driving
1111til we got to Mississippi!
It wasn't a total defeat. Forshay stayed behind and continued to
lll'1'1tnize for the ILD. Our work put the cops on notice that they
l•otaldn't get away with the kind of crap they had been dishing out.
· 1 hc raw stuff had to stop; otherwise they would have trouble. The
f'lood of telegrams had an impact. It also helped lay the base for
h1ture activity there.
 Chapter 16

Preparing for Battle:

8th Convention of the CPUSA

The Eighth Convention of the CPUSA was held in Cleveland,

Ohio, April 2-8, 1934. It convened in a world situation of rising
fascism and growing threat of war.
" Hitler had come to power in Germany the year before and had
embarked on a campaign of imperialist aggression. He had
promoted a fascist coup in Austria and had reoccupied the
Rhineland. In Asia, his Japanese imperial allies had overrun
northeast China as a first step toward establishing their "Asian Co­
prosperity Sphere" which envisioned the conquest of Asia and the
Pacific. Mussolini was planning the invasion of Ethiopia which
took place the foliowing year.
At home, the economic crisis had passed its lowest ebb in 1933
and had now leveled off into a deep-going depression. There was
no recovery in sight as a high rate of unemployment persisted. It
was becoming clear that Roosevelt's New Deal and the National
Industrial Recovery Aet (NIRA) were attempts to bridge the
most difficult period for the monopoly capitalists and begin the ·
restoration of their profits. This was indicated in the enormous
bounties being poured out by the Reconstruction Finance Cor­
poration, and the ruinous effects of inflation and price fixing in
reducing the workers' real wages.
Workers, however, were fighting back in an unprecedented
display of militancy and solidarity involving whites, Blacks,
women, youth, skilled and unskilled workers, native and foreign
 EIGHTH CONVENTION OF THE CPUSA 417

bom. A strike wave had engulfed the entire nation with over a
million workers on strike in 1934, the biggest mass upheaval of
workers in the history of the country.
I arrived in Cleveland several days early and stopped at the
Black YMCA on Euclid Avenue. I spent these days putting the
li nishing touches on my report on the Party' s Afro-American
work. As head of the CP's Negro Department, it was my
rcsponsibility to present such a report to the Eighth Convention.
Before I arrived in Cleveland I had attended the convention of
l>istrict Sixteen in Birmingham, Alabama. District conventions
were held throughout the country in the few weeks before the
national gathering. These meetings summed up the pre-conven­
tion discussion which had begun six months earlier with the
publication of the draft resolution on the work and tasks of the
Party. The draft was discussed at all levels; shop and street units
und sections. Amendments were formulated and disagreements
urgued out. Delegates to the Eighth Convention were also elected
ut the district meetings.
I arrived promptly on Monday morning April 2, at the Prospect
Avenue auditorium where the convention was to be held. The
uuditorium was located in a once proud but now crisis-stricken
rcsidential neighborhood. Delegates from all parts of the country
wcre arriving. After registering, I began circulating among them.
The composition of the delegates was impressive. There were a
number of older Party veterans whose faces I already knew. But
thc majority seem�d relatively young, rank-and-file leaders fresh
from the struggles. They appeared expectant and eager, self­
confidently girding for a new push towards the revolutionary goals
outlined in the draft resolution. They were gathered in groups,
t·xchanging experiences. Among the 233 regular delegates were a
significant percentage of Blacks (thirty-nine altogether). 1 In my
position as head of the Negro Department, I had become
ucquainted with a great number of the Party's Black cadre-or I
hud at least known of their work. But it was heartening to see so
many new faces among them. I was particularly happy to see the
delegation of sharecroppers from Tallapoosa County. Their
spokesman appeared to be Eula Gray, the niece of Ralph Gray-
418 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

the sharecropper who had been killed at the Camp Hill shoot-out.
I believe I had met her at the home of Tom Gray the summer
before. She was a lively and attractive young woman, with hig
bright eyes.
Later in the convention, she was to give a rousing report to the
delegates on the activities of the Tallapoosa County Young
Communist League. Describing the work of the youth cadres, she
stated that the youth made up 2,000 of the 6,000 members of the
Sharecroppers Union.2
As she ended her speech she led the delegates in singing a
revolutionary version of the old spiritual "We Shall Not Be
Moved":
Lenin is our teacher,
We shall not be moved.
Just like a tree that's standing by the water,
We shall not be moved!
Al Murphy, secretary of the Sharecroppers Union, was also
present. As usual, he maintained a low profile, pushing the local
leaders to the fore. There were also delegates from the fraternal
parties of Cuba, Mexico and Canada, among others. To my
surprise and pleasure I saw among them my old Lenin School
classmate, the Iris)?.man Sean Murray. He had come to the U. S. to
bring greetings from the recently-organized Irish Communist
Party, of which he was general secretary, and to tour the �ountry to
rally support for a united independerit Ireland.
Langston Hughes, an important figure in the Black renaissance
of the twenties, had recently returned from a year's stay in the
Soviet Union. He composed a poem-"Put One More 'S' in the
USA" -especially for the convention.
The convention opened with a gigantic mass rally on the night of
April 2. The main hall of the auditorium was packed with delegates
and visitors. Among the speakers were Robert Minor, Max
Bedacht, James Ford and Clarence Hathaway. Bill Foster, the
Party chairman, was unable to attend since he had not fully
recovered from a heart attack suffered in the 1932 election
campaign. He sent a message which was read and greeted with
 EIGHTH CONVENTION OF THE CPUSA 419

thunderous applause-as was the draft reply which wished him a

Npeedy recovery and quick return to the front lines of the battle.
The meeting adopted a manifesto calling upon "the workers to
tuke the revolutionary way out of the crisis in the fight for bread
und work and against war and fascism."3
The business sessions opened on the morning of April 3 with the
clcction of a presiding committee. The stage was dominated by the
hackdrop of a mural showing a mighty worker's arm wielding the
nxe of the united class struggle bursting the chains of capitalist
op pression. Cheers and a standing ovation greeted the nomination
of honorary members of the presidium, among whom were
included Joseph Stalin, Ernst Thaelmann (German leader impri­
Noned by the Nazis) and Georgi Dimitrov, the hero of the
Reichstag trial. He had exposed the flimsy frame-up of the Nazi
criminals and his release had been forced by international protest.
The mood of the delegates was enthusiastic, eager, expec­
tunt and determined. We felt then that the country teetered on the
cdge of a revolutionary upsurge-on the eve of historie, revolu­
tionary struggles. Thus, we prepared for battle.
The main task of the convention was mapping out a strategy to
win the masses to the revolutionary way out of the crisis. Browder,
the Party's general secretary, stepped forth. How this task was to
hc accomplished was the central thrust of his five-hour report,
frequently interrupted by applause. 4
In a dramatic analysis of the world and domestic situation,
Browder stated: "'Our task is to win the majority of the work­
ing class to our program. We do not have unlimited time to
uccomplish this goal. Tempo, speed of development of our work,
hecomes the decisive factor in determining victory or defeat. For
fascism is rearing its ugly head more boldly every day."
Taking the line of the Thirteenth Plenum of the ECCI, he said:
"The world stands on the brink of revolution and wars. Even the
lJ nited States, still the strongest fortress of world capitalism, has
heen stripped of its last shred of 'exceptionalism,' and stands fully
cxposed to the fury of the storms of crisis."
He went on to expose the first phase of Roosevelt's New Deal
program. "Roosevelt promises to feed the hungry by reducing the
420 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

production of food. He promises to redistribute wealth by billions

in subsidies to the banks and corporations. He gives help to the
'forgotten man' by speeding up the process of monopoly and
trustification. He would increase purchasing power of the masses
through inflation which gives them a dollar worth only sixty
cents ...he restores the faith of the masses in democracy by
beginning the introduction of fascism."
After recording the Party's substantive gains since the last
convention, Browder went on to list its immediate tasks in the
current period. He called for an extension of the united front from
below, with its only condition being unity in struggle, and a fusion
for the fight for immediate, partial demands with the revolu­
tionary fight for the overthrow of capitalism. In line with this task,
he urged a sharpened attack against the AFL bureaucracy, the
Socialist Party and all reformist and renegade groups.
On the Black struggle, Browder called for strengthening the
Party's work among Blacks in basic industry-steel, coal, packing
houses and marine. The Black worker should be organized into
revolutionary trade unions around issues of job discrimination
and democratic trade union rights.
He urged an accelerated fight against lynching and for the
freedom of the Scottsboro Boys and Angelo Herndon. In addition,
it was the job of the Party to raise the slogan of equal rights and for
the right of self-determination in the Black Belt.
But these tasks could only be fulfilled, Browder asserted, with
an uncompromising fight against the main danger-white chau­
vinism. It was also necessary to fight against petty bourgeois
nationalist tendencies among Blacks.
At the close of his speech Browder called for a party rooted
among the workers and toiling farmers.
Once Browder had outlined the general priorities regarding the
Black struggle, it was my job, as reporterfortheCentral Committee
on the question, to elaborate in detail and clear up some of the
confusion around Black reformism and petty bourgeois national­
ism.5 This was particularly important because for the first time in
the Party's history, we had to fight a significant petty bourgeois
nationalist deviation which was surfacing within our owri ranks.
 EIGHTH CONVENTION OF THE CPUSA 421

The general revolutionary p·erspective outlined by Browder on the

/\fro-American question meant a sharpened clash with the forces
of Black reformism-in both its assimilationist and nationalist
forms. This reformist ideology was the main obstacle in the road to
nchieving the hegemony of Black workers in the liberation
Nlruggle.
It was now a "we" or "they" situation, I maintained. My
ussessment of this situation came out of the Party's experience in
its three-year struggle to free the Scottsboro Boys.
Scottsboro represented our first serious challenge to recog­
nized Black reformist leadership. The activities of the reformist
lcuders had increased in direct proportion to the increase of our
1·cvolutionary influence among the masses.
The Party's strategy at the time was to wrest hegemony from the
reformists and win the leadership of Black workers in the Black
frccdom front. The Black proletariat, led by its communist
vnnguard, was then (and remains today) the only class that can
unite the broad masses of Black people and give the freedom
11truggle a consistently anti-imperialist content and character, thus
huilding its alliance with the working class as a whole.
In order to carry out this strategy, it was important for us to
understand that the attitude of the Black bourgeoisie toward
lmperialism is not uniform. On the one band, there is a capi­
tulatory, compromising and, in this country, assimilationist trend;
nnd on the other, a nationalist, sort of ghetto bou'rgeois tendency.
Thc main social base of this latter trend is among the ghetto petty
hourgeoisie-small businessmen, the intelligentsia, ministers, pro­
fossionals and the like who are the most outspoken representatives
uf bourgeois nationalist movements. Both trends are in essence
reformist, as they seek a solution to the question within the
fru mework of the existing imperialist-dominated social structure.
Permit me a brief digression to describe the disposition of class
forces in the Black community as they existed at the time. I would
1111y here that my analysis benefits somewhat from hindsight.
In 1934, the dominant tendency of Black reformism was
hourgeois assimilationism, reflecting the strivings and ambitions
of lhe top layers of what DuBois called the "talented tenth." These
422 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

elites were wealthy professionals, a sprinkling of successful

businessmen, top-echelon leaders, upper-bracket educators, local
politicians and the like. Centered in the top leadership of the
NAACP, Urban League and associate organizations, their orien­
tation for progress was via acceptance into the white world. They
saw the solution through a slow evolutionary process under the
benevolent auspices of enlightened imperialism and its liberal
detachment. Supporters of this trend tend to be staunchly anti­
nationalist and can only see advancement for Blacks through
aping the white establishment.
The influence of the top assimilationist group within the Black
movement derived not from its economic strength, but from its
control of the main media of mass influence in the Black
community: the press and administration of educational and
cultural insitutions. It had strings extending into the top leader­
ship of the whole complex of Black life on all its levels; ministerial
alliances, professional and fraternal organizations, women's clubs
and the like. They received heavy support in the columns and
editorials of the hig capitalist press and were the main dispensers of
white ruling class patronage.
In 1940, DuBois criticized the NAACP leadership because it
regarded the "organization as a weapon to attack the sort of social
discrimination that especially irks them, rather than as an
organization to improve the status and power of the whole Negro
group." 6
I pointed out in my report that they believe the "fate of the
Negro masses is bound up with the maintenance of capitalism."
This view of course "implies the collaboration with the white
imperialist rulers, or in the words of the N.A.A.C.P. leaders,
'united front of the hest elements of both races.'" This type of front
could only be built in opposition to "the rising movement of Negro
and white toilers, particularly against its leaders-the commu­
nists.''
Indeed, it was the white liberal elements within the U.S.
bourgeoisie who launched the NAACP in 1911 and thence­
forward held veto power over all its decisions. They intervened in
the movement when the Booker T. Washington Tuskegee niachine
 EIGHTH CONVENTION OF THE CPUSA 423

was under heavy fire from the Y oung Turks of the Niagara
Movement led by W.E.B. DuBois and Monroe Trotter. Big
business, alerted of the danger to "sane" leadership represented
by an uncontrolled Black movement, rushed forces to the danger
spot.
The young intellectuals of the Niagara Movement were over­
whelmed with new imperialist pleaders for its cause. They were
subject to sustained wooing by humanitarian millionaires,
backed up by hard cash in the form of subsidies to Black
education, health and religious projects. Wealthy white liberal
philanthropists like Joel Spingarn and Mary White Ovington held
decisive positiop.s of leadership in the organization. lts circle of
supporters included millionaires like Mrs. Cyrus McCormick and
Harvey Firestone.
As Ralph Bunche aptly observed, "The N.A.A.C.P. propelled
by dominant white bands embarked upon the civil libertarian
course that the Negro-inspired Niagara movement had futilely
tried to navigate." 7
The leadership of the NAACP is a self-perpetuating one with
ties directly to Wall Street and social democrats like A. Philip
Randolph-as well as in more recent years, to trade union bureau­
crats. 8 This assimilationist stratum has not ceased to offer oppo­
sition on domestic issues, nor has it surrendered its claims to speak
for Blacks. But it is its support for monopoly capitalism and belief
in the possibility of peaceful, legal, full integration into the system
that determines the boundaries and character of its opposition.
"This is the core of Negro bourgeois reformism. From this flows its
tactical line of reliance on bourgeois courts, legislative bodies, its
treacherous compromises with the w�ite ruling class, its reac­
tionary sabotage of the revolutionary struggles for Negro rights." 9
The bourgeois nationalist tendency had its economic roots in
the objective position of the Black bourgeoisie and its peculiar
conditions of a stunted development within the structure of
monopoly capitalism.
Confronted by overwhelming competition, Black business was
marginal and non-industrial in character, mainly retail and service
industries. Even here, it was restricted to the leftovers of the big
424 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

capitalist chain enterprises and economically sounder white

establishments.
As a result of this peculiar position, the Black ghetto bour­
geoisie (mainly a petty bourgeoisie) found itself caught in an
inescapable bind. On the one band, it had what has been called a
vested interest in segregation, upon which it was economically
dependent for its market. At the same time, it found segregation
the chief obstacle to its social development. It was torn between its
immediate economic interest which dictated maintenance of the
ghetto as its main base of operation and its desire for social
equality. The result was a split personality created by mutually
exclusive desires.
As I wrote in Negro Liberation in 1948, "The Negro upper class
came late to the scene of American economic development...
when the key points of the country's economic life were already
dominated by big business." 10
lts leaders sought to rally the masses through appeals to race
solidarity, cooperation and loyalty, for a "buy Black" policy. They
attempted thereby to foster a kind of Black exclusivism which
would objectively run parallel to the segregationist policy of the
white power elite. The Jess affluent sections of the petty bour­
geoisie aet as the most aggressive spokesmen of this type of
bourgeois nationalism.
The militancy of this stratum is very misleading and in faet
posed a real danger to the Party at the time. I felt it most important
to point this out to the delegates:
While apparently voicing opposition to the official bourgeois
reformist leadership, these petty bourgeois nationalist lead­
ers objectively represent the interests of the bourgeoisie.
Therefore, objectively these movements reflect an attempt on
the part of the petty bourgeois leaders to seize the leadership
of the rising movement of the Negro masses against oppres­
sion in order to throttle it by diverting it into reactionary ·
utopian channels, away from revolutionary struggle and
hence back into the fold of the bourgeois reformists.
This self-isolationist tendency has been expressed in a plethora of
projects for building a Black economy within the walls of
 EIGHTH CONVENTION OF THE CPUSA 425

segregation. In times of relative prosperity, this tendency existed

side by side with the dominant assimilationist trend as a more or
less steady undercurrent.
But in hard times, times of economic depression, this stratum, as
a result of its weak and tenuous economic position, is forced to the
wall of bankruptcy. As the economic conditions of the ghetto
masses (upon which they depend) deteriorate-their strivings are
blocked. Sections of them, driven to despair, frequently fall under
the influence of utopian and messianic leaders who raise the
banner of race solidarity and develop mass movements of a
separatist character. Such was the base of the Garvey movement
and others which followed World War I.
The growth of Garveyism came as a result of the crisis of Black
reformism when organizations like the NAACP found themselves
without a program to meet the needs of the masses. The end of the
post-war economic crisis was followed by a period of partial
capitalist stabilization and relative prosperity in the latter half of
the twenties. This witnessed the decline of the Garvey movement
and the comeback of the NAACP to the leadership scene.
But its hegemony was only short lived. The crisis of 1929 found
the old guard again in crisis. Again there was an upsurge of
separatist trends, expressing the desperation of the ghetto nation­
alists. Again there was a breakaway of the middle strata which
comprised its rank and file and lower-echelon leaders. By the mid­
thirties, these defections had reached into the top echelons of the
organization, resulting in the resignation of Dr. DuBois from the
NAACP. Unfortunately, his defection was not to the rising
revolutionary forces, but rather toward petty bourgeois nation­
alism. (By the fifties, however, DuBois had been won to prole­
tarian revolution and was a firm supporter of socialism.)
But this time, a new force had entered the arena of the liberation
struggle. Since the Garvey movement, a Black working class had
emerged as an independent class force. I_ts advanced detachment,
including many former Garvey militants, was the Communist
Party, with a revolutionary program and strategy for Black
liberation.
It furnished the leadership for a new, national revolutionary
426 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

trend. It was primarily because of the rapid growth of this new

force that the ghetto nationalist wave which swept the Black
communities in the early thirties did not coalesce into a single
organization with a unified program and a national center as did
the Garvey movement in the post-war decade. This time it was
manifested in a series of mainly local-based movements.
The main theme of my report was the call for a stepped up
ideological struggle against bourgeois reformism and its reac­
tionary programs and policies in the current crisis.
I called attention to the treacherous activities of the N AACP
and Urban League leadership which had greeted the New Deal as
virtually another emancipation proclamation. I pointed out that
the "clear-cut bourgeois reformist movements such as the N AACP
and the National Urban League... with their openly declared
policies of collaboration with the white ruling class" were not the
ma,in danger. To a large extent, they had already lost the
confidence of the masses. Our immediate problem Jay in the new
neo-Garveyist movements which were spreading like brushfire
through the Black communities. These appealed to the nationalist
mood among the masses and advocated the wildest reactionary
scheme� as a way out of the misery and suffering of the ghetto
masses.
I briefly analyzed some of these movements against which "we
would have to direct our fire in the coming period."
I noted three types of such movements. For example, the
Nationalist Movement for the Establishment of a 49th State,
headquartered in Chicago. The leaders of this organization held
that Black oppression and racism in this country were natura! and
inevitable. Therefore they proposed that "the Federal government
acquire a territory from the existing States (adequate in size and
fertile in soil) and dispose of this land its resources to Negroes
willing to settle." This defeatist scheme, according to its advocates,
would not only solve the problem but, we were informed, "will do
much to relieve the economic stress throughout the country due to
the vast oversupply of workers who can't find work."11
Another movement of this type, also originating in Chicago,
was the Peace Movement to Liberia. The leaders of this organi-
 EIGHTH CONVENTION OF THE CPUSA 427

1.11tion claimed four million members who had signed a petition

11ddressed to the president, asking that the government pay the
r1tpcnse of Blacks' transportation to Liberia or Ethiopia to settle.
Thc signers of the petition, according to the leaders, stated that
"t hcy hold themselves in readiness to be eliminated from the
lmpossibly competitive labor market here by transportation in
xovernment transports to Africa." 12
Further, they stated, an exodus of the poorest people would
bencfit both races, improve labor conditions for those remaining,
nnd promote the long deferred economic recovery. Emphasizing
I hc peaceful, non-revolutionary character of the movement, its
uttcr subservience to imperialism, its advocates asserted that their
11chcme entailed no complication with foreign imperialist powers
nnd they were not out to set up an independent state but to become
"lnw-abiding" citizens in their newly-adopted countries.
It was clear the.t these schemes fit prec1sely into the whole
1nogram of the most racist and reactionary elements, such as the
lnfumous Senator Bilbo of Mississippi.
We considered that perhaps the most dangerous of these
movements was the so-called Jobs for Negroes movement. It
,·rnpped up in many different cities under different names. In
llnrlem it was called the Sufi movement and was led by the
notorious Abdul-Hamid Sufi; in Baltimore it appeared as the
( 'ostini Movement; in Washington, D.C., it was the Negro
Alliance. The local nationalist leaders (and very often these
"!enders" saw the movement as a remunerative hustle) all followed
n Nimilar plan.
They focused their struggle for more jobs on the small white­
owncd businesses and shops which refused to hire Blacks. The
policy of a small firm's excluding Blacks from employment while
11cilling produets in the ghetto created a great deal of anger and
nnimosity among Blacks. The Jobs forNegroes movement thrived
nn this justly felt anger. But by directing the struggle exclusively
111111inst these small establishments, which had only a small fraction
nfjobs, the broad struggle of Black unemployed was diverted away
from the large corporations which were located mostly outside the
11hctto.
428 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

These movements tended to quickly become anti-white, seeing

the enemy as the white workers who held jobs in the ghetto.
Demands such as "All jobs for Blacks in Harlem," were common.
The ruling class was overjoyed with this type of movement. It
did not attack the real enemy nor raise demands for jobs, equality
and the end to discrimination where the main masses of Blacks
worked and where the majority of the jobs were. lnstead they
sought to divert the struggle for jobs from the real enemy to white
workers and aggravated racial divisions precisely at a time when
conditions and potential for a united struggle were very great.
Even more sinister was the Pacific Movement for the Eastern
World. It had as its main slogan "United Front of Darker Races
under the leadership of Japan." The movement developed directly
in connection with the threat of war between the U.S. and Japan,
and was basically the work of the Japanese imperialist agents who
wei;e attempting to divert the growing national liberation move­
ment of Blacks into support for Japanese imperialism.
Its program for race unity, as opposed to working class unity
and the unity of all toilers against imperialism, found support
among some sections of Black petty bourgeois intellectuals and
even some workers. This movement was particularly poisonous
because of the racial and chauvinist propaganda, attempting to
convince Blacks that Japan was the "champion of the darker
races."
In practice this movement ran counter to the real interests of the
Black masses and, in many cities, was an obstacle to the orga.ni­
zation of struggle for immediate demands. A good example was in
St. Louis where leaders of the Pacific Movement were active in
attempting to defeat a strike of Black and white nut pickers.
The third tendency was the Liberian-American Plan, which was
a clearly bourgeois ex pression of Pan-Africanism. Under the guise
of assistance to Liberia (their slogan was "Freedom for Liberia!"),
it was a plan of the aspirant Black bourgeoisie to participate in a
comprador role in the colonial exploitation of Liberia. This can
be seen in the statements of one of its leaders: "We are beating our
hearts and souls trying to break through thick walls of prejudice
which bar us from the higher brackets of big industry here in
 EIGHTH CONVENTION OF THE CPUSA 429

America, when there is a virgin field which we could develop in

Africa." 13 The so-called plan to free Liberia carefully avoided any
mention of the role of U.S. imperialism (Firestone owned buge
rubber plantations in Liberia) in the exploitation of the Liberian
people.
This plan received a large amount of publicity throughout the
Black-owned media. Its appeal to the impoverished Black masses
was mainly that a "Free Liberia" could show the way to improving
the conditions of "colored folk" throughout the world. The
propaganda was aimed at the ghetto petty bourgeoisie-them­
selves driven into poverty by the Depression.
The movement found its own theoreticians to justify such a
scheme, cloaking it in pseudo-revolutionary terms designed to
appeal to poverty-stricken Blacks. Foremost among these theo­
reticians was the renegade George Padmore, apostate communist,
whose numerous articles appeared throughout the Black press. 14
It is a credit to the Party's correct strategy and tactics in the
Black freedom front, along with our revolutionary line, that these
tendencies remained as scattered, local organizations, never able
to unite nationally as Garvey's UNIA had. We knew that to
maintain their credibility among the masses, these nationalists had
in some way to struggle against the system. To this extent, we
would unite with them in a principled way, while criticizing their
idealist schemes.
Our purpose in this was to better be in a position to lead the
broad masses, many of whom, having genuine national aspira­
tions, were temporarily taken in by these utopian escapist
nationalists.

PETTY BOURGEOIS NATIONALISM IN THE PARTY

From this account of the programs and activities of the various

brands of utopian Black nationalism, I addressed myself to the
struggle against the ideological influences of these movements in
the Party. This was a touchy question. It was.the first time this
question had been dealt with in such a forthright manner. We had
430 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

spoken much of white chauvinism, the main danger, and our tasks
in relation to it. There had been a considerable strengthening of
this fight, but there was still much room for improvement. But
little had been said about petty bourgeois nationalism within our
own ranks. It was not surprising that the pressure of the growing
wave of "ghetto nationalism" should find expression in the Party.
There was a tendency among some Black comrades to surrender to
the propaganda of the local nationalists. This was revealed in St.
Louis in connection with the pro-Japanese movement and in
Harlem in respect to the Jobs for Negroes campaign.
After all, there was no Chinese wall between the Party and the
masses. Just as the ruling class ideology of white supremacy had
its influences on white comrades, it was not unusual that Black
comrades would be similarly affected by petty bourgeois national­
ist ideology.
·These moods and sentiments were expressed in feelings of
distrust of white comrades, in skepticism about the possibility of
winning white workers to active support in the struggle for Black
rights, and in the attitude that nothing could be accomplished until
white chauvinism was completely eliminated. This latter was
particularly dangerous because it failed to understand that white
chauvinism could only be broken down in the process of struggle.
But more than a mood or a sentiment was the beginning of a
theoretical rationale represented in the contention that even to
raise the question of bourgeois nationalism would weaken the
struggle against white supremacy. I denounced this dangerous
counterposing of the fight against white chauvinism to the struggle
against bourgeois nationalism. Of course white chauvinism was
the main danger, but communists could not be content with mere
formula. As Stalin had said when dealing with a similar contro­
versy concerning great Russian chauvinism and local nationalism
in the Soviet Union:
It would be foolish to attempt to give ready-made recipes
suitable for all times and for all conditions as regards the chief
and the lesser danger. Such recipes do not exist. The chief
danger is the deviation against which we have ceased to fight,
thereby allowing it to grow into a danger to the state. 15
 EIGHTH CONVENTION OF THE CPUSA 431

The faet that white chauvinism was the main danger by no

means implied that bourgeois nationalism, under certain con­
ditions, could not become the main danger in a particular situation
in the development of our work among Blacks. No one could deny
that this was the situation that developed in St. Louis and in
Harlem. Our experience in these struggles showed that bourgeois
nationalism, if not fought, could become the main obstacle to
advancing our work among Blacks.
The struggle against white chauvinism and petty bourgeois
nationalism went hand-in-hand. It was necessary to struggle on
two fronts, for both deviated from the line of proletarian
internationalism. Stalin correctly stated: "lf you want to keep
both deviations under fire, then aim primarily against this source,
against those who depart from internationalism." 16
I tried to hit home sharply to the delegates that the most
dangerous forms of petty bourgeois nationalism in the Party were
not its open expressions, but rather its bidden forms. The clearest
example was the case of Comrade Nowell in Detroit. The Central
Committee had definite information that Nowell had become a
center around which these tendencies in the Party gravitated and
from whom comrades who erred in this direction found the
greatest encouragement. Nowell had spread veiled inferences that
some Black comrades who were carrying out the work of the Party
were Uncle Toms._ He had attempted to use all difficulties and
shortcomings of the Party to disrupt and to undermine morale­
particularly among the newer comrades.
I denounced Nowell's activities, charging that they created an
atmosphere in which stoolpigeons and provocateurs could carry
on their hest work. 17
I was now at the summation of my report. It was clear, I said, that
the struggle against reformism in the Black movement, including
bourgeois anlå: petty bourgeois nationalist influences, could go
forward only on the basis of an all-round strengthening of our
work among the Black masses. The increased actiyities of the
reformist leaders could only be met and defeated on the basis of the
widest application of our united front tactics. This meant that we
had to penetrate reformist-led mass organizations on the basis of
432 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

immediate and specific demands of the Black masses. Thus

we could draw the people into struggle over the heads of the
treacherous reformist and bourgeois nationalist leaders.
This whole situation confronted us with the necessity of
immediately strengthening the leadership of the proletariat and
the Party in the Black liberation movement. Black industrial
workers were then, and remain today, the most powerful,
resolute and consistently revolutionary force in the Black
movement. It is only under their leadership and that of its
communist vanguard that the Black united front can maintain a
consistently anti-imperialist character, unite with the multi­
national working class, and eventually overthrow imperialism.
Such a strategy called for a radical improvement in our trade
union and shop work. We had to energetically take up the struggle
for the day-to-day demands of Black workers in every struggle.
This also had to be done by the U nemployed Councils. On this basis
we could immediately carry through energetic and sustained
recruitment of Black workers into our revolutionary trade unions,
into the revolutionary opposition within the AFL. Simul­
taneously, it was necessary to carry through a bold policy of
drawing the most militant element among them into the leadership
of the trade union and unemployed work. The whole question of
developing cadres among Blacks had to be more rapidly pushed
forward in the Party, as well as in the revolutionary mass
organizations.
This drive for the strengthening of our work among the basic
sections of the Black working class was connected with the
intensification of the struggle along the whole front of Black
liberation. In this we had to immediately push forward the
campaign for Black political rights, against lynch terror and all
forms of persecution, for the freedom of the Scottsboro Boys,
Angelo Herndon and others. I called for centering this campaign
around the LSNR's Bill of Civil Rights for the Negro People. A
mass petition drive for the bill was to have been immediately
launched and connected with the development of mass actions in
all localities.
In the South, we had to strengthen our concentration work in
 EIGHTH CONVENTION OF THE CPUSA 433

Ih,� key industries-steel, coal, textile and tobacco. We had to

lmild up the Party, revolutionary trade unions and the opposition
movcment within the AFL on the basis of drawing Black and white
workers into joint struggle. Our demands should have focused on
llll' needs of the masses: against the NRA differentials, dis­
l'l'imination and increased fascist attacks upon the rights of Black
111ul white workers. Simultaneously, we had to take steps to
111 rcngthen the movement of sharecroppers and poor farmers
11�11inst the cotton plow-under, the Bankhead Bill-against the
whole system of semi-feudal slavery of the agrarian masses.
Il was necessary to further develop our revolutionary agrarian
program, in the center of which must be the slogan of"confiscation
of the land of the big white landlords and capitalists" in favor of
I hc Black and white tillers.
In all this work, ·it was necessary to bring forth more ener­
tl,l'I ically our full program for Black liberation: equal rights, the
1·i1tht of self-determination and confiscation of the land. We had to
,·nrry through the widest popularization of the achievements of the
Sovict Union in the solution of the national question. Likewise, it
wus important not only to popularize the program of the
< 'ommunist International for the Black colonies in Africa and the
Wcst lndies, but to develop actions in support of the revolutionary
mnvement in these colonies against imperialism.
In building a united front from below with the masses of Black
loilcrs in the reformist-led organizations, we had to guard against
nny leftist distortion of our line, any tendency to lump the masses
In t hese organizations together with their leaders. This would play
dircctly into the hands of petty bourgeois and bourgeois mis-
1t�11ders, inevitably leading towards our isolation. On the contrary,
li was absolutely necessary in our approach to these masses to
muke a clear distinction between them and their leaders.
At the same time, 'Yeh.ad to be equally alert against the right
opportunist tendency 'Jo underestimate the class role of Black
rcformism. Such a tendency would lead to lagging at the tail of
reformist and reactionary nationalist leaders, weakening prole-
1 nrian hegemony and Party leadership of the Black liberation·
movement.
434 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

An effective struggle against reformist leaders and the winning

of the masses from their reactionary influence demanded once
and for all, that we seriously take up the task of building the LSNR
into an independent mass organization around the Party's pro­
gram of struggle for Black liberation.
Only on the basis of building up our work along these lines,
would we be able to weld that unbreakable unity of Black and
white toilers. My report lasted two hours and was considered a
highlight of the convention. I received a standing. ovation. By a
motion of a delegate from Michigan, my report-"The Road to
Negro Liberation"-was published in pamphlet form. I was later
placed on the Politburo as a result of this speech.

LOOKING BACK

Before the Party could take the lead in the Black liberation
movement, it had to demonstrate in action to Blacks that their
deeply rooted distrust of white workers-nurtured by race riots
and discrimination, and encouraged by established leaders-was
an obstacle to united action in the crisis.
The Party was able to do this because it had a comprehensive
program to deal with the crisis and the other groups did not. In
Scottsboro, the Party effectively discredited the legalistic strategy
of the NAACP-its reliance on courts, lawyers and liberal
politicians. It was in our day-to-day work in the northern ghettos,
the unemployment demonstrations, the campaigns against evict­
tions and police brutality, and in struggles to organize non­
discriminatory unions, that the Party won hegemony over the
local bourgeois nationalist organizations. Such movements were
springing up at the time in Chicago, New York, Baltimore, St.
Louis, Washington and Detroit.
These nationalist and separatist organizations exploited the
antagonisms which inevitably developed between Blacks and
white immigrants in neighboring ghettos. This was further exacer­
bated by the presence of white immigrant shop keepers in the
Black community.
 EIGHTH CONVENTION OF THE CPUSA 435

But the nationalists failed to take two factors into account.

First, that the Depression was driving many of these white
immigrant groups into desperation and moving them to the left;
and second, that the Party was waging a relentless struggle against
white chauvinism in its own ranks and in the mass organizations it
participated in.
The Unemployed Councils, the TUUL unions and the ILD-all
active in the early Depression-enrolled large numbers of whites in
struggle on the platform which proclaimed full equality for Blacks
and resistance to all forms of discrimination in employment, in
distribution of relief and in the courts. Moreover, the Scottsboro
Campaign demonstrated, as Adam Clayton Powell pointed out,
that there were hundreds of thousands of white workers through­
out the country and the world who would go to meetings and
demonstrations, and even get arrested to protect eight Black youth
from a "legal lynching." These actions helped to demonstrate
that the white workers were willing, under Party leadership, to
struggle against their own chauvinism and support the special
demands of the Black liberation struggle.
But equally important was thefact that the Party's program was
far more effective than that of the nationalists in winning relief for
the Black community in the face of unemployment and high rents.
The nationalists stn)ggled for the right to all jobs in the Black
community, but_��t Blacks worked outside the ghetto. Even if
the nationalists succeeded, the number of jobs they could win
would only reach a fraction of the Black unemployed. In contrast,
the Party's demonstrations, such as sit-ins at relief offices, won
immediate relief for hundreds of thousands of unemployed Blacks
in cities throughout the country-in Birmingham, Richmond,
New York, Chicago-in almost every major urban center. The
Party's mass demonstrations brought results, and along with our
defense of Black political prisoners and the struggle against white
chauvinism, it won us the respect of the Black masses throughout
America. Large numbers of Black workers and intellectuals were
at"tracted to our ranks.
In my position as the head of the Negro Department, I tried to
guide this two-pronged ideological struggle-against bourgeois
436 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

assimilationism on the one hand, and petty bourgeois and bour­

geois nationalism on the other. The success of this ideological
struggle in the Black community was dependent upon a relentless
and continuous struggle against white chauvinism by white
communists and effective practical mass work by the Party in the
north and South. From 1930-35, both of these conditions existed,
and we became the single most effective and respected organi­
zation in the national Black community.
The Eighth Party Convention called for building the LSNR
into a mass organization. We felt the need for a Black-led
revolutionary organization to counter the N AACP leaders who
were attempting a comeback after Scottsboro. They wanted to
divert the mass trend toward militant confrontation back into
channels of reliance on capitalist courts and legislative bodies.
Towards this end, they were trumpeting the Costigan-Wagner
Anti-Lynch Bill in an effort to regain their lost prestige. Not only
did they seek to confine the struggle to legislative channels and
bolster faith in the capitalist institutions, they sought support for a
bill which in effect could be used as a weapon against the struggles
of workers.
Immediately upon my return to New York we launched a
campaign to rebuild the LSNR. We called a meeting of the
national council of the organization. At this meeting Langston
Hughes, who had recently returned from the Soviet Union, was
elected president. I was elected national secretary, relieving
Richard B. Moore who was in ill health. Ben Davis, Jr., just up
from Atlanta, was made the editor of the Liberator (formerly the
Harlem Liberator) which now became the official organ of the
LSNR. Davis was replacing Maude White who was sent to
Cleveland as a Party section organizer.

DETROIT'S SCOTTSBORO

As a first step towards rebuilding the organization, I went on a

speaking tour of midwest industrial centers and addressed success­
ful mass rallies in Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago and St. Louis.
 EIGHTH CONVENTION OF THE CPUSA 437

Thcsc rallies were sponsored by local LSNR groups, in some cases

jul ntly with the International Labor Defense. The burning civil
1l1&hts issue in these cities was police terror against the Black
L'ommunity. One of the most glaring examples I encountered was
In Detroit. There the Party and the LSNR chapter were in the
midst of a campaign to defend James Victory, a Black World War
I veteran, charged with robbery and assault with intent to murder a
whitc woman.
The situation was building up to a race riot. Detroit was a
virtual company town of the auto magnates and allied business
lntcrests. They controlled the government, the police and press. At
the same time the city was a key concentration of pro-fascist
elements. Foremost among these were Detroit's own radio priest,
h1ther Coughlin, and his followers. The Rev. Gerald L.K. Smith,
onc of Huey Long's chief lieutenants, had also settled in Detroit.
Thc area was also a Ku Klux Klan stronghold and the home base
of the notorious Black Legion-a split-off from the KKK. These
11nd various other local hate groups all engaged in fanning the
llnmes of racial and national hatred among the city's polyglot
In hor force, consisting of Poles (the }argest foreign-born element),
11 large contingent of Southern poor whites and Blacks.
The frame-up of James Victory occurred in the midst of one of
t l1c most vicious campaig�s of racist incitement in Detroit's
history. It was launc�i_)'.Y the police department under the
lcadership of Colonel Pickert, in conjunction with the employer­
controlled press of the city. For two weeks the news media and
cspecially the yellow sheet, the Detroit Times, carried on a vicious
drive of slanderous race-baiting in which Blacks were depicted as
natura} rapists, voodooists, murderers and all-round thugs who
were conspiring to assault white women.
The police department issued special instructions to arrest on
sight Blacks found in white neighborhoods. Col. Pickert boasted
that an average of fifty arrests a day were made. This frenzied
manhunt finally culminated in the arrest and frame-up of James
Victory, who was made a target for the whole campaign of lynch
hysteria.
The local LSNR and the ILD immediately came to the Øefense
438 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

of Victory. When I arrived they were in the process of building a

united front defense committee. From the outset, we saw that the
terror campaign and the frame-up of the innocent worker Victory
had a two-fold purpose: on the one hand, to intensify the
oppression of Blacks and on the other, to divide and split the
workers and in this way to forestall the growing tide of working
class struggle against the auto lords.
The defense committee formulated demands which included an
immediate end to the terror campaj.gn and manhunt, immediate
release of Victory, withdrawal of special police details from Black
neighborhoods, freedom of speech and movement for Black
people in all parts of the city, an end to discrimination in relief and
on the job, and a call for united action of Black and white toilers
against the common oppressor.
A series of meetings were called, resolutions and telegrams
PQ,ured down on the city officials. A tremendous mass struggle
developed to defend Victory.
I spoke at a large mass rally held at the Israel Baptist Church
along with Rev. Graham, John Bollens of the Union Theological
Seminary, and William Weinstone, district organizer of the
Communist Party. I remember comrades at this meeting and
activists in the campaign included Joe Billups, head of the LSNR
chapter; LeBron Simmons, a young Black law student and his
brother John; and Nat Ganley, trade union director for the �arty.
In my speech I placed the defense of Jarnes Victory in the context
of the overall struggle for Black rights, emphasizing that success
could only be achieved through revolutionary mass struggle of
Black and white workers. I scored Black r.eformists who stood
aloof from the struggle and refused to say anything about the
crying injustices and insults perpetrated against Black people.
The committee retained the famous labor attorney Maurice
Sugar to defend James Victory. At the trial, Sugar made a brilliant
and militant defense, breaking down the prosecution's lies and
fabrications and exposing the flimsy character of the frame-up.
The mass protest, combined with Sugar's legal defense, resulted in
the freeing of James Victory. This important triumph was
testimony to the need for mass struggle in defense of Black rights
 EIGHTH CONVENTION OF TRE CPUSA 439

und stood in sharp contrast to the reformist treachery of the

NAACP leadership.
I left Detroit in high spirits. My next stop was Chicago, where I
addressed a mass meeting called by the American Consolidated
Trades Council. The meeting was part of a campaign for
cmployment of Black construction workers on the DuSable High
School building project.
Chicago was followed by stops in St. Louis, Cleveland and
Kansas City. Following the tour, there was a short spurt of activity
by LSNR chapters, but this soon petered out. Soon the only active
chapters left were in Harlem and the Southside of Chicago. It was
not long before it became clear to me that the LSNR as a national
organization was dead and could not be revived.
What had happened? Why had the LSNR never really gotten off
lhe ground as a broad, mass organization?
lts failure was inevitable, inherent in the organizational struc­
lure and program of the LSNR as it had been conceived. Its
founding conference in the fall of 1930 had adopted a program and
manifesto which included the full program of the Communist
Party on the Afro-American question, including destruction of the
plantation system, confiscation of land without compensation,
und right of self-determination in the Black Belt�Whad called for
affiliation of other organizations to the LSNR on the basis of
support for this complete program. The obvious result of these
rigid demands was that no other groups would affiliate with the
I ,SNR. LSNR branches of individual members were small,
sectarian groups made up almost entirely of CP members and
close sympathizers. Little effort was made to build the LSNR as a
true united front body, organizingjoint actions around immediate
issues. Thus, the LSNR remained a small, isolated group.
These programmatic roadblocks were accompanied by prob­
lems of white chauvinism in the Party. Within Party circles, the
LSNR became an excuse for failing to tackle head-on the Afro­
American questiori and white chauvinism. Some even called the
LSNR the "Negro Party." This assumed the battle for Black rights
could be left to a Black party-rather than being a priority for both
whites and Blacks within one party. There was a tendency to defer
440 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

questions in the field to the LSNR and this became a cover for a
white chauvinist underestimation of the Afro-American question.
It allowed many comrades to neatly side-step dealing with white
chauvinism and the revolutionary importance of the Black
struggle. In this sense, the LSNR actually became an obstacle to
the mobilization of the entire Party for Afro-American work.
For all these reasons the LSNR did not become the mass
organization as it was originally conceived. It remained essentially
a paper organization, and all our belated attempts to revive it were
failures. The LSNR as a national organization ceased to exist. The
last issue of The Liberator appeared at the end of 1934. A few
branches, those clearly associated with local issues, survived.
In 1936, the LSNR was superseded by the National Negro
Congress, a genuine united front organization of which I will
speak in later chapters.
 Chapter 17

Chicago:
Against War and Fascism

Back in New York, I began to take stock of myself as a Party

leader. I had risen rapidly in the Party hierarchy during the four
ycars since my return from the Soviet Union. I was now a member
of the Politburo and head of the National Negro Department.
I >cspite the importance of my post, I was dissatisfied with my own
personal development. True, I was regarded as a promising young
t hcoretician. But I felt a lack of experience in direct mass work.
Although the general orientation of the Negro Commission was
lowards promoting mass activities in the field of Afro-American
work, I found my job mainly confined to inner-Party activities.
My actual work included checking on the work of the districts,
pnrticularly the Negro Commissions that existed on each district
level, consulting with district leaders, training cadres, organ­
izing education on the Afro-American question for national and
district training schools and preparing resolutions and articles
on the question. I had little contact with the masses outside the
Party. Therefore, I had originally welcomed the decision to build
the LSNR with myself as national secretary. I had expected it to be
nn opportunity to get into · mass work. The failure of the LSNR,
however, had eliminated that opportunity.
l was increasingly tied down to the office on the ninth floor of
the Party's national headquarters on Twelfth Street in lower
Manhattan and faced the specter of becoming an internal Party
functionary or bureaucrat.
442 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

In this situation my relations with James Ford became strained.

Ford was the only other Black Politburo member and now
headed the Party's Harlem organization, a major concentration
point in the Party's work among Blacks. Ford and I had
disagreements over such things as assignments of cadres, but I felt
the main cause offriction was Ford's personal ambition. Ford was
a man of considerable organizational ability, but Browder was
able to play on his weaknesses and use him as a vehicle for
winning the Black cadre to his developing liquidationist line on the
Afro-American question. Thus, Ford, supported by Browder,
built a power base-almost a clique-in Harlem.
I felt it was impossible to work in this atmosphere. Thus I
requested to be transferred to Chicago, something I had thought
about before these tensions had matured. My request was
approved in late 1934 and I left New York for Chicago. After my
departure, Ford, with Abner Berry's assistance, took over as
responsible head of the Negro Department.
As head of the Negro Department, I had kept in close touch with
the Chicago comrades. The Party in Chicago was beginning to
grow. A large number of recruits were from the disintegrating
Garvey movement, obviously attracted by the Party's work among
the unemployed, Scottsboro, and its program in favor of the right
to self-determination.
Chicago was the country's second largest Black city and had the
greatest concentration of Black industrial workers. In the early
thirties, the city was the scene of some of the fiercest battles of the
unemployed.
In the summer of 1930, the city was the site of the founding
convention of the National Unemployed Councils. Led by com­
munists, the councils fought for relief in cash and jobs, unem­
ployment insurance, public works jobs at union wages, hot lunches
for school children, a moratorium on evictions and an end to
discrimination against Blacks. Chicago's first Unemployed Council
was formed on the Southside in the fall of 1930, with Black
workers playing a leading role. Blacks constituted eleven percent
of the city's population, but were one-fourth of all the relief cases
in the city. Chicago's Southside Blacks were among the worst
 CHICAGO: AGAINST WAR AND FASCISM 443

,mfferers of the Depression.

Chicago's unemployed, led by the Communist Party, were
cx.emplary in carrying out energetic activities and demonstrations.
Some 50,000 marched through the Loop to Grant Park in the
summer of 1931, halting traffic and forcing police to back off from
11 planned confrontation. Earlier that summer there was a
mammoth march on the state capital in Springfield demanding
that relief cutbacks be restored.
But the real growth and consolidation of the movement
followed the police murder of four Black workers (Abe Gray,
.John O'Neil, Thomas Paige and Frank Armstrong) as they
attempted to prevent the eviction of a seventy-year-old Black
widow, Dianna Gross. This event-known as the Chicago mas­
sacre-occurred when police opened fire into a large crowd which
was trying to put the woman's furniture back into her home.
A local Party leader who was on the spot at the time described
the tremendous demonstrations and actions that surrounded these
brutal murders. The funeral of Gray and O'Neil was the greatest
demonstration of Black apd white solidarity that she had ever
witnessed. Crowds of white people poured into State Street in
solidarity with their Black brothers. They marched from Thirty­
first Street, behind the coffins, south to the Englewood Station
where the bodies were put aboard a train to return to their homes
in the South.
The crowd just took over State Street-there wasn't a cop in
sight. As people walked, they carried open sheets with them; the
crowds watching on the sidewalk threw money into the sheets, to
help defray the families' expenses. We estimated over 30,000
people were there. For a considerable period of time following this
march, the evictions were halted and the unemployment move­
ment grew in leaps and bounds. 1
There was a direct relationship in Chicago between this growth
and our work on Scottsboro. The case had a tremendous impact on
the Black community there. White comrades doing work among
the unemployed told us that the case was really an entree into the
community. Once people knew that they were communists, they
were accepted because communists were always associated with
444 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Scottsboro. The normal suspicion of whites in the Black com­

munity was greatly lessened.
The city administration's answer to this growing movement was
unbridled police terror. A tool of the corrupt city government and
allied with gangsters, Chicago's police force undoubtedly held the
record for terror and lawlessness against workers. They were
unsurpassed for sadism and brutality, regularly raiding the halls
and offices of the U nemployed Councils, revolutionary organi•
zations and the Party-smashing furniture, beating workers in the
halls, on the streets and in the precinct stations. Hundreds were
arrested.
In 1930, the police murdered Lee Mason, a Black communist
candidate for Congress. Harold Williams, a Party organizer in the
Southside and an old schoolmate of mine from Moscow, was
viciously beaten. Although hospitalized, he never fully recovered
and died a few years later in New York.
It took courage and on occasion ingenuity to thwart the police
terror aimed at forcibly stifling and demoralizing the workers'
movement. One example of both was Herbert Newton, a Black
member of the Central Committee and Party organizer in the
Southside. On one occasion he was speaking before a large crowd
in Ellis Park. The police arrived, determined to stop Newtonfrom
speaking and to break up the meeting. But Newton, moving
quickly, climbed up an old oak tree and kept right on talking. As
the Daily Worker reported: "Some of the uniformed killers tried
to climb up after him, but their graft-swollen bellies interfered."2
The crowd laughed as they left and Newton climbed down.
When I arrived in Chicago late in 1934, the Depression was in its
fourth year. The qetermined mass struggle had wrung some
concessions from the Roosevelt government and the spirit of the
people was raised by these victories.
I stepped off the train on a wintery day in late fall. I was greeted
by a surprise welcoming committee including Claude Lightfoot,
Katy White and John Gray. They informed me of a banquet they
had planned for that evening to welcome me to the district. During
the day I visited wjth my family.
The hall that evening was filled. There were comrades from the
 CHICAGO: AGAINST WAR AND FASCISM 445

dh11 riet -many of whom I already knew and with whom I was to
wnrk in the coming months. There was Morris Childs, district
m111111i1.er and former Lenin School classmate; Bea Shields,
tthll'.lllional director; and Joe Weber, leader of the unemployed
movcment. From the Southside came Claude Lightfoot, a YCL
ltndcr;·David Poindexter from the LSNR; Brown Squire, from the
l'lll'k ing houses; Delia Page, active in. the unemployed work;
Oliver Law, head of the Southside ILD; and other stalwarts. I
k ntw I was among old friends. The speakers were enthusiastic,
pled�i ng support for the work on the Southside. They called on all
1hr comrades to intensify their efforts and give me their full
1upport. I was somewhat embarrassed by the overwhelming
Wlll'mlh and comradeship shown that evening and left in high
11"1 rits.
( lrcctings from another source came the next morning. I was
1i,e11king at a demonstration in front of the "Fortress of Misery"
t•llcf station at 5051 East 50th Street. A police patrol wagon drove
Uf1, Ncvcral cops j'Qlhped out and rushed the speaker's stand. They
drn11�cd me off and hustled me, along with Tom Trent (Hyde Park
V<'I, organizer) and Edelman (a young white University of
( 'hlcngo student), off to the Forty-eighth Street Precinct Station.
l'hry hooked us on disorderly conduct or some such ridiculous
, hii r�c. We then were tak en to the Twelfth Street Detective Bureau
1

rm l'ingcrprinting and "mugging." Here was my first encounter

wllh Lt. Murphy of Chicago's Red Squad.
"< )h, you're the new nigger red from New York who they've been
hllllllllcting. Well, when we get through with you, you'll wish you
w�rc back east. By the way, how's old Williams doing?" (He was
r,forring here to the severe beating that Harold Williams had
ftl•civcd in 1931.)
Thcy drove us back to the Forty-eighth Street Station and threw
u• In n cell. Shortly after, two plainclothesmen appeared. "You
H11ywood?" they asked. "Captain Mooney wants to see you."They
1uldcd me towards the office and on the way one asked, "You ever
mol C'uptain Mooney? Well, you're going to meet him now and l'd
t111tr to be in your shoes." (Mooney later led the Republic Steel
MHNNncre of 1937.)
446 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

As they led me through the door, I saw Mooney-big, red-faced

and brutal looking-sitting behind the desk. "So you're Hay­
wood-you goddamn nigger son-of-a-bitch, we'll banquet you all
right! Now take him away!"
A few hours later I was taken back to see Mooney and the same
scene was repeated. In late afternoon we were taken out and lined
up in front of the guards as the shift changed. There were several
Black cops among them. "Now get a good look at these three,"
Mooney told them. "They're around here trying to stir up the poor
colored people. Whenever you see them, I want you to run 'em in."
After spending the day in jail we were brought before the
magistrate, fined and released.
The greetings were over, it was now time to get down to work.
Chicago District Eight incl uded all of Illinois, parts of Wisconsin,
lndiana, Iowa and Missouri. I was installed as Southside regional
org,anizer. My region included the Southside Black Belt wards,
Hyde Park and Englewood. At the same time, I was elected
chairman of the Cook County Committee of the Party.
When I first arrived the mass struggles, particularly of the
unemployed, had ebbed from the peak reached a year or so earlier.
Strikes and unemployed marches throughout the country had
wrenched limited concessions in the form of the first round of New
Deal legislation-the National Industrial Recovery Aet, Agricul­
tural Adjustment Aet, etc. The national economy had improved
somewhat-profits had risen significantly, production was fifteen
percent higher than the low point of 1932, and unemployment had
dropped three million, although over thirteen million remained
jobless. These factors all helped to ease the situation of the masses
somewhat. But this upturn didn't affect Southside Blacks much.
Last hired, fifty percent were unemployed, as compared with only
twenty-four percent of whites.
At the same time, these improvements signaled a new offensive
by monopoly capital. With the depth of the crisis behind them,
they were now confident they could put an end to the reforms they
had temporarily accepted and move the country in a fascist
direction. The Supreme Court declared key New Deal programs
unconstitutional. Roosevelt chose to move a "little left of center"
 CHICAGO: AGAINST WAR AND FASCISM 447

to strengthen his position among the workers, and presented the

Congress with a second round of New Deal legislation-Works
Progress Administration (WPA), the Wagner Aet (National
Labor Relations Aet, which guaranteed labor's right to organize),
the Social Security Aet (which established small federal benefits
for the 'aged and the unemployed).
The lull in mass activity, the growing conflicts in the ruling class,
and the rapidly changing international situation, marked the
beginning of a new period. All the struggles of the future would be
marked by the growing threat offascism_,_at home and abroad­
and our tactics would change accordingly.
We felt that what was needed was a clear program of action
cmbracing the Black masses together with white toilers, aimed at
building a broad united front movement. After much discussion in
the region, a plan of action was adopted. It called for concen­
tration on the three most pressing issues of the time: relief, high
rents and the high cost of 1,ving. We called for a special focus on
the rights of Blacks for whgm, because of Jim Crow, suffering was
particularly sharp. We oiganized around the slogans of "Drive
down rents!" "Abolish rent differences in Negro and white
neighborhoods!" "Increase cash relief!" "Smash Jim Crow meth­
ods of relief distribution!"

HANDS OFF ETHIOPIA

On July 25, 1935, the historie Seventh Congress of the

Communist International opened in Moscow and met in session
until August 21. The U. S. Party sent a strong delegation, including
an impressive group of Black comrades. Among them were Ben
Careathers, Pittsburgh's "Rock of Gibraltar"; Claude Lightfoot (I
was happy to see him go to further his political experience); the
sharecropper leader and organizer Al Murphy.
From Chicago, we followed the proceedings of the congress
closely. How to prevent fascism, and how to overthrow it where it
already had come to power, were the questions facing the
Congress. In his main report, Georgi Dimitrov, hero of the
448 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Reichstag fire trial, defined fascism as "the open terrorist dictator­

ship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most impe­
rialist elements of finance capital." 3
The congress called upon the parties to build broad people's
fronts against war and fascism. These anti-fascist fronts would
include workers and farmers, intellectuals .and all democratic
sections of the population. The parties were urged to take into
consideration the changed conditions in the world situation, and
to ap!)ly the united front tactics in a new manner. While pointing
out the need for such broad unity, at the same time Dimitrov
warned against the communist parties' losing their independence
and freedom of action and abdicating their leading roie within
the anti-fascist front.
In February 1935, ltalian troops were already massing in
Eritrea, obviously preparing to invade. By summer, Italy openly
pr:pclaimed its goal of annexing Ethiopia. The fascist threat to
Ethiopia aroused deep anger in the Black communities throughout
the country. Anticipating the call of the Seventh Congress, we
Southside communists seized the initiative to build a broad united
front struggle against the growing threat of war and fascism; An
emergency Southside conference was held on J uly 10, 1935, to plan
a campaign to defend and support Ethiopia. The response was
overwhelming. Over 1,100 delegates attended, representing all
manner of Black community organizations: churches, lodges,
clubs, Black nationalist groups and the Black YWCA, as well as a
number of ltalian anti-fascist groups.
Revolutionary-led organizations such as the ILD, the Unem­
ployed Councils and the League Against War and Fascism, as well
as the Communist and Socialist Parties, took part. It was a
genuine citywide people's front with the Southside as its base.
From this enthusiastic conference, the Joint Committee for the
Defense of Ethiopia was formed. Plans were immediately
launched for a mass "Rands Off Ethiopia" parade on August 31,
1935, and a petition drive for 500,000 signatures calling upon
Congress to invoke the Kellogg Peace Pact and embargo arms
shipments to ltaly. A demonstration was also called in front of the
ltalian Consulate on North Wells Street before the August 31
 • AND FASCISM
CHICAGO: AGAINST WAR 449

parade.
For Black Americans, Ethiopia had always been a symbol of
freedom and independence in history and folklore. Masses of
Black people strongly supported Ethiopia. Their readiness to
defend Ethiopia from fascist invasion was linked to the struggle
against the enemy at home. The defense of Ethiopia inevitably
became a fight against the growth of fascism right in Chicago,
against every petty persecution, Jim Crow degradation, misery
and discrimination.
The city administration made this strikingly clear by immed­
iately refusing to grant a parade permit for the "Rands Off
Ethiopia" march. Mayor Kelly, who had just received an award
from Mussolini himself, sought to justify this denial on the
political grounds that the parade,would be an affront to ltaly-a
"friendly power." (Ethiopia, while\ friendly, was not considered a
power.) But the underlying reasoil for their fear was what might
happen if the Black masses took to the streets-the specter of the
massive 1931-32 unemployed upsurge which had shaken Chicago's
Southside was still with them. The police and administration
knew only too well that the deep-rooted emotion of the Blacks in
Chicago for defense of Ethiopia could very quickly develop into a
new wave of mass actions among the jobless starving families
around the relief stations and against their domestic oppressors in
the steel mills and stockyards.
It was evident that the Kelly administration brought pressure
upon the joint committee and caused a number of ministers to bolt
the coalition. Among them was the Reverend J .0. Austin, minister
of the Pilgrim Baptist Church, one of the }argest Black churches in
the city and host to the July conference. The reformist leaders were
afraid of the "red menace," afraid that they could no longer control
the movement.
This temporary setback caused us to make a closer evaluation of
our united front activity. We had relied too much on building the
united front through negotiations at the top and had not
emphasized mobilizing the Party to work in the reformist-led mass
organizations-churches, lodges and unions. We had clearly
underestimated the importance of work within these organi-
450 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

zations. After a sucessful fight against these tendencies, we were

able to rebuild the joint committee on a new basis, continuing our
efforts to organize for the August 31 demonstration.
Our plan for escalating actions began on August 14, when more
than 2,000 Black and white workers attended three mass rallies on
the Southside. I remember that on this occasion, young comrades
in the YCL and the Young Liberators (a communist-led pre­
dominantly Black youth organization) . hanged an effigy of
Mussolini to the cheers of hundreds in the crowd.
A planning conference on August 19 at Lincoln Center drew
together more than sixty-five delegates and many more unofficial
observers and visitors from forty organizations. Rev. Kinsley of
the Church of the Good Shepherd was elected chairman of the
joint committee and Arthur Falls, prominent young Black sur­
geon, became its secretary. Delegations were chosen to visit
leaping churches and community organizations on the Southside
to mobilize thousands for the upcoming parade. Everyone attend­
ing got copies of the call and "Rands Off Ethiopia" buttons to take
back to their organizations.
The following day, a delegation chosen at the planning meeting
once again visited Mayor Kelly to demand a permit to march.
Once again, we were refused. The coalition had by now received
the endorsements of the local Socialist Party and executive council
of the Chicago AFL.
The actions continued with a protest at the ltalian Consulate. I
was among a delegation who met with the consul to demand
immediate withdrawal of ltalian troops from Africa.
The young comrades on the outside who were very adept at this
type of dramatic action carried on a demonstration during lunch
hour. Two young girls, one white and one Black, were handcuffed
to a light pole in front of the consulate. They wore white
sweatshirts on which were printed the slogans, "Down with
Mussolini, Rands Off Ethiopia!" It took the police ten or twenty
minutes to file through their chains, enough time for a huge lunch
hour crowd to gather and for them to make speeches and shout
slogans. Sidewalk as well as street traffic was blocked. To add to
the confusion of the police, others showered the crowd with
 CHICAGO: AGAINST WAR,AND FASCISM 451

leaflets from the nearby elevated station.

We had other flash actions in the downtown area. A hundred or
so of us would blend in with the crowd in the busy Loop area and at
a signal from the leader would draw out hidden placards and
leaflets. I could see the looks of amazement and disbelief on the
faces of the cops when this happened. Having received no
instructions from their superiors, the police were shocked to see a
full-sized sidewalk parade suddenly materialize seemingly from
nowhere. After a few blocks, the demonstrators would discard
their signs and disperse. All of these were build-ups for our August
31 parade.
This groundwork was successful. The entire Southside com­
munity was in a state of anticipation and in addition the Chicago
Party organization had mobilized suppqrt from all sections of the
city. But there was still one hitch. May,of Kelly and Chief of Police
Allman continued to reject our application for a parade permit.
The joint committee sent delegation after delegation of prominent
people, Black and white, but the chief was adamant-there would
be no permit.
Such was the situation at the final meeting of our joint
committee on Friday, the eve of the demonstration, where we were
to make the final preparations for the parade. Lincoln Center was
packed with people. Spirits were not dampened; we were deter­
mined to go on with the parade. As the Party's Southside
spokesman, I was told that I made one of the most spirited
speeches. It was unanimously decided that we would "assert our
democratic rights" and march in defiance of the police ban.
Parade marshals were appointed and the line of march mapped
out. The meeting adjourned amid defiant speeches. But we
communists were under no illusions. We knew that the police
would not even allow us to assemble. Our intelligence had
informed us that 2,000 cops would concentrate in the assembly
area, that all leaves had been canceled and extra duty assigned.
They were preparing for a real showdown. The defense of Ethiopia
had now become a fight for the streets of Chicago.
After the meeting adjourned, we communists got together. As I
remember there was Morris Childs, David Poindexter, Oliver
452 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Law, Tom Trent and myself. (Claude Lightfoot was in Moscow

attending the Seventh Congress of the Cl.) What we feared might
happen was that the crowds would be dispersed without any kind
of demonstration. We felt that this would be a demoralizing
setback. Therefore we planned alternate demonstrations, dra­
matic actions of all sorts, including speaking from rooftops,
burning of effigies of M ussolini, blocking traffic and other actions.
In order to carry this out, our people had to get into the assembly
area that night (it was already midnight when the meeting
adjourned) and stay. We knew that no known communists would
be allowed into the area the next day.
I chose to speak from the roof of a five-story hotel on the
southwest corner of Forty-seventh and South Parkway. I went
straight from the meeting and rented a room on the fifth floor of
the hotel, concealing a megaphone in my bag. I woke early, went to
the roof and surveyed the scene of the upcoming battle. It was a
bright, warm day and I could see that the police-hundreds of
them-were already forming their lines. A string of patrol wagons
were visible near the "L" station, waiting to be filled. I went back to
my room and a comrade brought me coffee and a newspaper and
reported on what was going on. Around one o'clock I went back
up to the roof. The streets were filled with shoppers, men and
women returning from work.
Then the demonstrators began arriving; streams of them,
striding expectantly down the steps from the "L" station. And the
action began. The police assumed most whites getting off the "L"
in this part of town, the heart of Black Chicago, must be there for
the demonstration. They began indiscriminately herding them into
patrol wagons and hustling them off to the station. They limited
the arrests among Blacks to a few well-known leaders. The whole
police plan was orchestrated by Mike Mills of the Chicago Red
Squad. Their strategy was to spare Blacks the brunt of the attack
because a direct attack in this part of town could set off a full-scale
riot. In this way, they hoped to split the demonstrators and thus
make it easier to disperse them.
From my vantage point, I could see the scene unfolding.
Pandemonium broke loose-the streets were crowded with
 CHICAGO: AGAINST WAR AND FASCISM 453

demonstrators and shoppers alike. As arrests were made, people

hcgan shouting protests and slogans. I saw Oliver Law jump up
und begin addressing the crowd from a roof very near the "L"
station.
This caught the police off guard and it took some time before
they could get to him._ But as soon as Law was pulled down and
nrrested, another speaker began on a roof across the street. This
was repeated five or six ti.mes as the police moved frantically to
silence the speakers. By this time, the crowd had grown con­
siderably and the streets and sidewalks were jammed. Every time
we would outsmart the police, a great roar would go up from the
crowd-and every time another arrest was made, they wouldjeer
lhe cops. Milton Howard, the Daily Worker's man-on-the-spot,
dcscribed the scene.
There were 2,000 uniformed police with revolvers and clubs
lined up through a quarter mile radius from the corners whe.re
the demonstration was to have begun.
But the 10,000 Negro and white enemies of war who gathered
to raise their voices in solidarity with the independent Negro
country facing the war menace of fascist troops were not
easily intimidated. Driven and herded from one corner to
another, dispersed by proddings from clubs and revolver
butts, scattered gr:oups held stubbornly the immediate neigh­
borhood from the early afternoon far into the night so that
h undreds of police had to set a ring of isolation around the
area several blocks on either side, blocking all traffic in their
fear of a demonstration. Despite provocations, the assembled
thousands permitted no breach of their peaceful discipline.
The only violence was the slugging of helpless prisoners by the
police and detectives in police cars and vans.
For many blocks on either side of Prairie and Forty-seventh
Streets police cars ·guided by members of the "Red Squad"
cruised everywhere, stopping and searching cars, seizing
every white person in sight, chasing"suspicious" N egroes"and
whites down the alleys, swinging clubs and blackjacks in an
organized sweep of brutality under the leadership ofthe"Red
Squad" leader Lieutenant Mike Mills.
454 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

At various corners, Forty-seventh Street and Calumet, Forty­

seventh Street and South Park, Forty-sixth Street and other
places, speakers arose to speak to crowds only to be dispersed
and seized. 4
All this time the police were pushing the crowd in my direction.
N ow the crowd was below my building. Just as they arrested the
speaker on a rooftop opposite me, I leaped up and began speaking.
Because of the buge crowd and the increasing confusion and
frustration of the police, I remember speaking for ten, maybe even
fifteen minutes. I exhorted the crowd that they had the right to
march and parade, scoring Chicago's Mayor Kelly and Chief
Allman for importing Mussolini's tactics into the Southside.
Indeed, Kelly had merited the decoration bestowed upon him by
his friend Mussolini.
Then I felt a blow on the back of my head and spun around to
face four plainclothes cops with riot clubs. They started to beat me
but one said, "Careful, don't bloody him up. We have to get back
through that crowd down there." They gave me a few kicks and
dragged me down the back stairs outside the hotel. On the last
flight, my spirit rose when I caught sight of an angry crowd of
Blacks milling around the alley. "Look at that crowd!" exclaimed
one of the cops as they nervously drew their guns.
A big Black woman in the crowd hollered out, "Don't you hit
him, you sons-of-bitches!" The cops waved their revolvers
menacingly.
The crowd in the alley pulled back grudgingly. The police
pushed me out the Forty-eighth Street side of the alley, comman­
deered a passing taxi and ordered the cabbie to drive to the
Wabash Avenue Station. I remember their sighs of relief as the cab
got under way. They turned their attention to me, methodically
beating my legs and knees, cursing me with every blow.
When we arrived at the precinct station, I was flung into the bull
pen, which was already filled with demonstrators, all white,
excepting three or four Blacks. I received a few parting kicks as the
cops shouted, "Here's Haywood, your leader."
To one side, I could see bloodied people staggering and limping
through the door. They were being herded from the patrol wagons,
 CHICAGO: AGAINST WAR AND FASCISM 455

forced to run through a gauntlet of club-wielding, sadistic goons. I

glimpsed a woman named Anna, our Chicago district office
manager, with blood cascading down her forehead. A Chicago
De/ender reporter witnessed the incredible scene:
If the people who saw the police break up the parade were
surprised at the brutality that went on all afternoon on 47th
Street they would have been astonished at the downright
savageness with which the police amused themselves at the
Wabash Avenue Station. The patrol wagons gathered
in such numbers in front of the station to hold up traffic on
48th Street. Prisoners were unloaded in the middle of the
thoroughfare. On each side of the wagon formed a long
double line of 15-30 police. The unfortunate prisoners were
pulled out of the vehicle and forced to run the gauntlet. Their
heads, shins and bodies were clubbed by policemen who
yelped in glee at the bloody sight. 5
In the cell, my legs suddenly fell out from under me. It was a
delaycd reaction to the beating I had received in the taxi. I could no
longer stand. My fellow cell mates began yelling and chanting,
demanding that they take the more severely injured out to the
hospital.
Finally we were taken to the city hospital. Expecting some relief
from my injuries, I was greeted by another hellish scene. The
emergency room was filled with people injured in the demon­
stration. The student doctors attending the injured were having a
great time.
"Hey, look at this one! What a beaut! Hey, you have to give
them cops credit, they sure know how to swing a billy. Look here,
cut wide open but no skull fracture-perfect!"
I was given a quick going-over. I was unable to walk but the
doctor mumbled, "He'll be all right, now get him out of here." I
was taken back to the cell block. By this time the Red Squad was
busy screening out the over 500 arrested. Two cops were swag­
gering back and forth taunting us. "Goddamn Jews-stirring up
all this trouble around here!" "There oughta be a Hitler over
here."
"He's already here," someone yelled back.
456 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

A white man with his head in a bandage and blood stains on his
shirt was explaining, "l'mjust an insurance collector. I came over
here on my regular rounds and look what happened."
Murphy, the Red Squad lieutenant, responded, "Oh, you don't
look so bad, you'll be all right. We were protecting you-wejust
made a mistake. They must have thought you were one of those
reds. You can go."
But there must have been a lot of "mistakes" that afternoon.
When they finished, only thirty-five of us were charged with an
offense. Late that night, bail was made and we were released. A
Russian comrade, a huge man, picked me up and carried me like a
baby to a waiting car and then to my apartment.
I was released on Saturday night. In its usual flamboyant and
sensationalist style, the Chicago De/ender reported that I was
"beaten. so badly that he may lose the use of his legs." 6 In faet, I did
hj:lve to walk on crutches for a month as a result of the scientific
beating from the Chicago police.
The Party immediately took the offensive against this attack,
linking it directly with the growing fascist menace abroad. Morris
Childs, the district organizer, made a militant statement to the
press in which he declared that the people of Chicago were against
the "imperialist plunder of an independent country," and would
stand up for their right to say so freely. He called for a "united
people's front against fascist reaction in this city," 7 and urged the
people of Chicago to flood the city with telegrams demanding the
release of all demonstrators and an end to police sup·pression of
political activity.
The Party called for a buge protest meeting the following
Wednesday at Boulevard Hall on Forty-seventh Street. Despite
the Red Squad's attempts at intimidation, it was packed with
pcople. S peaking to the audience from a chair, as I was unable to
stand, I told the audience that our demonstration had been a
brilliant success in showing that the people of Chicago were ready
to unite against war and fascism, both foreign and native, and in
defense of their right to speak for peace.
There was indignation throughout the whole community about
the police attack on our peaceful demonstration. A bi-racial
 CHICAGO: AGAINST WAR AND FASCISM 457

committee of prominent citizens, including Dr. Arthur G. Palls,

chairman of the Interracial Commission; attorney Edith Sampson,
who later became a member of the U.S. delegation to the United
Nations; A. L. Foster, secretary of the Chicago Urban League; and
Robert Morse Lovett of the University of Chicago-was formed
to investigate the police brutality. The committee urged that
people send protest letters and phone calls to the mayor and to
prominent members of the city administration.
The thirty-five of us who had been charged with inciting to riot
demanded a jury trial. When we arrived in court, it was packed
with our supporters. The prosecutor, on seeing the crowd, asked
for the trial to be postponed. During the following weeks and
months the D.A. asked for postponements each time our case
came up. It was clear that they were trying to drag things out,
hoping that the momentum of/our support would die down.
This tactic of theirs imposeq a hardship on us, for we had
thousands of dollars tied up in bail which would not be returned
until after the trial. The money was desperately needed for defense
work elsewhere. Finally, we accepted the deal they offered of
pleading guilty in exchange for settling the matter quickly and
reducing the charges to disorderly conduct, thus releasing the bail
money. This went along with the understanding that the sentence
would be a fine of one dollar and one day in jail, which we had
already served.

THE NATIONAL NEGRO CONGRESS

Our campaig_n in defense of Ethiopia helped lay the basis for the
greatest Black united front movement of the period-the National·
Negro Congress. Founded in Chicago in mid-February 1936, the
Congress brought together representatives of all classes in the
national Black community, promoting unity in the struggle
around the burning issues of Black rights.
Our activities on Ethiopia merged with preparations for the
Congress. We were glad that Chicago had been chosen as the host
city because it provided impetus for consolidating arid extendirig
456 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

A white man with his head in a bandage and blood stains on his
shirt was explaining, "I'm just an insurance collector. I came over
here on my regular rounds and look what happened."
Murphy, the Red Squad lieutenant, responded, "Oh, you don't
look so bad, you'll be all right. We were protecting you-we just
made a mistake. They must have thought you were one of those
reds. Y ou can go."
But there must have been a lot of "mistakes" that afternoon.
When they finished, only thirty-five of us were charged with an
offense. Late that night, bail was made and we were released. A
Russian comrade, a huge man, picked me up and carried me like a
baby to a waiting car and then to my apartment.
I was released on Saturday night. In its usual flamboyant and
sensationalist style, the Chicago De/ender reported that I was
"beaten so badly that he may I ose the use of his legs. " 6 In faet, I did
h11ve to walk on crutches for a month as a result of the scientific
beating from the Chicago police.
The Party immediately took the offensive against this attack,
linking it directly with the growing fascist menace abroad. Morris
Childs, the district organizer, made a militant statement to the
press in which he declared that the people of Chicago were against
the "imperialist plunder of an independent country," and would
stand up for their right to say so freely. He called for a "united
people's front against fascist reaction in this city," 7 and urged the
people of Chicago to flood the city with telegrams demanding the
release of all demonstrators and an end to police sup·pression of
political activity.
The Party called for a buge protest meeting the following
Wednesday at Boulevard Hall on Forty-seventh Street. Despite
the Red Squad's attempts at intimidation, it was packed with
p�ople. Speaking to the audience from a chair, as I was unable to
stand, I told the audience that our demonstration had been a
brilliant success in showing that the people of Chicago were ready
to unite against war and fascism, both foreign and native, and in
defense of their right to speak for peace.
There was indignation throughout the whole community about
the police attack on our peaceful demonstration. A bi-racial
 CHICAGO: AGAINST WAR AND FASCISM 457

committee of prominent citizens, including Dr. Arthur G. Falls,

chairman of the Interracial Commission; attorney Edith Sampson,
who later became a member of the U.S. delegation to the United
Nations; A. L. Foster, secretary of the Chicago Urban League; and
Robert Morse Lovett of the University of Chicago-was formed
to investigate the police brutality. The committee urged that
people send protest letters and phone calls to the mayor and to
prominent members of the city administration.
The thirty-five of us who had been charged with inciting to riot
demanded a jury trial. When we arrived in court, it was packed
with our supporters. The prosecutor, on seeing the crowd, asked
for the trial to be postponed. During the foliowing weeks and
months the D.A. asked for postponements each time our case
came up. It was clear that they were trying to drag things out,
hoping that the momentum of(our support would die down.
This tactic of theirs impose(J a hardship on us, for we had
thousands of dollars tied up in bail which would not be returned
until after the trial. The money was desperately needed for defense
work elsewhere. Finally, we accepted the deal they offered of
pleading guilty in exchange for settling the matter quickly and
reducing the charges to disorderly conduct, thus releasing the bail
money. This went along with the understanding that the sentence
would be a fine of one dollar and one day in jail, which we had
already served.

THE NATIONAL NEGRO CONGRESS

Our campaign in defense of Ethiopia helped lay the basis for the
greatest Black united front movement of the period-the National·
Negro Congress. Founded in Chicago in mid-February 1936, the
Congress brought together representatives of all classes in the
national Black community, promoting unity in the struggle
around the burning issues of Black rights.
Our activities on Ethiopia merged with preparations for the
Congress. We were glad that Chicago had been chosen as the host
city because it provided impetus for consolidating arid extending
458 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

our contacts and associations. The National Sponsoring Commit­

tee for the Congress, headed by John P. Davis who was then
secretary of the Joint Committee on National Recovery, set up
headquarters in Chicago. We also established a local sponsoring
committee with Charles Wesley Burton, a well-known leader in
Chicago's Black community, as chairman.
An office was opened on Chicago's Southside. We set up a
speakers' bureau and organized canvassing teams which distributed
throughout the city the congress call and thousands of copies of the
pamphlet "Let Us Build the National Negro Congress." We
approached local organizations for delegates to the congress. We
were active in this preparatory work, and the result was reflected in
an extremely large Chicago delegation.
The congress opened on Friday, February 15, at the Eighth
Illinois Regiment Armory (my old World War I regiment). There
was
., a large crowd milling around the entrance as Claude
Lightfoot, Hank Johnson and I arrived, flanked by several Black
notables.
I recognized our old Red Squad enemies, Mills and Murphy,
standing off to the side and watching the scene. Not only hatred,
but frustration and surprise showed on their faces. And why not? It
had been their job to isolate and discredit us communists. lnstead
we had become respected members-even leaders-in the Black
community. The overwhelming turnout and broad united front
character of the Congress were testimony to their failure. But we
were to learn that they were not yet finished with us.
The armory was jammed with over 5,000 delegates and visitors.
Some 585 organizations from twenty-eight states and the District
of Columbia were represented, sharecroppers and tenant farmers'
unions, 246 trade unions, eighty church and civic organizations,
youth groups, political parties, cultural and fraternal groups, and
women's organizations. About eighty-five percent of those attend­
ing were Black.
A. Philip Randolph, Black trade unionist and president of the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, gave the keynote address.
He linked up the various issues in the Black community with the
need for a united front organization. He pointed out the special
 CHICAGO: AGAINST W AR AND FASCISM 459

significance of developing the anti-fascist movement and the need

for special focus on organizing Blacks in industrial unions. He
called for continuing and strengthening the "fight to break down
the color line in the trade unions which now have it." He also urged
independent political action in the form of a farmer-labor party.8
John P. Davis, secretary and a key organizer of the congress,
stated its purpose and outlined the agenda for the meeting.
Greetings of solidarity from many -revolutionary movements
throughout the world were read.
The one that excited me the most was that from Mao Tsetung,
then provisional chairman of the Chinese Soviet Republic. The
message read in part, "I greet...the First National Congress of the
fighting Negro people, 12,000,000 strong in America against
every form of natiqflal and racial oppression." He went on to
condemn the fascisl)nvasion of Ethiopia and add that "this
struggle must spur you on to strengthen your ranks in a united
fighting front, guided by the program of the militant Negro leaders
which today raises its voice for a determined struggle for freedom."
Chairman Mao concluded by sending greetings from Chou En-lai
and Chu Teh.9
The next day was devoted to panel discussions and workshops.
The large armory floor was covered with groups meeting to discuss
particular issues and hammer out resolutions. The !argest work­
shop was on the trade unions, reflecting the significant working
class composition of the congress. The crucial importance of
Southern Blacks was emphasized by Robert Wood, ILD organizer
from Birmingham, and by Ozzie Hart, president of the Share­
croppers' Union.
Special sessions were held on fascism and war, civil liberties and
police terror. One of the highlights of the congress was the
appearance of Lij Tesfaye Zaphiro, special envoy of Ethiopia's
London legation, who addressed the gathering.
The militant spirit and determination of the delegates was
continually brought out on the floor. At every mention of the
Scottsboro Boys and Angelo Herndon there were prolonged
cheers. Tim Holmes, communist delegate from New York, led
three cheers for the defense of Ethiopia, which shook the vast
460 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

auditorium. When a resolution condemning the Hearst press and

urging its boycott was unanimously adopted, the delegates staged
a spontaneous demonstration in which every visible copy of the
local Hearst sheet-the Herald Examiner-was torn to shreds and
tossed in the air. Silence greeted the telegram from Mayor Kelly
who conveniently found that he had scheduled an out of town
meeting and would be unable to attend. When his replacement,
Judge Burke, telegrammed that he was suddenly called to the
bedside of his dying sister, the audience responded with prolonged
derisive laughter.
On Sunday, the closing session established the congress as a
permanent organization and called for the formation of local
councils throughout the country. The thrust of the program was
basically as outlined in the keynote address by Randolph,
centering on active support of industrial unionism and the need to
combat the growing threat of war and fascism.
·, The congress passed resolutions calling for the formation of
Negro labor committees to oppose discriminatory practices in
trade unions and to undertake organization of unorganized Black
workers. The resolution read in part: "These Committees can be a
powerful factor in the cause of Industrial Unionism and especially
in mass production industry where there are many Blacks.'; Other
resolutions supported sharecroppers' and tenant farmers' unions
and called for social security benefits and improved unem­
ployment relief.
On the front against war and fascism, the congress called for
increased support of Ethiopia, passed a strong resolution oppos­
ing lynching and supporting the revised Costigan-Wagner Anti­
Lynch Bill and calling for continued support of the Scottsboro
Boys and Angelo Herndon.
The speakers at the closing session included Norman Thomas of
the Socialist Party, Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, Lester Granger,
chairman of the Urban League, and Angelo Herndon, who
received an enthusiastic ovation. Randolph was elected president
of the new organization.
Throughout the congress, we communists played an active role,
participating on the numerous panels. James Ford stressed Black
 CHICAGO: AGAINST WAR AND FASCISM 461

pcoples' stake in the struggle for independent political action in the

form of a farmer-labor party. Communists were on the local and
national sponsoring committees. The seventy-member national
council of the National Negro Congress elected at the conference
included about ten communists.
Our participation during the entire three-day session was,
however, somewhat hampered by continual harassment from the
Chicago Red Squad. They set up a loose dragnet around the
armory and jailed a number of comrades on their way to or from
congress sessions. They held them without booking until the
congress closed on Sunday. These comrades were mostly second­
line leaders. The police k:1,1ew any arrest of a well-known leader
would have provoked large demonst.rations and protests.
The Red Squad's disruptive activities were not confined to
harassment outside, or tojust the communists. They clearly sought
to disrupt the work of the congress itself. Congress leaders faced
daily threats of being thrown out of the meeting hall. In this, the
Red Squad had an amenable accomplice in Col. Warfield,
Black commander of the Eighth Illinois Regiment. He had
obviously swallowed whole hog the Hearst propaganda accusa­
tions that the conference was organized and manipulated by the
"reds" and was part of the "general plot" to overthrow the
government by force and violence.
Col. W arfield had even escorted friends of his around the
armory, sho.wing them hidden machine guns with stand-by crews
to back up any ultimatum to clear the hall. The colonel, whom I
remember as a lieutenant during my Army days, was a "back-door
relative" of Wallis Warfield. The old Virginia slave-holding family
had recently gained some notoriety through their daughter's
marriage to the Duke of Windsor. This connection had undoubt­
cdly been helpful in the colonel's clirnb to eminence in Black
bourgeois circles.
While this.form of harassment failed, Warfield and his officers
were successful in preventing Earl Browder from speaking at the
closing session. Browder had been requested by the session1s
chairman to speak, but was prnhibited by order of the Eighth
Regiment officers. This announcement was re.ceived with strong
462 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

disapproval by the assembled delegates. The issue, however, was

not forced because it was the last session and just before
adjournment.
In all, the conference was a huge success. All our local activities
were given a real boost, especially so in Chicago with its large turn­
out at the conference. The Party' s prestige was also bolstered and
this was to be reflected in later campaigns like the steel drive and
the electoral campaign of 1936.

THE NINTH PARTY CONVENTION

The Ninth Party Convention was held in New York City, June
24-28, 1936. The regular Party convention occupied the first three
days and the last session, held in Madison Square Garden, was
devoted to ratifying the national election platform and nominating
candidates for the 1936 elections.
The 1936 elections, held in the midst of the continuing economic
crisis, saw some of the most bitterly fought campaigns in American
history. The dominant Wall Street monopolists, the Hearst
papers, the most reactionary and fascist-minded sections of the
ruling class, united behind the Alfred M. Landon/ Col. Frank
Knox slate in a determined effort to defeat Roosevelt and reverse
the New Deal programs and gains made by the popular mass
movement.
At the same time, agents of big business form ed the Union Party
which was designed to take votes away from Roosevelt and spread
confusion among the populist-oriented voters. Self-declared
fascists, Father Coughlin and Gerald L. K. Smith, were its major
leaders, and William Lenke was its presidential candidate. Roose­
velt, running on a pledge to continue the New Deal reforms, had
substantial middle-class support and aid from more .liberal­
minded and anti-fascist sections of the ruling class.
This sharpening of contradictions in the U.S. ruling class was a
reflection of the growing threat of fascism on a world scale. The
fascist offensive at home was part of a similar offensive abroad: the
formation of the Hitler-Mussolini-Hirohito axis, the invasion of
 CHICAGO: AGAINST WAR AND FASCISM 463

northern China, the invasion of Ethiopia, the strengthening of

Hitler's power in Germany and the growing threat of civil war in
Spain.
In order to remain in the presidency, Roosevelt was forced to
take a more progressive posture, moving to the left of the
"economic royalists," as he dubbed his opponents, and establish­
ing a new alignment of forces in the ruling circles.
It was in this context that over 750 delegates met in New York
for the Ninth Party Convention. I arrived with the large Chicago
delegation in which Southsiders were well represented. In pre­
convention discussions we had made a self-critical evaluation of
our work. We pointed to our strength in united front activities and
our success in organizing in the lighter industries. But our most
serious weakness lay in the work in basic industry-steel and meat
packing-where we had few contacts and had made little progress.
But we looked forward to overcoming this in the coming period
with the opportunities opened up by the CIO drive for industrial
unions.
William Z. Foster, Party chairman and head of the trade union
department, made a brief speech, outlining the objectives of the
convention and the aims of the Party in the struggle against
reaction: strengthen the mass movements, fight against fascism
and war, develop our trade union work and the drive for industrial
unions, build our unemployed work and work among Blacks,
youth and women. He linked all these areas together with the
election campaign.· It was Foster's first appearance since his heart
attack which had occurred during the 1932 campaign. We were
happy to see him back, anticipating his advice and participation in
the coming steel drive. We gave him a stirring ovation.
Browder, the general secretary, gave the keynote speech, a
report of the Central Committee. By correctly building the united
front against fascism, he noted, the Party had been greatly
strengthened. He stressed that the Party's dramatic growth­
membership was up sixty percent in two years to 40,000, with an
additional 11,000 YCLers-was an indication of the growing
influence and correctness of our policy. Browder pointed to the
progress made by the National Negro Congress and stressed that
464 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

communists had earned an unchallenged place in the Black

movement through their efforts around Scottsboro and the
Angelo Herndon defense.
He noted that Blacks expected from communists the greatest
sensitivity, the greatest energy in their defense, and the closest
solidarity. The Communist Party, Browder emphasized, was
proud to be spoken of as "the Party of the N egroes." He concluded
that the Party must use the 1936 election campaign as a means of
further building the American people's united front against
fascism.
Browder was the Party's candidate for president; Ford again ran
for vice-president. The Party's platform gave implied support for
Roosevelt, however, by focusing on Landon as the main
danger. The platform correctly emphasized a minimum program
which linked demands for more jobs, for social security, relief and
for Black rights, with the key political struggle of the period-the
defeat of the fascist offensive. To carry this out, we had to build a
people's front in the form of a farmer-labor party.
While the convention under Browder's leadership showed the
Party's basic strength, it also revealed certain rightist tendencies.
Browder advanced the formulation of communism as "Twentieth
Century Americanism," a perspective which saw socialist transfor­
mation simply as a continuation of American democratic tra­
ditions. It was a classless proposition, which failed to make
distinctions between bourgeois democracy and proletarian de­
mocracy, and obscured the need for revolution. With hindsight,
Browder's statements were actually a forewarning of what was
later to become an entire theory, the justification for dissolving the
Party as a Marxist-Leninist vanguard. In practice it hinted at the
submerging of the Party in the united front, abdicating its
independent role and tailing after Roosevelt and the New Deal
labor leaders. 10
At the time I doubt that any of us understood the full
implications of Browder's formulations. Still, there was some
struggle with Browder. He was defeated in the Politburo when he
proposed the Party run its candidates as a farmer-labor ticket
rather than as communists.
 CHICAGO: AGAINST WAR AND FASCISM 465

I was cohcerned about a tendency to downgrade the importance

of the right of self-determination. Browder failed to place it as the
basic principle upon which we based our fight against Black
oppression and for Black-white unity. Further, it was completely
absent from the election platform. The minimum demands were
placed, but to the exclusion of the maximum program.
I felt this was wrong, particularly because the large increase in
Party membership had brought in many new cadres who were not
fully aware of the theoretical foundations for our position on the
question. I made a speech at the nominating convention which
was described in the Daily Worker as follows:
Harry Haywood, Negro leader in Chicago, after emphasizing
that the "denial of land and the denial of freedom is at the root
of inequality," pledged the Southside delegation to the
carrying forward of the Party banner in Chicago.
"It is because we carry our stand for equality to its logical
conclusion that we can lead the Negro mas.ses," he declared.
"It is not chance that we are the ones who spread the infamy of
Scottsboro to every corner of the world. It is not chance that
from our ranks came Angelo Herndon."
The education of Party forces to a real understanding of the
Party position on the Negro question was urged by Haywood
who said that "it is we who have to demonstrate in theory and
practice how the struggle for self-determination is at the very
heart of the struggle for uriity of Negro and white."
Self-determination must be explained, he stated, to white
workers. "Always on the basis of unity ... on the basis oftheir
common interests with the Negro people. We must convince
them that the possibility of their own freedom depends on
unity, and that unity demands equality in the deepest sense­
self-determination."1 1

Back in Chicago, I was the Communist Party's candidate for

Congress from the First Coilgressional District on the Southside.
My opponents, both Blacks, were incumbent Congressman Mitch­
ell, a Democrat supported by the Kelly machine, and Re­
publican Oscar DePriest. The congressional district included the
Southside Black wards. In the campaign, I scored both of my
466 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

adversaries for being responsible for hundreds of evictions on the

Southside and I urged my audiences to vote communist. Foliow­
ing the Party's line of indirect support for Roosevelt, I centered my
main attack on Landon and his fellow Republican Oscar DePriest.
Mitchell won the election, part of the great pro-Roosevelt
landslide which witnessed the first nationwide breakaway of
Blacks from the Republican Party. The Chicago Democratic
machine, dominated by Mayor Kelly, rode to victory on Roo­
sevelt's coattails. I picked up a scant 899 votes on a straight
communist ticket. 12 Though it was the highest vote ever received by
the Party in that district, it was still quite small relative to our
strength for the Southside. Doubtless this was a result of the
Party's policy in the 1936 elections, which, as Foster uncritically
remarked, amounted to "objective, but not official support for
Roosevelt." 13
 Chapter 18

The Spanish Civil War:

A Call to Arms
This landscape
buried after a battle­
keep it hidden, my knees,
more hidden than these refugee lands.
Never let go of it, my eyes,
until you say the names, make the wounds,
keep it, my b/ood, keep
this taste of shadows
so there can be no forgetting.
Pablo Neruda l

Why did I go to Spain?

For me, as a communist, Spain was the next logical step.
Franco's rebellion in mid-1936 sparked a civil war which became
a focal point of the worldwide struggle to halt fascism and prevent
World War II. The generals' rebellion against the Spanish people's
front government was backed by Hitler and Mussolini, who
poured in troops, tanks, planes and supplies in an attempt to
topple the progressive Republican government.
The Spanish Civil War was a part of the worldwide drive for
fascism. Spain had become the next item on their agenda, after
north China and Ethiopia. The Soviet Union called for collective
action to stop the aggression in Spain, but the western capitalist
468 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

democracies responded with a so-called non-intervention pact

which allowed Hitler and Mussolini to flood men and munitions
into Spain while the U.S., France and Great Britain refused to sell
war supplies to either side.
Betrayed by these appeasement policies, the Spanish Loyalist
forces faced seven to one odds in equipment and materials. Fascist
atrocities shocked the world as the Nazis used. Spain as a testing
ground for new weapons.
On April 26, 1937, the small village of Guernica in the Basque
province of Vizcaya was bombed by German planes from about
four-thirty in the afternoon until eight at night. The population
was strafed by machine guns as they fled and 1,654 people were
killed, 889 wounded. 2 Communist parties throughout the world
rallied to the defense of Republican Spain and organized the
International Brigades, made up of communists and other anti­
fascist fighters, to answer the fascist aggression.
·,our Party in the U.S. took up the call. It came during a time of
deep domestic crisis and increasing radicalization of masses of
Americans. We were already involved in the fight against domestic
fascism and were developing a popular front under the leadership
of communists. There was widespread support for Republican
Spain. Over 3,000 American volunteers traveled there, making up
the majority of the Lincoln and Washington Battalions of the
Fifteenth Brigade. More than 1,500 died there.
As another step in the fascist plan of world conquest, Spain
made the threat of fascism at home more immediate. Although
there were relatively few Blacks-not more than a hundred who
volunteered for Spain-there was generally support and sympathy
for the Republican cause in the Black community. Already alerted
to the dangers of fascism through the defense of the Ethiopia
campaign, Blacks played an active role in the movement to
support Republican Spain with the National Negro Congress and
the Southern Negro Youth Congress adopting strong resolutions
against fascist aggression and for collective security. 3
As a Black man, I was acutely aware of the threat of fascism.
Blacks have always faced the most brutal, racist oppression in the
United States, but fascism would mean a great heightening of the
 THE SPANISH CIVIL W AR 469

terror and oppression. I felt it was wrong to say that the conditions
of Blacks "could not be worse under fascism." It was through this
understanding, that I felt the strongest solidarity with the Spanish
people.
I was eager to go to Spain. We had carried on an active
recruiting campaign for the brigade. Many of my co-workers in
Chicago had volunteered-Oliver Law, Tom Trent, Oscar Hunter
and others. Also I felt it would afford me the opportunity to learn
many lessons in revolutionary struggle which would be invaluable
for our Party and my people. Finally, I felt the presence of Black
communists in Spain would help emphasize the solidarity between
the Afro-American and Spanish people in the struggle against
fascism.
I was reminded of this later on in Madrid when Bob Minor
introduced me to La Pasionaria (Dolores lbarruri), the great
woman communist leader who embodied the whole sentiment of
the Spanish people's struggle. She was happy to see me and related
how impressed she had been when she had watched the parade of
the International Brigades through Valencia on the way to the
Aragon front. Leading them was a bandsorne Black youth
carrying the American flag. "How remarkable that Black people,
so oppressed themselves, see the relation of our struggles and are
here to join us," she said. "What happened to that young man?"
"That was Milton Herndon, Angelo's brother," I replied. "He
was killed a few days later on the Aragon front."
Despite heroic efforts, the civil war in Spain ended in a tragic
defeat for the world's anti-fascist forces. The death of the Spanish
Republic emboldened the fascists and led, six months later, to
Munich, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and with that, the
inevitable outbreak of the Second World War in which millions
died.
While the people's forces were defeated in S pain, their cause was
not. The fascists could claim this initial battle, but the courageous
cxample set by the Spanish people and the International Brigades,
cven in defeat, inspired millions across the world to stand up to the
fascist tide. In the end, it was fascism that was crushed and the
pcople's forces that triumphed. Those who fell in Spain were the
470 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

vanguard of the victory.

Personally, I also suffered a defeat, a setback which would affect
my life in the Party for some years to come. My experience in
Spain was shortlived, lasting only about six months. It, and its
aftermath, which I relate in the foliowing chapter, focus on some of
the more negative features of the International Brigades. But they
should not be allowed to detract from the overall epic struggle that
Spain represented. I have not attempted to detail the political and
military history of the brigades in Spain. This has been done in a
number of books. 4
Late in the winter of 1937 I raised thequestion of going to Spain
with Browder, and he tried to dissuade me. I would be the highest
ranking member of the U.S. Communist Party in Spain and the
sole member of the Politburo. He had been receiving reports about
the problems in the brigade and probably questioned my ability to
handle the job. I was persistent, however, and Browder brought it
up before the Politburo where it was reluctantly agreed upon.
Within the next few weeks, the Party took steps to strengthen its
leadership in Spain and sent over several top organizers.
We sailed for Spain on the Ile de France out of New York. Our
large group of volunteers went through the usual charade of
pretending not to know each other-just tourists meeting for the
first time. The leadership group was composed of Bill Lawrence,
Ed Bender of New York and Dave Mates from Chicago-all old
Party functionaries whom I knew. The crossing was uneventful,
and we docked at Le Havre, taking the boat train to Paris.
At the hea<l"quarters of the International Brigades on Rue de
Lafayette we were taken in charge by the French Party. We spent a
few days in Paris, and I went to visit my friends Otto Huiswood
and his wife, Hermie Dymont. Huiswood headed the International
Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers, which had been in
Hamburg until Hitler's rise to power. From Paris we went by train
to Perpignan near the Spanish frontier, where a local committee
took charge.
We were split up and lodged in a number of farmhouses outside
the town. I was impressed by the strength of the anti-fascist forces
in which the local communists were the moving force. We were
 THE SPANISH CIVIL W AR 471

treated with great courtesy and hospitality by our hosts. Lawrence,

Bender, Mates and myself were put up in ttie same house to wait
for our turn to cross the Pyrenees.
While waiting I had a bad attack of asthma. It was the allergic
type which I attributed to some ragweed in the vicinity; I had had
such attacks before and I assumed this would go away once we got
out of the area.
One night at about midnight we were roused and told to fall out
with our baggage. We were to begin our march and cars were
waiting to drive us south towards the border. After about an hour's
drive, we pulled up near a river and got out. This apparently was an
assembly spot. A number of comrades were already there and
others were arriving by car.
We formed a column of probably a hundred men-including
several guides and a doctor. We marched towards the river where
we were told to strip and wade across: As I remember the river
wasn't very wide or deep, but once we were in, we found the early
spring water was ice-cold and chest-high. We got to the other
bank, dried off, put on our clothes, reformed our ranks and began
to climb. We were told to keep close, not to straggle, because of the
French border guards. There were guides in front and file dosers in
the rear to keep us together so there'd be no stragglers. They set a
very fast gait.
We walked quietly, climbing steadily for a couple of hours. My
asthma was bothering me, and I had difficulty breathing and
found it hard to keep up with the column. It got worse and I finally
fell to the ground, completely out of breath. The column stopped.
Two of the young men who were our file dosers rushed forward.
One stuck a pistol in my side as I lay there, saying, "Get up, you
bastard, you volunteered, it's too late to change your mind!"
I knew what was on his mind. He was afraid that stragglers
might disclose the secret trails to the French border guards who
were carrying out the orders of Premier Blum's non-interven­
tionist French government to close off the horders.
My comrades immediately interceded, asserting that they knew
me, that I was an important anti-fascist leader, that I must reallybe
ill and wasn't faking. They called the doctor over and he checked
472 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

me over with his stethoscope. He said, "Yes, this man can't go any
further, to do so might cause irreparable damage to his heart."
What to do? The summit and the frontier were a couple of hours
away. One of the guides, an elderly man, pointed to a but on the
mountainside, a short distance from the trail. He said it was vacant
and suggested I should stay there, rest up, and come over in the
morning.
One of my comrades said someone should stay with me; the old
man volunteered. The column reformed and marched away,
leaving me with the old man. I felt ashamed and somewhat
humiliated at not being able to make it over the mountains. I had
been in fairly good health ever since I had left the Army; but, I
thought to myself, I was getting old (I was thirty-nine and no
mountain climber).
After resting in the road for a few minutes, I told the old man
that I felt I could make it to the hut. He looked at me anxiously as if
to say, "Can you really go?" He insisted on carrying my pack and
helped me to my feet. Leaning on him, I made it to the hut. It was a
one-room affair with a cot. I flopped down really fagged. He told
me to get some sleep, that he was going down the mountain to get
some food and would be back shortly. I gave him an incredulous
look-you're going down there where we came from? "Oh, that's
nothing. I've climbed mountains all my life."
After he left I fell fast asleep and woke when the sun was bright
in my eyes. There was the old man sitting .beside me, waiting
patiently for me to wake up. He smiled-and produced some
cheese and wine which I ravenously attacked. He asked if I was
ready to attempt the climb, that it was only a short distance, and
we would go slowly, resting whenever I was tired. He carried my
pack.
We reached the summit after a series of short hikes and pauses.
There we met the guards of the Loyalist Spanish Republic. They
greeted us; the old man knew them. They said our comrades had
passed through several hours before. They insisted we have
breakfast with them. The old man remained. The guards told me to
follow the road to the Figueras, an ancient fortress now used as
barracks for brigade volunteers.
 THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR 473

A truck soon came by, and I hopped a ride into Figueras. I met
up with my comrades again, as they had been detained there to
wait for transportation. Worried about my health and the
possibility of not being allowed to go to the front, I went to see a
doctor. After a thorough examination, he assured me that my
hcalth was alright and he saw no reason not to go to the front. The
four of us in the leadership group were driven to Barcelona where
we spent the day.
During our stay in Barcelona we spent some time seeing the
sights. Walking down the Ramblas de Catalunia, we suddenly
stopped and did a double-take. It was Bert Wolfe! He also
stopped, startled at seeing us. He had been a leading member and
chief lieutenant of the Lovestone group and had been expelled
with Lovestone from the Party in 1929.
What was he doing here in Spain, we wondered. We recognized
cach other-exchanged startled looks and then turned and went
our separate ways. We were sure he wa·s up to no good for he had
turned virulently anti-communist. Looking back on it, our
suspicions may well have beenjustified. For only a few weeks later,
there was a counter-revolutionary putsch of the POUM, the
Trotskyite organization. 5 It was reasonable to assume that Wolfe
would have made common cause in their struggle against the
communists.
We left Barcelona and eventually arrived in Albacete, a
provincial capital, now the headquarters of the International
Brigades. There were five International Brigades: the eleventh,
chiefly German, called the Thaelmann Brigade; the twelfth, chiefly
ltalian, known as the Garibaldi Brigade; the t}:tirteenth, mainly
East European; the fourteenth, chiefly French; and the fifteenth,
composed of Americans, French, Belgians and Balkans. The
fifteenth, due to the tater predominance of Americans, was often
incorrectly called the "Abraham Lincoln Brigade."
At this time, all the brigades were under the political command
of a triumvirate based in Albacete: Andre Marty, leader of the
famous French Black Sea Mutiny and member of the Political
Bureau of the French CP, was commander; Luigi "El Gallo"
Longo, second in command of the ltalian Party, was inspector
474 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

general (he was la ter to become T ogliatti's successor as Party

chief); and Giuseppi di Vittorio was chief political commissar. The
General Commissariat, under their leadership, was the multi­
lingual command apparatus in which all nationalities were
represented. Lawrence assumed the position as American political
commissar of the Albacete base, Bender became his assistant in
charge of cadre, and Dave Mates left Albacete for Tarazona de la
Mancha to become political commissar of the Washington
Battalion which was then in training.
Even before we left the States, we had heard of the terrible losses
suffered by the Americans of the Lincoln Battalion of the Fifteenth
Brigade atJarama. Upon our arrival in Albacete, George Brodsky,
the acting American representative, filled us in on the details. The
situation was much worse than we had expected. The action of
February 27 on the Jarama front resulted in a needless slaughter of
American volunteers and their fellow battalion members, the
Irish, Canadians and Cubans. Ill-equipped, largely untrained, and
without the promised artillery, air or tank support, they were
thrown against an impregnable fascist strongpoint, Pingarron
Heights, in their first engagement.
This attack was carried through on the insistence of General Gal
and Lt. Colonel Vladimir Copic, and over the protest of Captain
Merriman, the American battalion commander. Charging up the
hill, the Lincolns were caught in a murderous machine gun
crossfire. It was a virtual massacre.
The results were that our batallion which had entered the lines
with 450 men, had 200 killed or wounded, leaving only 250
effectives on the line. The casualties included most of the officers.
Douglas Seacord, second in command, William Henry, com­
mander of the first company, and adjutant Eamon McGrotty were
all killed in the attack. Captain Merriman was wounded, as was
my old friend and schoolmate, the Englishman Springhall.
Springy was an assistant to brigade commissar and along with
Merriman had led the assault. My good friend from_Hyde Park,
our YCL organizer Tom Trent, was also killed that day.
The responsibility for this crime lay·with General Gal, division
commander, and Copic, the brigade commander. Their incom-
 THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR 475

11rtt�nce was exposed further when it was later learned that a little
l11rlher down the line there were ill-defended enemy positions
whcre a breakthrough could have been made.
I >cspite the handicaps and bungling by the brigade and division
l'llmmands, the Lincolns fought with great heroism and deter­
mination. The International Brigades played an important role in
hnlling the fascist offensive aimed at cutting the Madrid to
Vnlcncia road, the life artery of Republican Spain, and thwarted
lhcir efforts to encircle the capital.
After a few days in Albacete, I left for the front, accompanied by
I .nwrence and Bender. Our front lines were situated along the crest
ol' 11 hill which rose in a gentle slope from the Morato road, about a
kilometer away. About halfway up sat a small Spanish villa which
wns used as brigade headquarters. Entering the villa, we met Lt.
( 'olonel Copic.
M uch to my surprise, I recognized him as "Sanko," an old Lenin
Sl'110ol student from the Slav language group. He had been one
vrn r ahead of me and so I had known him only slightly. He seemed
J&rnuinely pleased that I was the brigade's new adjutant political
rommissar and embraced me warmly. I learned that he had been
1111 officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army and had received some
l{cd Army training. He spoke English fluently.
He introduced us to the members of the staff. There was Col.
llnns Klaus, chief of staff, a former Imperial German Army
officer; George Aitken, brigade political commissar, my direct
NU pcrior and a Scottish veteran of Paschendale-the World War I
holocaust of British and Canadian troops; Major Allan Johnson,
on leave from the U .S. Army and the highest ranking Army officer
In Spain (he had come to the brigade after the February 27th
disaster); and Lt. George Wattis, former British officer and now in
diarge of brigade staff mess.
Copic took me aside to give me his account of February 27.
According to him, the attack on Pingarron Heights was necessary
und had to be carried out as General Gal had ordered. Of course it
wns difficult for the American volunteers to understand. After all,
I hcy were no soldiers, he said, but only raw recruits without
lrnining-pampered by easy living in the States and unprepared
476 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

for the rigors of battle. He reminded me that it takes time to make a

soldier. We all took a drubbing that day, the Americans were
nothing special.
I listened, growing angry at his disparaging remarks. Of course
all of this was true, but it still didn't explain the suicidal assault on
Pingarron. These volunteers were not the "do or die" type. They
were political soldiers, ideologically committed and they knew
who was responsible. Copic's account amounted to a dispar­
agement of the American effort and a complete denial that the
command was in error.
We went up to the trenches to meet the men. I was struck by
their youth; many were YCL'ers and I recognized only a few.
Among those I knew was Oliver Law, a former Chicago comrade,
head of the Southside ILD and one of the several American
volunteers with military training. Law was a veteran of the
Twenty-fourth lnfantry, a Black regiment, and was now comman­
der of the Lincoln machine gun company. He had been an
important member of our Southside leadership. I remember him
running the police gauntlet at the Forty-eighth Street precinct
during the Ethiopia demonstration. He had been a victim of Red
Squad sadism during the unemployed struggles in the early thirties
when he was beaten up and deliberately kicked in the groin. It
seemed right and logical that Oliver should be in the front lines in
Spain.
I was happy to see that he had survived the February 27
ordeal, but saddened when he told me that the young Irish­
man, Tom Trent, was among those who had perished in battle
that day.
I also met Martin Hourihan, battalion commander, a former
Regular Army calvary man, teacher, seaman and trade union
leader. The fellows were happy to meet us and glad the U.S. Party
now had some leading members in Spain.
In hopes that we could be of some help, they poured forth their
complaints. They were beefs concerning poor equipment, food
and clothing. They suspected some of these problems arose with
the Spanish Premier Largo Caballero. Rumor had it that the
international brigades were being discriminated against in terms of
 THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR 477

the limited amount of equipment available because Caballero, a

right wing socialist, hated the communists. But the men's bitterest
complaints were directed at the brutal incompetence and irre­
sponsibility of Copic and Gal. The men had absolutely no faith in
their leadership and were particularly angered by the faet that they
had had no relief in four months. They wanted adequate American
representation on the brigade staff.
I then spoke with Allan Johnson. He was very impressive and
struck me as a first-rate officer, a graduate of the U.S. War
College who had been a Regular Army captain assigned to the
Massachusetts National Guard. Though he arrived at the front
after the Jarama battle, he felt the men's complaints werejustified.
He was particularly outraged at what he considered to be the
incompetence of the brigade and division leaders. H e felt that they
had failed to exercise common sense. His opinion was that
something had to be done, at least the removal of Copic, because
the colonel had lost the confidence of the men of the Lincoln
Battalion.
Lawrence, Bender and I talked it over and agreed that
something had to be done. The two of them returned to Albacete
and made an appointment with Marty's adjutant, Vidal. He was
sympathetic and advised us to return in two weeks. We returned,
and he explained that it was impossible to remove Copic. Vidal
assured us that the men would be given relief-new weapons,
clothing and equipment. Also the brigades would be reorganized
and divided into two regiments with Chapayev to lead the Slavic
group. He then asked who we thought should lead the English
speaking battalions. I answered him immediately. Jock Cun­
ningham was my choice, a well-respected rank-and-file leader.
(Johnson probably would have been our first choice, but he had
left S pain on a special mission to procure weapons for the Loyalist
government and was not to return until September.) Vidal agreed
and asked if I would be Cunningham's political commissar. I
accepted. Vidal also explained at this point that we would
be drawn back from the front for a long-deserved rest-though
not right away-and the plan would be implemented at that
time.
478 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

These changes would be an important victory for our men but I

unfortunately paid far too little attention to the possible reper­
cussions. I had made an enemy of Copic.
Our battalion was pulled back for a two-day rest at Alcala de
Benares. We were to take part in the May Day celebrations. At this
time, Steve Nelson came up to the brigade. I only knew him
slightly but he had a reputation as a veteran communist organizer
and a leader in the eastern Pennsylvania anthracite coal mining
areas. When I met him, he relieved fred Lutz as commissar of the
Lincoln Battalion.
Shortly thereafter, on May 5, Bob Minor came over as a
representative of the Politburo for a short inspection tour. We
filled him in on the events with Copic. He spoke to the men on the
May 3rd attempted coup of the POUM, criticizing Caballero very
sharply for his attitude toward the brigades, and left a new Dodge
f.pr my use.
In the middle of May, I accompanied Al Tanz, brigade supply
officer, to Valencia on a matter of supplies and we learned more
about the coup. At that time, the popular front government was in
a crisis as a result of the POUM action. Caballero had been
hesitant to take military measures against the counter-revolu­
tionary coup. His stand lost him the government, and he resigned
on May 16.
A few days later, we heard La Pasionaria speak at one of the hig
halls in Valencia. 6 She stated the position of the communists. I went
to hear her with Langston Hughes and Nicolas Guillen, the black
Cuban poet. I had heard great oratory before, but never anything
like hers. She appeared tome tall and stately. She spoke in a calm
manner with few oratorical flourishes, hardly raising her voice.
It was a damning bill of particulars, detailing the crimes of the
Trotskyist POUM. She described how under their leadership the
anarchist "un1.:ontrollables" had set up a dictatorship oflibertarian
communes in Aragon where they were strong. Now instead of
agrarian reform for the benefit of the peasantry, they had imposed
forced collectivization-this in the midst of a bourgeois demo­
cratic revolution. "You could win the war, but lose the revolution,"
was their slogan. She went on and detailed how they had refused to
 THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR 479

h11ild the people's army and kept the arms in the rear, preparingfor
1111 uprising against the popular front government.
She charged fascist infiltration and collusion with Franco's
1tJ(cnts. Finally, their activities culminated in the May 3 coup
which left the Aragon front wide open to the fascists. Although I
k 11cw very little Spanish, I felt I could understand every word. Of
l'ourse, I was acquainted with the subject and that helped. La
Pnsionaria spoke eloquently, holding the audience in rapt atten­
lion for forty-five minutes. She built it up slowly and carefully,
point by point, to the end of her speech. Lowering her voice
Nhc asked, "What are you going to do with such people?"
Pandemonium then broke out in the hall. "Kill 'em! Shoot 'em!"
I had never seen such a demonstration.
The meeting broke down spontaneously into a whole number of
Nmall meetings throughout the hall; people were bringing it down
lo their local situations, taking the lessons from her speech. She
Nlood poised and calm, waiting for the commotion (which lasted
fifteen · minutes) to subside. And then a unanimous resolution
of support for her and the Central Committee of the Spanish
( 'ommunist Party was passed.
I returned to the front and pursued my duties as deputy brigade
l'Ommissar. A political commissar's main job was to inspire morale
und the highest spirit of discipline and loyalty among the men for
thc Republican cause. A crucial task was to establish a mutual
rnnfidence and close comradeship between officers and men. It
was not a militaristic discipline, but rather one based on the
rnnscious realization that the interest of the people and the army
wcre one.
Our duties required keeping the men fully informed. as to the
progress of the war and our current military objectives. Our work
rxlended to the smallest detail that contributed to the physical and
mental well-being of the men-food, clothing, supplies, mail, rest
nnd leisure. Our jobs were an integral part of the brigade command
NI ructure. Political officers held parallel rank with the military
command and all orders to the troops needed the signature of
hoth. The responsibilities and difficulties of the job were tre­
mendous, and we could not always live up to them.
480 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Our Fifteenth Brigade Commissariat was under the direction of

Aitken. We published a daily memo sheet, Our Fight, in English
and Spanish. There was also a larger periodical, The Volunteerfor
Liberty, which was published in French, German, Italian, Polish
and English. We used sound trucks for propaganda directed at the
fascist troops calling on them to join the fight against their real
enemies.
The heroic Frank Ryan, a flamboyant Irish journalist and
former officer in the IRA, was assigned to work with us. On one
occasion, we drove into Madrid together to check up on the
printing of The Volunteer. As we were driving from Grand Via, a
main street in Madrid, I realized · it was almost deserted. I
wondered what was happening. Frank noticed also and exclaimed,
"Damn! I didn't realize it was so late! It must be four o'clock!"
Suddenly a shell whistled over our heads and exploded down
the street. It was the regular daily shelling that the fascists used to
demoralize the valiant citizens of Madrid. The shelling came
faithfully every day at four o'clock-you could set your watch by
it. It came from Mt. Garabitis on Casa de Campo and was soon to
be the objective of one of our offensives.
The men were finally withdrawn for relief to small villages near
Madrid. The reorganization plan was put into effect and the men
were given new equipment and clothing. After a few weeks' rest,
our brigade was given orders to move to the new front. Our first
objective was Villanueva de la Canada, a well fortified town on
the Brunete Road. On the road to Villanueva, we passed many of
the Listers and Campesinos, crack troops of the Loyalist army,
lined up by the side of the road ready to move out. We realized this
was to be a major battle.
We met with stiff resistance and became pinned down. The
British Battalion in the Fifteenth Brigade circled to the west to cut
the road leading south to Brunete. They crossed just to the right of
us under machine gun cover directed by Walter Garland, the
young Black commander of a machine gun company. Garland had
been seriously wounded at Jarama and, after recovering, was sent
to the brigade training camp at Tarazona de la Mancha where he
assisted in the training of the Washington Battalion. He served as
 THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR 481

ucting commander until he left for the Brunete front, at which time
hc was reljeved by Merriman.
I had made my way to the rear behind the lines to look over our
positions. As I approached Garland's machine gun company, he
Nhouted a warning, "Get down, Harry, the snipers have a head on
I hat spot! Captain Trail's just been hit right there!" I ducked
quickly, getting out of the line of fire, but a young Spanish soldier
was not so lucky. Coming up behind me, he was hit and killed.
Walter was impressive, directing the very effective cover fire
which allowed the British to cross the road. Standing behind his
men, much like a quarterback barking signals, he would order his
�unners into action, the fire pinning down the fascists long enough
for the British to make it across.
Our Washington Battalion was under orders to move straight
11head for a frontal attack on the town. The town was well fortified
11 nd we faced heavy machine gun fire. Our only orders were to keep
11dvancing. This we did, but very slowly. At one point, Martin
llourihan (adjutant to Cunningham) and I witnessed a suicidal
charge by our cavalry in which they suffered terrible losses and
wcre forced into a wild, disorganized retreat, nearly overrunning
our position. Shaking his head in disbelief, Hourihan, an old
cavalry man himself, asked, "Did you ever see anything like that?
11 orse cavalry attacking such a fortified position?"
Hourihan was severely wounded later that day in the final
nssault on Villanueva. Our attack proceeded very slowly and it
wasn't until early evening, after being pinned down the entire day
in the sweltering heat with little water, that we forced the fascists to
withdraw and were able to seize the town. But this delay was to
have serious consequences for it gave the fascists time to figure out
our objective, to begin concentration of their troops and materiel
on the Mosquito Heights, the highest point in the area. Our
offensive had lost its element of surprise.
In town I found Cunningham's headquarters; he had moved in
with the British Battalion which was on our right flank. Immedi-
11tcly he informed me that we were moving out. Moving south
down the Brunete road, we soon encountered the horrible sight of
I hc bodies of women and children lying in the road, as well as the
482 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

bo dies of members of the British Battalion. Among those latter I

recognized Brown, a member of the British Central Committee
and formerly of the Lenin School. He had been a political
commissar of one of the British companies.
What had happened? A group of fascists, fleeing the town, had
seized some women and children as hostages, forcing them to
march in front as a shield against the British fire. Passing the
British they suddenly opened fire and threw grenades. Shoving the
hostages aside they tushed down the road. The British, caught off­
guard by this ruse, tried to defend themselves. But to avoid
shooting the women and children, they were unable to effectively
reply and took many casualties as a number of fascists escaped.
We continued to march in the direction of Brunete to our new
attack position, avoiding the road as much as possible. Hitler's and
Mussolini's planes were already bombing the roads. Towards
evening we halted for the night. Cunningham was called to brigade
headquarters to get the plan of action for the next day. At the time
I thought it was strange that I had not been called. Jock returned
shortly and unfolded a military map, asking me if I could read it.
Having no experience in military map reading, I said no. He
abruptly folded the map and marched off without saying another
word, apparently having confirmed some derogatory judgement
of me.
I mention this incident because from that time on, there seemed
to be a definite cooling in our relationship. At the time, I wondered
if there were any connection between this action and an incident
with Nathan earlier that morning. I had been standing roadside
waiting for the Washington Battalion to pass so I could fall in with
them. Nathan, the chief operations officer for the brigades,
marched past. Out of the side of his mouth he snarled, "Y ou'll get
yours."
This came so suddenly and so threateningly, that I was taken
aback. I yelled after him, "What did you say?" But he kept going
without looking back. Now, putting these incidents together, I
began for the first time to suspect that the band of Col. Copic was
at work, that he had begun lining brigade staff up against me in
order to even the score.
 THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR 483

The next morning we were to be in position. I had only a general

idea of the action. I knew our immediate objective was Mosquito
Crest, the dominant ridge in the area, in the foothills of the
Guadarrama Mountains, overlooking Madrid. If we took the hill,
the fascists' positions at Mt. Garabitas, from which they shelled
the city daily, would be outflanked and untenable. Franco would
be forced to abandon his salient, and the seige of Madrid would be
lifted.
We arose early and were in our attack positions by daylight. In
our brigade sector, the British Battalion was on the right, where I
was, the Franco-Belgian, Spanish, Washington-Lincoln and Di­
mitrov Battalions were all on our left. At zero hour, our men
charged up the hill with shouts, hurrahs and vivas, dashing across
the Guadarrama River, which at this time of year was practically
dry. Under cover of machine guns, we took the first ridge. By this
time, however, the surprise element in the offensive was lost.
The enemy had decamped, moving back to the heights beyond.
We stood looking east; ahead of us, beyond a series of ridges and
probably 3,000 meters away, loomed Mosquito Crest, our objec­
tive. We established temporary regimental headquarters on the
first ridge in a large dugout, vacated by the fascists. We established
telephone connections with the brigade. Our orders were to
continue the attack.
After a slight rest, all battalions moved forward in an attack;
British on the right, then Washington and Lincoln. Our regimental
headquarters were closest to the British positions and I watched
the British battalion led by its commander Fred Copeman, leader
of the naval mutiny of the Enver Gordon, move forward. Jock
and I remained in our newly established headquarters, as all
the battalions moved forward. The brigades came under wither­
ing fire from the crest and were forced to withdraw with heavy
casualties. It was during this attack that Oliver Law was killed. The
men brought back the wounded during a lull foliowing the
withdrawal.
During the next few days, a number of attacks and probes were
made in the direction of the crest. Now seeing what we were up to,
the fascists began a massive concentration of troops and weapon-
484 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

ry, artillery and planes. The air superiority which we enjoyed the
first day or two was soon gone. The fascists brought in planes from
everywhere. There were swarms of German Heinkels and ltalian
Cazas that bombed and strafed our ground positions, flying so low
they showered us with hand grenades from the sky. All this amidst
the most murderous heat that I had ever experienced. The sun was
a blazing inferno. The Guadarrama River, which the day before
had been a trickle, was now completely dry.
By now the food and water problem was acute. The iron rations
(reserve supplies) were running out, and we had lost our rolling
kitchens; they had failed to keep up with our advance and were
scattered along the road, almost to Madrid-sixteen miles away.
A main duty of a commissar was to maintain morale; proper and
sufficient food was an important item in this task. With the
incessant bombing and strafing, the whole network of roads
between Madrid and the front was disrupted and supplies were
prevented from moving up. I suggested to Jock that I round up the
chuckwagons and he agreed. I then left the headquarters dugout,
walked down the hill across to the west bank of the nver, and
found the car Minor had left me at the brigade car pool in the
woods. A young lad assigned to me as driver was there and we
drove back in search of the kitchens.
On the road I saw the devastation caused by the bombing.
Villages which were standing when we had passed through on our
offensive were now reduced to rubble, deserted by their surviving
inhabitants. The sickeningly sweet stench of death filled the air.
The bombing of the roads was so sustained that several times we
stopped, abandoned our car, and took refuge in the woods.
We finally located some of the kitchens. They had pulled off the
road to escape the planes. I remember running across an American
mess officer from the Washington Battalion, Sam Kaye, who had
drawn his whole outfit off the road into the nearby woods. He
remained near the road, peering out from a culvert and tiying to
find directions to our brigade sector. There were several more of
the rolling kitchens scattered along the way. I told him to wait until
dark and some let-up in the heavy enemy bombing and we would
then guide them up to our positions. This is what we did, and we
 THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR 485

arrived late that night.

I spent the remainder of the night with the kitchen crew. In the
morning I crossed the river with a Canadian comrade. We started
up the hill to the regimental headquarters. Halfway up, we were
halted by an ear splitting and earth shaking barrage of enemy
artillery. We fled from the road and burrowed ourselves into the
earth. We were showered with stones and dust, but miraculously
escaped without being harmed.
What had happened? The British, attacking east along Bodilla
Road, ran into the withering fire of fascist artillery massed along
the crest, and were hurled back with heavy losses. The barrage
lasted probably an hour. When the artillery finally stopped, we got
up and continued up the hill to regimental headquarters. We found
the entrance to the dugout blocked by a number of dead bodies.
Among them I recognized Black, Canadian commander of our
new anti-tank group. Charles Goodfellow, adjutant commander
of the British battalion lay dead in the road, cut down while trying
to reach the safety of the dugout. We entered to find it crowded
with men from the British battalion; those fortunate enough to
escape the murderous shelling on the road. They had also dragged
in a number of wounded comrades. In the dim light I saw Ted
Allen, a Canadian newspaperman who was covering the Brunete
offensive for the Canadian Tribune, the communist paper.
Jock Cunningham wås shouting excitedly over the brigade field
phone. He hung up, turned and continued shouting, this time at
me. "Where the hell have you been?"
"Rounding up the kitchens, you knew that," I said.
"Fuck the kitchens, you should have been here!"
I was incensed by his comment and even more by his tone. He
was like a British sergeant dressing down a recruit. "You know
goddamn well you agreed I should go get the kitchens!" I yelled
back.
We confronted each other afew feet apart. Theo Jock unleashed
his crowning insult. "Aw, fuck off. Y ou're no good anyway. You're
scared now."
Furious, I started towards him. Ted Allen, sitting close by,
jumped up and rushed between us. "Take it easy, Harry," he urged.
486 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

"This can't be settled now in the midst of battle. You'd better go

back to the brigade and settle this later."
I turned and walked out of the dugout, the confrontation over. I
made my way down the road towards the river. The main shelling
had stopped, but there was desultory fire. Walking down the hill, I
thought over the events that had led up to this confrontation with
Jock. Again I sensed the fine band of Col. Copic behind the whole
matter. There had been the incident with Major George Nathan.
Our relationship had been cordial out how was I to account for his
actions on the road up to Villanueva? Theo there was the faet that
I hadn't been called into the operations meeting and the map
incident with Jock that followed. Something wasn't right.
As I neared the river, engrossed in thought, I ran into Copic. He
could see from my expression that I was troubled.
"What's the matter?" he asked eagerly .
. I told him ab out the argument with Jock. "I told you those guys
were no good, but you sided with them against me," he beamed.
"What are you going to do now?" I told him I was on my way back
to see Steve Nelson.
I found Steve at the Lincoln Battalion headquarters. He had
had his own troubles; the Lincolns had also suffered heavy
casualties. Oliver Law had been killed. Law's adjutant, Vincent
Usera, an ex-Marine officer, had left his post without permission
and had been dismissed from the battalion staff by Steve and the
other officers. 7 Nelson now assumed command of the battalion. I
informed him about my quarrel with Jock. His opinion w·as that it
couldn't be settled then in the midst of battle. He suggested that I
return to Albacete, pick up Lawrence and Bender, and bring them
up to the front within the next few days. Then we could find time
with leading American comrades at the front to have a meeting on
the situation and decide what to do. This made sense.
The meeting took place a few days later, when the battalion was
given rest and drawn back on the other side of the river. Present
were Steve Nelson; Mirko Mirkovicz, commander of the Wash­
ington Battalion; Dave Mates; two or three other comrades from
the front; Bill Lawrence and George Bender from Albacete; and
myself.
 THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR 487

In the meeting, Steve repeated what he had said earlier. The

issue couldn't be settled at that time, in the midst of battle. Jock
Cunningham, he pointed out, was in effective command of the
regiment. Thus he felt that I should be withdrawn from the front
and things worked out later. This was unanimously agreed upon.
On my own part, I felt it was the only possible decision that
could be made under the circumstances, but nevertheless, I didn't
like it. I left the front bitter and frustrated. But now I had time to
understand how this situation had come about. I had led the fight
for improvement of conditions for the Americans and the removal
of Copic. The main responsibility for the February 27 slaughter at
Jarama was Gal's, the division commander. Copic, however,
shared in it as brigade commander and became the main apologist
for Gal-consequently he was the immediate target for the men's
anger. The struggle for changes in the brigade brought about
improved conditions, reorganization and a marked boost in
morale. It also meant a loss of prestige for Copic, even though he
remained as commander.
Copic was aware of my role in all of this. At the front, where his
power and influence were greatest, he was at last able to move
against me.
Johnson had been the only American on the brigade staff. When
he left the front on a special mission, Nathan took his place. Copic
easily brought Nathan into his inner circle which, I reasoned,
enabled him to clear the way to isolate me in the brigade
leadership. My confrontation with Jock was undoubtedly the end
result of this effort to regain his lost prestige.
Shortly after the meeting at the front, Bob Minor arrived back
in Spain, this time as official representative of the CPUSA. I was
happy to see him. He listened sympathetically to my side of the
story and told me that they heard I was having difficulties.
Browder had said that if I couldn't see my way through, I should
come back home.
He agreed that my withdrawal was the only thing that could
have been done at the time, and that at some future time it might be
possible to work me into some position at the front. In the
meantime, he suggested that I might consider taking over as
488 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

political commissar in Madrid. I rejected this latter proposal,

considering it a demotion. By this time, I was already beginning to
feel that I was getting the short end of the deal. Rather than go to
Madrid, I stayed in Albacete with Lawrence and Bender, accom­
panying them on their rounds of hospitals, checking up on
Americans. Bob Minor took me to Valencia and introduced me to
leaders from other countries and from Spain.
The battle of Brunete ended on July 28. Of the 360 men in the
British battalion, only thirty-seven were left on the line. The
remainder were either killed or wounded. The Franco-Belgian
battalion had eighty-eight left. The Dimitrovs had ninety-three left
from 450. Only 125 Spaniards remained effective out of 400. There
had been two American battalions with a total of 900 men. Now
there were 280 effectives who were merged into one battalion.
They pulled back to rest in villages near Madrid, the same villages
fro,m which they had left for the offensive. Officers killed included
Nathan. A number of volunteers were given "extended leaves" to
return home if they wanted. Among those repatriated were Jock
Cunningham and Aitken.
There was now, for the first time, an American ascendency in
the brigade. Although Copic remained commander, Steve Nelson
replaced Aitken as political commissar; Merriman, now a major,
became chief of staff, replacing the German Col. Klaus. Gal was
dismissed. Johnson returned to command the training camp at
Tarazona. The brigade went on to Terruel and then to the Aragon
front. It became clear to me that after all this reorganization, all of
which passed me over, there was no place forme in the brigade.
Minor raised again the question of repatriation and I agreed.
The fighting in Spain continued for nearly eighteen months
after I left. the internationals fought many more battles and their
heroism and fighting spirit became legendary.
But Loyalist Spain was not able to overcome the military
superiority of the fascists, a condition forced on it by the non­
intervention pact. On March 28, 1939, Madrid fell, ending the
three years of bitter fighting. Republican Spain was clearly a
victim of the western imperialists' policy of appeasement. The
fascist victory in Spain was another step toward World War Il.
 THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR 489

I left Spain bitter and frustrated. I was disappointed that I had

not fully anticipated nor was I able to overcome the difficulties
encountered there. It was for me a personal crisis, but nothing
compared to what I was faced with on returning home.
 Chapter 19

World War II
and the Merchant Marines

I returned home from Spain in the fall of 1937. Soon after

arriving, I heard for the first time the malicious rumors which had
preceded me. I was being accused of leaving the front without
permission, of running away.
Browder's first words to me were, "Harry, had you been a better
organizer you wouldn't have gotten into that fix."
I had to admit that there was some truth in this. I'd done pretty
well in Chicago, but there I had the benefit of collective leadership.
In Spain, a more experienced organizer would have moved
cautiously, not impulsively as I had. He would have made a more
careful analysis of the situation, arrived at an estimate of exactly
what could be done and not allowed himself to be pushed into
premature action. As a staff officer, I lived in brigade head­
quarters, separately from the men in the trenches. A more
experienced organizer would have made a greater effort to get out
among the men and spend less time at headquarters.
I had made some mistakes in Spain. But I did not feel anything I
had done warranted the type of rumor and stander that I was now
confronted with. I had led the struggle to improve conditions in the
brigade after Jarama. I had made tactical errors in carrying out this
struggle, but I expected and felt I deserved the support of our
leading comrades. Now I found myself the victim of a rumor
campaign that could only have started in Spain.
I felt that at least the brigade leadership, which now included
 THE MERCHANT MARINES 491

Steve Nelson and Lawrence, could have explained to the men why
and how it was decided that I should leave the front. But they never
did. Instead, it was left that "Harry Haywood left the front,"
providing fertile soil for rumor mongering.
I was in no position to fight the rumors, however. First, I
hesitated to bring the whole business out into the open in the midst
of the war. Also, to defend myself would necessitate bringing back
to the forefront people and events which had drifted into history as
the bitter fighting in Spain continued. Gal had been dismissed
from the Republican Army for mistakes, including the criminal
blunders at J arama; Nathan was killed; Cunningham and Aitken
repatriated; Klaus had been transferred to the Thaelmann Bri­
gade; and only Copic remained of the old leadership. 1 The men who
survived Jarama were veterans now. And most significantly, the
gross command errors at Jarama's Pingarron Heights were not
repeated, thus pushing these events into the background where
they lost the sharp significance they had while I was in Spain.
I was demoralized and depressed. I had no other course but to
accept the decision to leave the matter in abeyance until a later
date. The rumors, however, persisted-undermining my role as a
leading Party member and questioning my integrity. At the time I
saw this slander campaign as an unwarranted attack and, person­
ally, as a tremendous setback. Only years later was I able to see
how this attack on a leading Black cadre was part of the overall
thrust in the leadership of the Party to liquidate the national
question and our leading role in the struggle. That is, the
Browderite leadership made good use of the political in-fighting in
Spain.
The sharpest attacks came from James Ford. He lost no time in
moving to take advantage of my loss of prestige as a result of
Spain. In my absence, Ford had continued to build his one-man
leadership of Afro-American work. Under his influence, the
Harlem leaders tended to become a closed group; anyone who did
not provide Ford with uncritical support was suspected of being
"anti-leadership." As head of the National Negro Commission,
Ford tried to extend his style of leadership to the national scene.
In this, he had the active support of Browder who played upon
492 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Ford's personal ambitions with uncritical praise, referring to him

as "the Frederick Douglass of our time." As a result, he became
one of Browder's key henchmen. Ford also continued a vendetta
against the older comrades, which eventually led to the expulsion
of Briggs and Moore. 2 Before Spain, I had sufficient prestige as a
leader and theoretician in my own right to resist this tendency. But
now with my standing largely eroded by the difficulties in Spain,
Ford moved to consolidate his position and oust me from
leadership once and for all.
Although I had my differences with Ford, I did not expect the
type of veiled attack which he launched. This attack was revealed
through a series of underhanded blows. The first was an article l
had written as part of the Party's pre-convention discussion in
early 1938. The article, "The White South and the People's Front,"
was su bmitted to The Communist, the Party's theoretical organ. It
was a polemic against Francis Franklin, a young Southern
intellectual who was at the time the head of the Education
Department of the YCL.
He had published an article in the January 1938 issue of The
Communist, "For a Free, Happy and Prosperous South," 3 which
minimized the role of revolutionary Reconstruction and made
unwarranted concessions to reactionary distortions of the period,
particularly concerning the role of the "carpetbaggers." Under the
guise of winning the white Southern masses to our program, he
distorted the revolutionary thrust of Reconstruction. His article
was, in effect, an attack on some of the basic tenets of our
revolutionary position. I answered in my article (published in
April 1938) by reasserting our position on the revolutionary role of
Reconstruction and the so-called carpetbag rule as the most
democratic period that the South had ever known. 4
To my surprise, I picked up the April issue of The Communist
and saw that my article had been printed just as I wrote it, but
under the name of Theodore Bassett. Bassett was one of Jarnes
Ford's inner circle and educational director in Harlem. I ap­
proached V.J. Jerome (The Communist editor) to find out what
had happened. Jerome stated that Ford had insisted that my name
be removed from the article for "political reasons." Obviously
 THE MERCHANT MARINES 493

Ford pirated this article to prevent me from regaining any

prominence and in order to enhance the prestige of his Harlem
leadership. He was able to do this by invoking my "Spanish
difficulties" as a reason for not allowing my name to appear in
print.
The Tenth Convention of the CPUSA was held in New York in
May 1938. There I was removed from the Politburo and the
Central Committee. My name was simply omitted from the slate of
candidates submitted to the convention by the presiding commit­
tee. Browder was the person who informed me of the move, citing
the reason of "mistakes made in Spain."
After twelve years of being on the Party payroll, I was suddenly
faced with the need to find employment outside. For a well-known
communist, it was not easy.
In the summer of 1939, the World's Fair opened in New York
City. Isadore Schneider, a left-wing writer and poet, headed up the
publicity for the Soviet pavillion. He took me on as his assistant.
My job was to popularize the pavillion among Blacks and to
publicize Soviet achievement in solving national and racial
questions. It was an interesting job. I put advertisements in the
Black press and organiied delegations of prominent Black leaders
to visit the ex hibit. We held a press conference of Black editors and
invited them to dinner at the pavillion. My still fluent knowledge
of Russian proved very useful and I translated for the Soviet
guides when groups visited.
It wasn't long before Ford got wind of my activities, however.
He told me angrily, "You know you shouldn't have taken this
job... you're too well known a communist." According to him,
public relations should be handled by a non-Party person­
otherwise the effort to publicize the exhibit would be narrowed. I
certainly didn't agree with what he had said and told him so. But he
insisted that I resign or he would take steps to have me removed. I
went to see Schneider and learned that Ford had already talked to
him. I had been red-baited before, but always by the police or
bourgeois press. Ford had added a new twist! I collected my wages
and left.
Ford's vendetta continued through the summer of 1939. As the
494 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

outbreak of world war approached, Japanese imperialists were

stepping up a propaganda campaign directed at Blacks in the U.S.
Claiming to be the champions of the colored races, they attempted
to use the national liberation movement of Blacks for their own
purposes against their U.S. imperialist rivals, and to disrupt the
popular anti-fascist forces.
Cyril Briggs and I wrote a pamphlet to counter this pro­
J apanese movement among Blacks. 5 This pamphlet refuted their
spurious propaganda and exposed the Japanese plunder of north
China and their imperialist designs for Southeast Asia. The Negro
Commission allowed the pamphlet to be published, but only after
Ford had added his name and those of his close associates,
Theodore Bassett and Abner Berry.
In the early fall, Jack Stachel, national organizational secretary,
called me into his office and asked if I wanted to go to Baltimore to
head up Afro-American work for the Maryland district, which
included Washington, D.C.
I welcomed the opportunity to return to work as a Party
organizer and saw it as an indication that the personal attacks were
coming to an end. Maryland provided a challenging place to work.
There was the giant Bethlehem Steel plant, Sparrows Point, which
had a significant number of Black workers. The drive to organize
little steel had suffered a defeat at the 1937 Memorial Day
Massacre in south Chicago. N ow the drive was regaining momen­
tum. As one of the !argest eastern seaports, the Baltimore
waterfront was a hotbed of activity, lead by the doughty, dynamic
and energetic Pat Whelan.
There were also important Black liberation struggles in the
district. Baltimore was the scene of anti-police repression cam­
paigns, and the Eastern Shore-a former slave breeding center
and actually part of the Black Belt-was the sight of periodic
lynchings and frame-ups.
I stayed about a year before the shadow of Spain crept up on me.
One of my most important tasks was organizing for the Third
National Convention of the National Negro Congress. The
organizing in preparation for the convention and the meeting itself
provided important impetus for all the work in the district.
 THE MERCHANT MARINES 495

John P. Davis, executive secretary of the NNC, asked to borrow

some funds for the convention, promising to repay us as soon as it
was over. I supported this request and we lent the NNC money
from district funds. But Davis was unable to repay us as he had
promised. Fields, the district organizer, took exception to this and
we clashed sharply. Before the situation could be resolved, Fields
went to the national office without my knowledge. He was able to
convince them that I was not needed in the district. I was soon
withdrawn, returning to New York in the fall of 1939.
World War li, with its beginning in the fascist invasion of
Ethiopia, China and Spain, broke out in earnest with Hitler's
lightning conquest of Poland in September 1939. The imperialist
governments of France, Great Britain and the U.S., which had
been following a p.olicy of appeasement towards the building up of
the German war machine in the hopes of using it in an armed
invasion of the Soviet Union, now found themselves threatened.
Their schemes against · the Soviets had been shaken by the non­
aggression pact signed by the Soviets with Germany in August
1939.
The Soviet policy had consistently urged joint action against
fascist aggression, but the capitalist governments were not in­
terested. The Soviets offered to defend Czechoslovakia, but the
French refused to put their mutual defense pact into effect. The
Soviets offered to defend Poland on the eve of the German
invasion, but Poland refused to allow the Red Army units to cross
the border. The British stubbornly refused any type of mutual
assistance pact with the Soviet Union, hoping all the time for war
between Germany and Russia.
The Soviets thus moved to defend themselves and thwart this
imperialist scheme, signing the non-aggression pact with Ger­
many-a brilliant and necessary diplomatic move.
Despite the faet that France and Britain were pledged to assist
Poland, they did nothing in response to Hitler's invasion. For six
months, neither side made a military move against the other. This
period, the "phony war," was used by the western imperialists in a
final attempt to turn the war against the Soviets.
On November 30, 1939, war broke out between the Soviet
496 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Union and Finland. The immediate cause was German-inspired

Finnish incursions into Soviet territory, greatly encouraged and
fostered by attempts by the British and French to foment war
against the Soviet Union.
But Hitler had his own plan. Realizing the impossibility of
waging war on both eastern and western fronts, he moved against
the weaker opponents. In April 1940, German troops marched
into Denmark and Norway. Finland proved the utter bankruptcy
of British and French policy by allying itself with the fascists. On
May 28, the supposedly invincible armies of France were defeated
and the British were driven into the sea at Dunkirk. In rapid
succession, the countries of western Europe came under Nazi
control. Thus satisfied that his western front was secure and not
considering the British a serious threat to his rear, Hitler turned his
attention eastward. Viciously occupying Yugoslavia, Greece and
Albania, and bringing Bulgaria into the war as a fascist ally, Hitler
overran the Balkans and prepared for his decisive blow of the
war-the Soviet Union.
The initial stage of the war (September 1939 to June 1941) was
dominated by the imperialist powers and was a war for world
domination. Our policy called for active support of China and all
oppressed peoples in their struggles against fascism and for
national independence. It called for ending the war as rapidly as
possible on the basis of a democratic peace. Our main slogan was
"Keep America out of the imperialist war!"
The great sentiment for peace was reflected in the positions of
both the AFL and the CIO which went on record as opposing U.S.
participation in the war. United front organizations such as the
NNC, the Southern Congress for Human Welfare and others
adopted similar positions.
Probably the !argest of the many peace activities was the
American Peace Mobilization, formed in Chicago on August 31,
1940. It consisted of over 6,000 delegates representing about
12,000,000 people in trade unions, youth organizations, women's
clubs and Black groups. Under the banner of "For a People's
Peace," it fought against further extension of the war.
In October 1939, a few weeks after the fascist conquest of
 THE MERCHANT MARINES 497

Poland, I found myself in the Veteran's Hospital at Kingsbridge

Road in the Bronx. I suffered a serious heart attack. My condition
was found to be service connected; the result of the endocarditis I
had suffered while in the Army during the First World War. This
time the diagnosis was valvular heart disease. I was awarded full
compensation, one hundred dollars per month, by the Veterans'
Administration.

R &R IN THE SAN FERNANDO VALLEY

After three months' recuperation, I was released from the

hospital and advised to take a long rest. Thinking that I might be
incapacitated for life, I decided to go to Los Angeles, arriving there
in the winter of 1940. I rented a small bungalow on the property of
a comrade in the San Fernando Valley and stayed there over a
year. It was on Van Nuys Road near the Pacoima Reservoir.
My stay was very restful and I became a member of the
Southern California District of the Party. There was a good Party
organization in the valley and a relatively large circle of sym­
pathizers. The comrades were very solicitous towards me.
Our Party branch actively organized in the valley for the
American Peace Mobilization and we were able to send a strong
delegation to Chicago as part of the Los Angeles contingent.
Although still recuperating, I helped with this work by giving talks
and leading discussions on the international situation and the
progress of the war.
It was in California that I met an old comrade, Belle Lewis, who
had also come from the east to recuperate from an illness. I was
happy to see her again, having known her back east during the
National Miners Strike of 1931. She was a veteran communist and
organizer for the National Miners Strike Relief Organization in
"bloody" Harlan County. During the strike, she had been jailed
along with five other women who were framed up and known as
the Kentucky Six. Later she was a section organizer in Boston's
Black ghetto.
Belle was a handsome, warm-hearted woman in her early
498 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

thirties. She had Slavic features, with a broad face and high cheek
bones. We were both lonely and struck it off quite well together.
She came to live with me in the valley and later we were formally
married. Our union was to last fifteen years.
On June 22, 1941, Hitler launched his attack against the Soviet
Union. This fateful action dramatically changed the character of
the war and was in faet, the beginning ofthe end for Hitler. Hitler's
armies marched deep into the Soviet Union, but in the winter of
1941-42 the heroic effort of the Russian people stopped the
German offensive at Leningrad and Moscow.
A regrouped German army launched another offensive in the
spring of 1942, aimed at Stalingrad. For months the city was under
siege, but the powerful Germans could not take the city. The epic
Battle of Stalingrad was ended January 31, 1943, with the decisive
defeat of Hitler's crack Sixth Army.
With the invasion of the Soviet Union, our Party's policy
towards the war changed. It was no longer possible to limit the
spread of the war; it was now a people's war aimed at the defeat of
fascism. The bombing of Pearl Harbor ended any lingering hope
that America could stay out of the war. Our slogans became,
"Everything for National Unity!" and "Everything for Victory!"
By the time Hitler hurled his war machine against the Soviet
Union, my health had improved and I was feeling as good as ever.
Belle and I decided to move into L.A. proper and become more
active in Party affairs. Browder had sent a letter to the district
secretary, Carl Winter, to the effect that the Spanish incident was
not to be held against me and I was to be given an opportunity to
make my contributions to the Party. Pettis Perry was at the time
head of Afro-American work in the district.
Although I wasn't aware of it at the time, in hindsight it's clear
that under Browder's leadership Ford had already set on a course
which was to lead to the liquidation of the Party's revolutionary
position on the Black national question. The Party had already
dissolved the Sharecroppers Union and, under the pretext of
building the united front, was slurring over the special demands of
Blacks in all its areas of work.
The Party's correct position for consolidating the united front,
 THE MERCHANT MARINES 499

the declaration of national unity under the slogans, "Everything

for the war effort!" and "Everything for victory over worldwide
fascist slavery!" was however accompanied by a serious under­
rnining of the Party's leading role and its ideological strength.
The tendency to subordinate the class struggle to Roosevelt's New
Deal policy had manifested itself earlier in the liquidation of the
Party's factory units, shop papers and trade u�ion fractions.
YNow this tendency was revealing itself in distortions of the no­
strike pledge and hiding the face of the Party. Belle brought this
home to me in regards to her work in a war industry plant in Los
Angeles. She was very dissatisfied and angry because according to
the line she was supposed to remain in the background­
prnmoting non-Party people for union leadership. In many cases,
and her plant was a good example, the no-strike pledge was
interpreted to mean little, if any, struggle around working
conditions or safety. The Party demanded virtually no concessions
from the factory owners in return for the guarantee that workers
would not strike during the course of the war.
A similar tendency of slurring overthe special demands of Blacks
had begun to creep into the work. An example ofthis was the faet
that despite the active role th� Party played in the struggle for the
FEPC (an executive order to outlaw discrimination against Blacks
in war industries), it found itself tailing the NAACP and A. Philip
Randolph when it came to organizing support for the measure.
I saw these tendencies as deviations or individual mistakes which
would be corrected-not as symptoms of a developing opportunist
line, a pattern of abdicating the leading roie of the Party.
Somewhat divorced from the struggle going on in the Party, Belle
and I moved into .an apartment on Forty-second Street and
Crocker in the Central Avenue district, the heart of Los Angeles's
Black ghetto. We immediately got to work, and in no time we were
able to build up a Party branch of about fifty Blacks, some of the .
finest young people I have ever met. Most were from Oklahoma,
Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana-part of the first wave of
migrations to the · new war industries in and around Los Angeles.
The branch secretary was one of the local people, with Belle as
membership director and myself as education director. We held
500 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

discussions and meetings on national and international problems,

as well as questions confronting the community.
W e were elated with our success, but it was not shared by the
district office downtown. Pettis Perry had tried to direct the Afro­
American work from his office, rather than establishing a base in
the community. The work obviously suffered from this isolation
and he was jealous of our success. Our house was always open to
comrades and quickly became a center for activity in the area.
It wasn't long before we began hearing rumors which referred to
Belle and myself as the "uptown braintrust" and accused us of
"establishing a second center." Angered and fed up with those false
charges, covert accusations and innuendos, I decided to get a job.
Although my health seemed excellent, I was wary of my heart
condition.
I went to the state rehabilitation office fora check-up to see if I
was fit to work. To my surprise, I· passed the examination with
flying colors. The examining doctor told me my heart was in good
condition and he saw no reason why I couldn't do anything I had
done before. Encouraged, I asked if I could go to sea.
"Certainly, but I wouldn't advise you to be anything like a
stevedore," he said. Still, I was told I was unable to join the Army.

SIGNING UP WITH THE NMU

In June 1943, I enlisted as a seaman in the Merchant Marine at

San Pedro, California, the port of Los Angeles. Just as millions
around the world, I wanted to make some contribution to the fight
against fascism. I knew the history of struggle of the National
Maritime Union and had long been an admirer of the militant
seamen's union.
The NMU was the largest of all seamen's unions, reaching a
membership of about 100,000 during the war. lts forerunner had
been the Marine Workers Industrial Union, organized by the
the SIU (an AFL-dominated seaman's union). The TUUL union
dissolved and sent its membership into the SIU. They later helped
to lead the rank-and-file revolt against the bureaucratic leadership
 THE MERCHANT MARINES 501

of the SIU. This revolt led to the founding of the NMU as a CIO
union in 1936. Its history was marked by bloody strikes in 1936
and 1937 in which several members were killed by thugs and
police.
Through this fierce struggle and with the Party's correct
leadership, the NMU became one of the most militant, dedicated
and highly organized of all the CI O unions. The union was in the
leadership of the anti-fascist movement both at home and abroad.
It actively supported the anti-lynch bill, demanded full employ­
ment and a permanent FEPC. When Italian fascists invaded
Ethiopia, NMU seamen refused to sail ships to ltaly. Later they
refused to sail steel-laden ships andtankers for Japan. In the midst
of very important union struggles, some 800 union members left
their picketlines for Spain. Over 200 died in the attempt to defeat
the fascist offensive and prevent a new world war.
NMU seamen were known as worldwide emissaries of labor.
They would contact local unions wherever they docked, offering
assistance and support and often participating in labor marcbes
and demonstrations. 6
As head of the Party's Afro-American work, I had known many
of the old-timers in the SIU and had worked with some ofthemen
who helped to found the NMU. These included Al Lannon, Patty
Whelan, Tom Ray, Johnny Rogan, Hursel Alexander, Roy
Hudson, George Mink, Josh Lawrence and Ferdinand Smith. The
latter two were Blacks and both were on the national board of the
union. Smith became the national secretary and Josh, a boilt­
swain, became port agent for the Great Lakes.
A few days after I enlisted, I signed on the Union Oil Company's
tanker, La Placentia. I had no training besides as a waiter so I
chose the job of crew messman, serving the crew at meals and
cleaning up. I was the only Black in the crew. We were bound for
Pearl Harbor and Honolulu. Our tanker served as mother ship for
a dozen or so PT boats on their way to the Pacific war zoJle,
refueling them on the voyage across and relying on them to serve as
our escort.
These boats (patrol torpedo craft) were smalL fast and heavily
armed. They carried a minimal crew of three officers and eleven
502 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

men. Armed with four torpedos, two rocket launchers, twenty

millimeter anti-aircraft guns, thirty-seven millimeter cannon and
fifty caliber machine guns, PT boats were pound-for-pound the
most heavily armed ships in the war.
In the months foliowing Pearl Harbor, the Japanese met with
almost fantastic success in the Pacific and south Asia, despite the
faet that their finest force, the Quantung Army, was tied down in
north and east China by the armies of Russia and China.
By May 1942, most of the major islands in the south Pacific had
fallen to Japan, either wholly or in part. Bangkok, Hong Kong,
Java, Wake, Guam and the Philippines were among the territories
incorporated into Japan's "co-prosperity" empire. Australia was
threatened with invasion from the north; Darwin, a northern port
city, had already been attacked by the Imperial Air Force. When
Burma fell to the Japanese, land supply routes to embattled China
were effectively cut and Japan had a base from which to launch an
invasion of India.
It wasn't until May 1942, at the battle of the Coral Sea, that the
Japanese met their first hig setback. It was here that they were
prevented from taking Port Moresby, Papua, and possibly invad­
ing Australia. In the next few months, they suffered major defeats
at Midway and Guadalcanal. As we headed into the Pacific war
zone, ten months after Guadalcanal, the allies were preparing to
launch their major offensive in the south Pacific.
After two weeks at sea, we land ed at Pearl Harbor. In December
1941, it had been the scene of the massive Japanese raid on the
Pacific fleet. N ow, a year and a half later, the wreckage of Admiral
Kimmel's once proud fleet was strewn over the harbor. Thousands
of victims still lay in the hulls.
I went ashore with some shipmates. We took a bus to Honolulu,
a few miles away. I found war-time Honolulu pretty drab. The
streets, busses and amusement places were crowded with U.S.
military and naval personnel.
We went into a bar on Bishop Street in downtown Honolulu
and the white bartender-proprietor refused to serve me. He
apologetically said that he had nothing against Blacks personally,
but that there had been a bloody fight between Black and white
 THE MERCHANT MARINES 503

soldiers there just a week before. For that reason he had decided
not to serve Blacks at all. My white shipmates started to protest,
but I said, "A w, come on, don't bother." It wasn't worth the hassle.
We just walked out and went to another bar.
The Marines and the Navy, serving as Shore Patrol in Pearl
Harbor at the time, were generally arrogant and belligerent toward
us civilian seamen. They called us draft dodgers, dollar chasers,
reds and slackers. We had to swallow hard and just take it. If we
fought back, we'd be thrown in the brig where we'd suffer even
more abuse. We developed a real hatred for the Navy and the
Marines.
Their hostility and the racism the military had brought over
with it tended to sour my impressions of Hawaii. I had no regrets
when, in a couple days we were on our way back to San Pedro. We
returned without escort, having left the PT boats at Pearl Harbor
to supplement the allies' Pacific fleet.
Two weeks later we left San Pedro again, retracing our last
voyage back to Hawaii. By this time, the allies were engaged in
fierce battles to retake the Japanese-occupied territories on New
Guinea and the Solomon Islands. In six months, as the result of
these and later actions, Japan's eastern front would be wide open.
We brought with us another escort of PT boats. Again we
dropped the PT boats at Pearl Harbor, but this time we headed
southwest to Pago Pago in the American Samoas. It was not a
busy port, we were the only ship in the harbor. The Polynesians
there were among the friendliest people I had ever met. They had
light brown skin and looked like any mulatto that one might see on
the streets of Harlem or Chicago's Southside. Families would
invite us to visit their homes.
Our next port was Noumea, New Caledonia, a French pos­
session about 800 miles east of Australia which had formerly been
a penal colony. The New Caledonians were Melanesians, big fine
looking Blacks with wooly hair. My interest in anthropology had
led me to read extensively about these "Asian Negroes" and I was
glad to have the opportunity to meet them first band.
After about ten days there, discharging our fuel and refueling
small naval craft coming in from the Solomons, we finally sailed
504 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

out past the coral reefs and were on our way home.
At that time, merchant ships were more heavily armed than they
had been earlier in the war. Our tanker mounted two three-inch
cannons, fore and aft, and several twenty-millimeter rapid firing
Swiss anti-aircraft guns. On our ship these guns were manned by a
N avy gun crew of eighteen men commanded by a lieutenant junior
grade. We merchant seamen performed a vital support role for the
armed guard detachment. I served as assistant loader on one of the
anti-aircraft guns.
In the early morning, about two days out of Noumea, a general
alarm was sounded. An unidentified ship had been sighted on the
horizon off the port bow. We all rushed to our battle stations and
waited. In wartime, we had to maintain radio silence to avoid
disclosing our position. We waited for the ship to come close
enough to identify it. We knew we wouldn't have a chance against
a Japanese warship; it would have blown us out of the water. We
were all relieved when the alarm was finally called off, the vessel
had been identified as the U.S. troop ship West Point.
Back home after a couple of weeks in Los Angeles, we got the
news that a hig troop ship was crewing up in San Pedro. It was the
Uruguay, a former luxury liner on the New York-Buenos Aires run
that had been leased to the military by Moore-McCormack lines.
She had now been converted into a troop ship and had been
carrying troops from the east coast to Oran and other ports in
north Africa. N ow she had come through the Panama Canal and
around to the west coast.
Scuttlebutt had it that she was now to transport troops to the
Pacific war zone. When they got the news that she was being
transferred to the Pacific, half the original crew had gotten off in
New York. She made the New York to San Pedro run with only
half of her 450-man crew. She was carrying no troops at the time so
it posed no hig problem.
San Pedro was mainly a freighter and tanker port, supplying
crews of between forty and sixty. The NMU local was hard put for
men to fill out the Uruguay's large crew and for the new crew
ratings required for a large troop transport. The local had to send
to San Francisco to help fill out the crew.
 THE MERCHANT MARINES 505

The NMU port agent in San Pedro at the time was Oliver
Boutee, a progressive minded Black from New Orleans. The chief
union patrolman-the number one port union official under the
port agent-was Neil Crow, a tough experienced seaman and a
well-respected communist. The union was determined to put
together the hest possible crew for the Uruguay and started by
lining up a solid nucleus of good union seamen. One reason for the
special effort was the rumors of racketeering aboard the Uruguay.
It was a good opportunity to clean up the ship.
Racketeering on board ships-mainly gambling and selling
illegal liquor to troops-was a crucial issue for the National
Maritime Union. It was a matter of principle-the honor of the
union was at stake. In spite of the NM U's hundred percent backing
of the war effort, merchant seamen were often the target of the
kind of slanderous remarks I have already mentioned. Shipboard
racketeering played into these slanders.
Racketeering also prevented the union from handling legitimate
"beefs" about ship conditions. It divided the crew against itself and
made it difficult to wage effective struggles to improve intolerable
conditions; crowded and inadequately ventilated quarters, unsan­
itary heads, poor food and arbitrary disciplinary treatment from
officers. Shipboard racketeers were strongly anti-union, undoubt­
edly often the result of deals made with the officers to look the
other way from the rackets. Having never worked on a hig ship, I
was, at the time, only dimly aware of these problems and what they
meant for the union.

ROUNDING THE CAPE

When the day arrived to crew up the Uruguay, the hiring hall
was crowded. I recognized some familiar faces. Red Herrick was
there, a veteran communist seaman and artist who had made the
maiden voyage on the Booker T. Washington. The Washington
was the first merchant ship to be commanded by a Black captain,
Hugh Mulzac. Red was a fireman on the ship. I was surprised to
see Hursel Alexander, a well-known Black communist leader from
506 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Los Angeles who had never sailed before.

I stood in the crowded union hall, reading the long list of ratings
that had to be filled. There were openings for cooks, bakers,
waiters, pantrymen, utilitymen and others in the stewards' depart­
ment. I knew my skills were limited, but I had no desire to take
another messman job. Neil Crow approached me and said, "We
really want you on that ship, Harry. Take the chief pantryman's
job," he told me.
I hesitated, wondering why the job was posted when the third
and fourth pantryman jobs were not. Why hadn't anyone from the
old crew wanted to move up to chief pantryman? I didn't know if I
was qualified; the job would put me in charge of about ten men,
responsible for preparing salads and hors d'oeuvres, setting up and
serving at steam tables and making beverages, coffee, tea and
desserts for 400-500 officers.
Several friends of mine standing nearby also urged me to take
the job. A young man whom I had just met in the hall, Herbert
Jeffries, said, "l'11 support you, Harry. l'11 throw in my card for
first pantryman."
With the promise of their support, I agreed. When the
dispatcher called out, "chief pantryman," I stepped forward and
threw in my card. No one else applied; there was no contest. I felt
uneasy all over again, but I had the job.
Upon. boarding ship, my ability to perform the chief pantry­
man's job was immediately challenged by the chef. He was an
Argentinian, an old chef from the Uruguay's days as a luxury liner,
and a rabid white chauvinist. When he saw me he scowled: "So
you're the chief pantryman!" I said I was.
"Well, make me up four gallons of French dressing, four gallons
of thousand island, four gallons of Russian dressing, a gallon of
tart ar sauce and four gallons of mayonnaise."
It was clearly a challenge to my ability, especially making
mayonnaise from scratch. I was taken aback because l'd never
done it before. I sought out Jeffries, who had promised to b�k me
up, but he didn't know how to make mayonnaise either.,fortun­
ately the second pantryman, a Swede, stepped in and saved the
day. I passed the chefs "test" to his great disappointment and had
 TUE MERCHANT MARINES 507

no more problems of this type during the voyage.

We left San Pedro on November 9, 1943, bound for the South
Pacific and eventually Bombay, India. Approximately 5,000
troops were on board. In contrast to the La Placentia, a large
portion of Uruguay's crew was Black, especially in the stewards'
department. On the first day out we organized a union ship
committee which consisted of one delegate and an alternate
delegate from each departmeqt-deck, engine and steward. A
meeting of the crew was called and Red Herrick was elected ship
chairman. The meeting was general, a statement of union princi­
ples was made, the need for a clean ship emphasized and every man
urged to do hi� job. There was no controversy and it was
uneventful.
Two or three days out, however, racketeering became the issue.
My third and fourth pantrymen were arrested by the ship military
police and charged with selling liquor to the soldiers. The military
police had raided their bunkrooms and found the bulkheads
packed with cases of liquor, a virtual warehouse of smuggled
booze. How did they get all that contraband aboard, I won­
dered? Obviously these men had connections with shoreside
gangsters. They were put in the brig for the remainder of
the three month voyage. Now it was clear to me why ·these men had
not put in for the chief pantryman's job. They didn't need the extra
pay and didn't want the extra responsibility.
But this was not all. The ship was swarming with a number of
rackets. There was a cigarette racket, controlled by a storeman. He
smuggled aboard entire cases of cigarettes and, when we reached
Bombay, sold them at fantastic profits. But the greatest of all the
rackets was the nightly crap and poker games. They were run by
two glory hole (crews' quarters) stewards, the lowest rating on the
ship. The stewards were big-time professional gamblers and had
the entire operation well organized. They were surrounded by
toadies and sycophants who covered their jobs for them and even
served them special food and the best scotch while they lay around
all day in their bunks.
These men and their circle of cronies were corrupting a
significant section of the crew and represented the main obstacle to
508 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

any united action to improve conditions on the ship. In ship

meetings they always were the greatest patriots and red-baited the
union, warning against communists that were out to "disrupt" the
ship. We struggled against these phonies during the entire three
month voyage and after several tense incidents were finally able to
isolate them.
Our first port of call was Hobart, Tasmania, an island southeast
of Australia on the Tasman Sea. A few days before arriving, we
picked up two Army transports which continued sailing with us all
the way to Bombay.
Our stay was short, only twenty-four hours, but a welcome
break after the long, lonely Pacific crossing. Hobart, a very
pleasant town, was a resort and vacation area for Australians.
Leaving Hobart, we stood for Freemantle, the port of Perth on
the west coast of Australia, sailing the rough seas of the Great
Australian Bight. In Perth, I had my first impressions of Australia.
It seemed a white man's country to me then-1 never saw any of the
native inhabitants-but strangely I felt no antagonism. On the
contrary, everyone was very friendly toward us Black seamen.
We were aware of the immigration bar against Asians and
Blacks which was rigidly enforced. When asked about this, the
Aussies assured us it wasn't a racist law-"lt's got nothing to do
with you guys...and certainly we're friendly with the Chinese."
I thought to myself, "Well they should be, for the Chinese were a
major factor in preventing a Japanese fascist invasion of Australia
by pinning down Japan's main armies in north China."
They told us, "lt's a law brought in by the labor government to
prevent Australian capitalists from importing coolie labor and
undercutting the white Australian workers." The irony of this
explanation didn't even occur to the Australians.
We found ourselves warmly greeted as we went sightseeing
through the city of Perth. Several members of an Australian artil­
lery regiment invited us to "bring all our friends" and come to a
dance that night at their barracks just outside of Freemantle. We
turned out in large numbers and were waltzing Matildas'all night
long. It was a great party and didn't break up until nearly daylight.
When we sailed several days later, we bid them all goodbye.
 THE MERCHANT MARINES 509

We were glad to see the two Dutch cruisers that would escort us
to Bombay. We felt these were particularly hostile waters since
much of the territory on the coast of the Bay of Bengal was
occupied by the Japanese, as were the Andaman Islands some
1,800 miles east of India. Even now, as we sailed through the
Indian Ocean with our"cargo" of U.S. troops bound for Bombay,
the Japanese were massing their forces in Burma preparatory to
invading eastern India.
Six weeks out of San Pedro, we docked in Bombay. I wanted to
find the Communist Party headquarters to see if it would be
possible to meet with some of the Indian comrades I had known at
K UTV A. This proved to be a simple task. I asked a longshoreman
who gave me directions_ to the Party headquarters. Several
comrades, Hursel Alexander, Red Herrick and I went downtown
and found the Party headquarters. It was an impressive four or five
story building on a main street, a red flag with hammer and sickle
flying from its roof.
Walking in, we identified ourselves to the first person we saw-a
young man who turned out to be a member of the Central
Committee of the Indian Party. I explained that we were American
cornrnunists and that I was interested in seeing some of the Indians
I had known in Moscow. I didn't know their real names, but I gave
the young man several descriptions. He asked what years I had
been in Moscow. When I said 1926-30, his face showed real
interest.
"Well," he said, "I think something can be arranged. Why don't
you and your friends come back here at about six o'clock for
dinnerT'
Hursel, myself and several others came back that evening and
went upstairs. We took our shoes off in the hall as was the custorn;
and entered in our stocking feet. There they were, rny old friends
from Moscow. Nada, a beautiful Indian woman, rushed to
embrace me. There was Sakorov, my old roommate and close
friend, one of the founders of the Indian C.P. He told rne he was
now on the Central Committee and was Party representative to the
National lndian Congress for the Bombay District.
There was also Paiel, who had toured the United States before
510 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

the war as a representative of Indian students. His tour had been

sponsored by the American Y outh Congress. He was now
Communist Party district organizer for Bombay. There were also
several of the old Sikhs who grabbed me, "Harry! Harry!" My
friends sat us down and we all ate and swapped tales about old
times and about the political situation in our respective countries.
Nada was now president of the Bombay chapter of the Friends
of the Soviet Union. Befare, she had been a nationally known
communist youth leader. She invited us to come visit a group at the
University of Bombay. The next day we met with a bunch of
young students there and talked politics over cups of Indian tea.
Our troops disembarked at Bombay and after about six days we
pulled out of the harbor with a very light load; a handful of
passengers, a few military hospital patients and some diplomatic
types. We headed for Capetown, sailing down through the Indian
Ocean ever watchful for Japanese submarines which had been
reported off Madagascar. As we neared Capetown, a notice
appeared on the ship's bulletin board, something to the effect that
"the people of South Africa have certain customs and laws as to
race. While they are not ours, we should all respect them,
remember we are in their country .and don't start any trouble."
A bunch of us, about half Black and half white, got off the ship
together and went straight into a dockside bar. No sooner did we
get in than the bartender started yelling, "Now wait a minute,
fellows, the Blacks over here and the whites over there."
Some of our white shipmates started to protest, but we Blacks
said, "What the hell, we want a drink, man. We know this is South
Africa. Damn it, you know we can't fight this thing now-let's get
a drink." We settled for salutes across the bar.
I went up to the Sixth District, Capetown's Black ghetto, with
some of my Black shipmates. I was never so depressed in my life.
The oppression of the people was complete. I'd seen nothing like it,
even in "darkest Mississippi." There Blacks at least had some kind
of cultural institutions-churches, lodges and so forth. Here they
had nothing. They had been forced from the land and pushed into
oppressive native "reserves." These reserves in turn served as labor
reservoirs for the city, where blacks were crowded into ghettos and
 THE MERCHANT MARINES 511

their tribal structures and institutions completely destroyed. Their

culture had been stolen from them. Whites were warned not to go
into the area after dark, as a number of whites had been murdered
there. This seemed like a kind of spontaneous rebellion to me.
As I walked down the street, I heard two Blacks speaking in a
strange and beautiful language. I stopped and asked them what it
was. They answered in perfect English that it was Xhosa, their
tribal language. It sounded almost musical to me.
Back downtown, I went into a restaurant for natives, but the
white owner refused to serve me. " But I'm Black," I protested.
"Yeah, but you're not one of ours."
I made my way to the Communist Party headquarters and was
surprised to find that like in Bombay, it was located on a main
street downtown. There was a young white woman at the office to
whom I introduced myself. She seemed to recognize my name. She
was the wife of an Indian member of the Central Committee. She
said, "lt's so unfortunate that you came through at this particular
time. All the Central Committee people are in Jo'burg. There's a
big plenum going on this weekend. I'm sure my husband and
others would have liked to have met you."
I asked about some of the South Africans I had known in
Moscow. She said that Bunting had died and that Roux was no
longer in the Party, but still friendly.
"What's this I hear about the Party in America?'' she asked. I
said that I didn't know what she meant. "Well, it came over the
radio last night that your Party is dissolving itself!"
This all came as a great surprise and shock to me. It was hard to
believe. I knew there had been some backsliding and a general
move to the right. But dissolve the Party? I wondered if there could
have been some misunderstanding.
Before we boarded ship, we all met at the USO by the docks.
This was the first time since we had come ashore that Black and
white shipmates had been able to get together. We made the most
of it, drinking beer and swapping stories. Herb Jeffries, a very light­
skinned Black man with blondish hair and blue eyes, was a target
of a lot of kidding. Herb's brother, Howard, was a nationally­
known singer with the Duke Ellington band.
512 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

When we had split up on leaving the dockside bar, Herb had no

choice but to go with the whites. Now we had some fun at his
expense. "You goddamn white son-of-a-bitch, you ratted on us.
You left your own race."
"You ran out on us at the docks, man. I don't think we'll let you
back in the race," said H ursel.
Herb was embarrassed and kind of felt bad. "What was I gonna
do, manr' he asked. "They wouldn't serve me with you guys."
Hursel winked at me and we kept putting poor Herb on for some
some time. What he said was true, though. In South Africa, he
couldn't pass for Black.
The struggle against the racketeers had been going on since we
left San Pedro, and by the time we left Capetown we had them
pretty well isolated. We had the goods on them and they knew it.
We had built up a core of about twenty-five guys who played a
leading role in the fight for better conditions and against these
crooks.
Things were tense though. One evening I was on deck, leaning
on the rail, when Red came up from the engine room. "Harry," he
said, "be careful about getting too near that rail at night.. We're in
the middle of a hell of a fight and those bastards would love to
dump you over!"
The ship's committee met to draw up charges against the
racketeers. Two or three of them were direct accusations. Clearly,
we said, the racketeers were literally robbing the soldiers with their
fixed games. They were obstructing the fight for better conditions
on board by setting shipmates against each other. And finally, they
were besmirching the name of the union.
As we headed up the south Atlantic, we called a general meeting
to present the charges. A group of us got together beforehand to
talk over the issues. Red Herrick, the ship chairman, was there as
was Hursel Alexander. H ursel was short, not more than five feet
four inches, with broad shoulders and a big roaring voice. He'd
been one of the Party's finest orators. Red said, "After all these
points are made I want you to sum it up, Hursel. Really stir the
crew up. Then, when you're through, 1'11 call for a vote right away."
Red chaired the meeting and read the charges. Everybody had a
 THE MERCHANT MARINES 513

say and most everybody spoke against the racketeers. As I recall,

they weren't there, but their toadies did their red-baiting for them.
The discussion went on for a considerable time. Finally Red
recognized Hursel and that clinched it. The crew confirmed the
charges and referred the crooks to a shoreside committee of the
union for trial.
Crossing the Caribbean, we were anticipating the time when.
we'd return to San Pedro and get rid of these parasites. This would
be no problem since San Pedro was a small port and union
grievances could be processed quickly. We thought we had
everything sewn up. Then one night, while several of us were
standing on deck, one old seaman noticed, "We're not sailing
through any damn Panama Canal. We're too far north. Look at
those lights; there's St. Thomas and that's Puerto Rico. We're
going to New York, man!"
As the word spread, the crooks started getting cocky again.
They knew the ropes in New York and stood a better chance of
stalling things in such a large port. A few days later, the ship
docked at the military base on Staten Island. Normally, crews were
paid off at the end of a voyage with a union patrolman present who
was able to handle grievances. But the military authorities would
not allow our patrolman aboard ship. The crew was paid off
outside the base and everyone who had been active in our union
caucus was fired for "inefficiency." By the time we could get
through the red tape to raise the issues, the Uruguay was off shor�,
on its way to Oran, Algeria. The racketeers sailed with the ship
while we were left in New York.
We put up at the Broadway Central Hotel and stayed there a
couple of weeks. Nothing could be done about our grievances.
Most of the guys went back to San Pedro-the shipping adminis­
tration gave first class fare back to your home port. I decided to
stay in New York and take advantage of the union 's program for
members to upgrade their skills as cooks and bakers. I spent a
month at Manual Arts High School on Thirteenth Street near
Seventh Avenue, learning the rudiments of baking.
While I was in New York I went to see Bill Foster and check
on what I'd heard in South Africa, about the Party being
514 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

dissolved. I went up to the ninth floor of the Party headquarters on

East Thirteenth Street.
There was Foster, alone in his office, his feet on the desk, his hat
pulled down to his eyes. He appeared to be in deep thought.
"Hello, Harry, I hear you're a seaman now," he said.
I told him l'd just returned from an around the world voyage,
and we talked awhile about the sea. Foster had years before been a
sailor himself. Finally I told him what I heard in South Africa
about the Party being dissolved.
"Yes," he said, "that is what Browder has in mind." When I
asked what he planned to do about it, he said, "Let's take a walk,
the walls have ears..."
As we walked down University Place toward Washington
Square, Foster explained how he saw Browder's line. "!t's a
rightist line," I recall him saying. "One that just tails behind the
bourgeoisie. He thinks they will voluntarily stick to the Teheran
agreements. Browder is pushing the line that the American
capitalists-for their own hest interests-will continue the unity of
the big three [the U.S., USSR and Great Britain-ed.] after the
war is over. He wants us to continue the no-strike pledge, and is
saying that there won't be any more economic crises or wars or
class conflicts-only peace and prosperity."
Foster told me how Browder was then proposing to change the
Party into an "association," for this was in line with his view that
the two-party system is adequate. What it all came down to is that
he not only wanted to dissolve the Party-he wanted to liquidate
Marxism.
Again I asked Foster what he was planning to do. I remember
that his greatest concern was to avoid a split in the Party in the
middle of a war.
"But," I asked, "isn't Browder going to dissolve the Party in the
middle of the war? There certainly is an opposition, why not lead
it?"
He hedged, saying Browder was looking for the chance to expel
him. By this time, we had returned to the Party headquarters. We
agreed to keep in touch. What I did not know then was that Foster
had written a letter to the National Committee opposing Brow-
 THE MERCHANT MARINES 515

der's line. This letter was read at the Political Committee a few
days before our conversation on February 8, 1944, and was
opposed by every other committee member except Sam Darcy of
Pennsylvania. Further, it had been made clear at the time that
Foster would be expelled if he attempted to take the struggle
against Browder to the rank and file.
This was a difficult time for me. I knew from discussions with
others, especially seamen, that there was fairly widespread oppo­
sition to Browder's position. But no one was sure what to do. The
opposition existed, but it had no leadership. Browder was
systematically violating democratic centralism by stifling any
thorough discussion of his new policies. Thus the opposition in
various parts of the country remained isolated from each other. I
found myself feeling very much like many others. Browder's
business was really bad, but it was being steamrollered through. At
the time, it seemed the only thing that could be done was to bide
our time, waiting for events to expose Browder's opportunism.

LIFE ABOARD THE ERICSSON

Late in March 1944, I signed on as assistant baker on the John

Ericsson, for the first of four voyages on that ship.
This was the period of preparation for the long-awaited second
front in the European war. This had been deliberately delayed by
Britain and the U. S. since 1917. The dominant theme in the
relations between imperialist countries and the Soviet Union had
been the former's desire to crush the world's first socialist state.
The earliest manifestation of this had been their pouring over
900,000 troops into the Soviet Union in the early twenties to aid
the white armies in' the civil war. When the Red Army proved
indomitable, their policy took the form of economic embargos
and diplomatic boycotts. During the period of the Third Reich, the
British, French and American governments saw their chance to
move against the Soviets through a third party.
Thus, when Nazi Germany rose to become a major power, the
imperialist powers followed a policy of appeasement and financial
516 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

support, hoping to induce the Germans to turn eastward. The

U.S., Britain and France refused to take action against Germany's
illegal remilitarization, its reoccupation of the Rhineland, its
support of the fascist invasions of Ethiopia and China, and its
direct intervention in Spain.
The day after Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, this policy was
articulated by then Senator Harry Truman who said, "If we see
that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is
winning, we ought to help Germany." 7
Even when circumstances forced Britain, France and the United
States to ally themselves with the Soviet Union against the axis
powers, this policy continued. The most striking example of this
was their refusal to open up the second front in Europe until three
years after the Nazi invasion of Russia. The Soviets thus bore the
main brunt of the anti.,.fascist fight, and the number killed, perhaps
18,000,000, was twenty-seven times the total U.S. and English
deaths combined.
By the time the second front was finally opened, the
Red Army had already broken the back of Hitler's Wehrmacht
at Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad, and had crossed into
Poland on its way to Berlin. The decision to land troops
at Normandy was prompted as much by the British and American
imperialists' desire to prevent a Soviet sweep to the Atlantic
as by their desire to shorten the war. It is, in faet, estimated
that their delay in opening the second front prolonged the war by a
full year.
The Ericsson was formerly a Swedish luxury liner, now leased
to the U.S. as a troop ship. She usually carried about 5,000
troops on her trips from New York to Liverpool. We would
go in a big convoy with a number of other troop ships and a
number of escort vessels. The allies by that time were building up
for the opening of the second front and the invasion of N ormandy,
which was to take place in June of that year. It took us about a
month to make the round trip. We'd drop the troops in Liverpool
and then sail up to Scotland.
There were four or five bakers and assistants in the Ericsson's
baking department. The chief baker was a Swede named Vidal. He
 THE MERCHANT MARINES 517

had been chief baker on the Ericsson when it was a luxury liner. He
was a fine pastry chef and we baked bread for the whole ship,
pastry for the officers.
Vidal outdid himself, making chocolate eclairs, bismarcks and
Danish pastry. I loved the work and by the time I got offthat ship, I
could make all kinds of pastries. Vidal was a good teacher, but he
was a little sore that all the young guys were learning so fast. He
was from the old school and had been apprenticed to a baker at the
age of twelve.
He used to tel1 us how the chief baker would stride in with his
head up in the air and all the boys would greet him, "Good
morning, Herr Chief Baker."
"I had to wash pans for a year before they'd even let me toP,;h
the dough," he would tel1 us, "and now you guys come on here and
expect to be bakers in a few months."
I also met Jake "the bread baker" Rabinowitz on the Ericsson.
He was a specialist in sour dough bread. He'd come up the
gangplank with a little satchel and all the old bakers would say,
"Here comes Jake with that same old mother dough he's had for
twenty-five years."
After we dropped the troops off we had a chance to see
Liverpool. It was an old port city which had suffered heavily from
Hitler's blitz and large sections of the city lay in ruins. The pubs
were fascinating places. They were real social centers where people
spent the evening drinking beer and playing darts. The British were
polite and someone would always come up to my table and strike
up a conversation. Perhaps because I was Black, they would often
raise criticisms of Americans which they didn't mention to my
white shipmates. They couldn't stand the way some Americans
were always boasting and carrying on about American superiority.
The British were proud too, but in a quiet way.
"What's wrong with the Yanks?" I'd ask when the subject came
up.
"They're over paid, over sexed and over here," came the reply.
The German counter-offensive at the Battle of the Bulge was
going on and the British followed it carefully. "The Yanks are
getting it now," they'd say. "Americans were so critical of our
518 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

fighting, but they're finding out it's no easy road."

When we'd leave Liverpool, we'd go up to Glasgow, Scotland,
and pick up German prisoners and wounded. It was easier to take
them back to the U. S. than to ship food over for them. As our ship
pulled out of Gourock, Glasgow's port, the German prisoners
would be assembled on the deck.
We'd ask, "Are there any bakers here?" Inevitably some woutd·
step forward because they knew they'd get better food if they
worked in the kitchen. So on the return voyages we ship's bakers
could take it easy.
There were a lot of good fellows in our crew, but we were slow
getting the ship organized. After my first voyage I got in touch with
Al Lannon, the Party's waterfront organizer and member of the
Central Committee. I asked about the possibility of getting one or
two good Party men aboard to help us make the Ericsson a model
union ship.
"Who's in port here?" I asked Al.
"1'11 tel1 you just the guy you need. lt's Harry Rubin."
"l'm not sure I know him."
"He's a man with tremendous drive and a hell of a dynamic
organizer," Al said. "You put him on that ship and he'll be a real
help. But I should warn you, he has a kind of puritanical streak.
After a while he may do something or other and get himself
isolated from the rest of the crew. Y ou can use him for a couple of
voyages, though."
Rubin was a little fellow who walked with a limp as a result of
being wounded in Spain. He signed on as wiper in the engine room,
the lowestjob there. Sure enough, he helped whip the whole thing
together in short order. In no time at all we had the whole ship
tightly organized. The committees and delegates in all the
departments were functioning well. The crew was up to standard.
We presented and won many grievances and improved the food
and living conditions. There were classes for the crew on union
history and improving technical skills. As educational director, I
taught a course on the nature of fascism.
A couple of voyages later, there was an incident which proved
Lannon's cautions about Rubin to be correct. Rubin charged two
 THE MERCHANT MARINES 519

Puerto Rican crew members with selling a couple pints of liquor to

two of the soldiers on board. The union had a strict policy on this
sort of racketeering, but the attitude of most of the crew was, "We
don't want to press this too hard. lt's just a small case. Just tel1
them they can't do it anymore." There were no big racketeers
aboard.
But Rubin took a hard line. He insisted that charges be brought
against them and that they stand trial before the union port
committee in New York. There was a division on the ship's
committee and many of us thought we should be a little flexible in
this situation, but in the end we followed Rubin's lead.
The incident made for hard feeling among the crew and divided
the ship which we had worked so hard to organize. The union
meeting on board which we called to discuss the charges was very
heated. The defendants claimed the charges were an example of
discrimination against Puerto Ricans. There were about fifty
Puerto Ricans in the crew and about the same number of Blacks.
The defendants were able to line most of them up on their side.
In truth, Puerto Ricans and Blacks had some real grievances. They
were mostly in the steward's department and many lived way down
in the glory hole, the worst section of the ship. Also, the
"evidence" against the defendants was flimsy and consisted of two
affidavits signed by two soldiers long gone from the ship. The crew
was split down the middle, and when the vote was·called as to
whether the defendants should be charged and stand trial in New
York, about sixty percent voted no.
In later voyages, we were able to unite the crew under our
leadership again. Rubin, however, didn't sign on again because he,
· more than any of us, had isolated himself from the rest of the crew.
I quit the Ericsson in early September, 1944. I planned to return
to Los Angeles, but I had followed the Soviet counter-offensive
with intense interest. The victories at Stalingrad and Leningrad
and in the Crimea had pushed the Germans back beyond the
border. Thus, I was determined to make the Murmansk run before
I returned to the west coast.
I went down to the union hall on West Seventeenth Street. No
one told where a ship was bound during the war, but when the
520 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

dispatcher called out, "Here's that cold run. Get your heavy
underwear on," everyone knew what he meant.
I wanted to sign on as second cook and baker, but that job was
already taken. The only rating I could take was crew messman, so I
threw in my card. The ship was the Winfred L. Smith, docked in
Jersey. I packed my bag, being sure to include my Russian
grammar book and dictionary, and a Russian edition ofTolstoy's
War and Peace so that I could bone up on my once fluent
knowledge of Russian. I then hurried to New Jersey and signed on.
We sailed on September 26, 1944, for Halifax, Nova Scotia,
where the convoy assembled. We had a heavy escort of destroyers,
cruisers, and corvettes as we headed for Glasgow, Scotland. After
docking at Gourock on the Clyde, we headed north �long the
Scottish coast to Lock Ewe, where we reassembled for the last leg
of the Murmansk run. A British commodore took over command
of the convoy, calling a conference of captains to explain the
procedures and route for making the dangerous run through the
Norwegian Sea, around the North Cape to the Kola Inlet and
Murmansk.
Leaving Lock Ewe, we were a formidable convoy of about thirty
ships in all. Our escort vessels included, frigates, destroyers,
corvettes and "baby" air craft carriers (escort carriers). The cargo
ships were also armed. Our liberty ship had, in addition to the
normal crew of forty-four men, a navy gun crew of eighteen which
manned the two three-inch fifty caliber-type cannons, several
twenty-millimeter Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns and lighter caliber
machine guns.
The convoy, we understood, was also given distant cover by a
British battleship and cruiser of the home fleet, which lay just out
of sight. Further protection was afforded by the winter solstice
which provided virtually twenty-four hours of darkness.
The crew's quarters were midship, the portholes looking out on
the aft deck cargo. There were several narrow gauge train engines
lashed to the deck. Heading northeast, we entered the N orwegian
Sea, one of the world's stormiest seas. It didn't take much
imagination to visualize the engines breaking loose and crashing
through our bunks. It certainly didn't make for a relaxed voyage,
 THE MERCHANT MARINES 521

but then neither did the Germans.

German sub packs hounded us throughout the voyage. Our
reminder of their presence was the constant dropping of depth
charges which shook everything and everyone on ship as the
bulkheads quivered and the deck plates rattled. But we were lucky.
It was later revealed that no Jess than eighteen U-boats were lying
in ambush for our convoy. When we arrived in Murmansk, we
learned that only one escort frigate had been damaged by a
torpedo.
Our convoy was routed unusually close to the N orwegian coast,
grobably not more than seventy-five miles offshore. The normal
route took convoys far from German occupied Norway. It was
understood that we were attempting to lure the battleship Von
Tirpitz out of the fjords. A year before, her sister ship, the
Scharnhorst had slipped out to attack a similar convoy and, after
a long chase, was sunk by the British Navy. But this time the Von
Tirpitz did not accept the challenge and remained in the fjord.
Off North Cape we were attacked by a formation of sixteen
German torpedo bombers. General alarm was sounded. I rushed to
my position as assistant loader on the Oerlikon gun, life jacket
slung around my neck and rubber suit under my arm. The
engagement lasted only a few minutes. Heavy fire from our entire
convoy quickly brought down three planes and drove the others
off. They did manage to drop a few torpedoes, but they went
astray, doing no damage.
We finally dropped anchor in the Kola Inlet in early November.
Half our convoy, including our ship, unloaded our cargo in
Murmansk. The remaining ships sailed across the White Sea and
on to Archangel. Our first sight of M urmansk was the badly
battered dock and railroad spurs. It was a prime target for the
Luftwaffe, which had a base in Petsamo, Finland, barely sixty
miles from Murmansk. By the time I got there, the Soviets had
installed so many heavy anti-aircraft guns and had brought down
so many planes that the bombing was greatly reduced.
At last we were ashore in Murmansk. Formerly the Russians
had given a $125 bonus to each seaman for making the run. This
was a gesture of appreciation and provided money to spend in
522 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

port. But at the behest of the U.S. government, they had stopped
this practice. We drew money from the captain to spend ashore.
At last ashore, the Russian language sounded beautiful to me.
On the voyage over I had spent several hours a day boning up on
my Russian. Once ashore, I became fluent again and found myself
translating for my shipmates.
There was no doubt Murmansk was a front line town. There
were only two places to go for relaxation and diversion. There was
the International Seamen's Club and the International Hotel. At
the club there were often American movies and dances on a
Saturday night.
The crews from the convoy crowded into the Seamen's Club and
were soon drinking the good old Russian vodka. But we soon
discovered that vodka, unlike whisky, was not a liquor to be drunk
neat as was the American custom. Under the influence of the
vodka the meekest fellows soon became roaring lions. Several
fights broke out. The Russians looked on with amazement at this.
"What's the matter with you Americans? " they asked after
finding that I could speak Russian. "Can't you take your liquor?"
�• Ah well, they're just blowing off steam after the terrible tension
of the voyage," I answered.
Thereafter, the Russians restricted the Americans to one drink
of vodka in the club, which was equivalent to a double in our
measure. On our part, a few of us union guys got together and
constituted ourselves as an ad hoc committee to maintain order
ashore. We served notice that henceforth any seaman who caused
trouble and was giving the crew a bad name would have his shore
leave taken away for the duration of our stay in port. We posted
notices to that effect on the bulletin board of the club. The
Russians were very pleased with our self-disciplinary action.
My Russian came right back and I spent a lot of time in the clubs
and met a whole number of Russians. They took me around to the
factories and Russian clubs. Among my friends was the ship
chandler who took me out to his home and introduced me to his
family. I was sitting in his office one day when two white American
seamen came in. They asked the chandler if he could. sell them
some vodka. He told them that he wasn't permitted to sell to
 THE MERCHANT MARINES 523

individuals, that they would have to get a permit from the captain
of the ship. The chandler could understand a lot of English but he
couldn't speak the language, so I volunteered to translate. My
proffered help was met by a hostile stare by these two drunks. I
heard their drawl and knew where they were from. One, the most
belligerent, glared at me.
"Who's talkin' to you? Keep out of this," he growled.
"Well, I know Russian and thought I could help you."
"We don't need your help. We're from Texas."
"Well, good," I rejoined, "some of my best friends are from
Texas."
I stood up and put my hand on the water bottle on the chandler's
desk. They turned and walked out of the. place.
The chandler was taking it all in, apprehensive that something
was going to happen. "Comrade," he said, "I'm so glad you didn't
allow yourself to be provoked."
He told me that a year ago, a Black seaman had been killed right
there in Murmansk by white seamen. "Do Black people always
have to fear for their lives in the United States?" he as ked, puzzled.
"Well, one can expect attack at anytime, but not all whites are
hostile. And Blacks have their own communities."
He seemed puzzled by the whole thing. "I guess it's like theJews
under the old regime," he said.
"Precisely," I agreed.
I went over to the International Hotel and joined some
of my white shipmates sitting around a table. I told them about
what had happened at the chandler's. Just then the two fellows
came in and sat down at the next table. One of my mates, a
reconstructed Southerner-Texas Red we called him-got up and
started talking loudly about "god damn rednecks." The two slunk
out of the bar and that was the end of it. We figured they were
members of the SIU, a Jim Crow seamen's union.
Another night I came into the International Hotel and after
checking my boots and coat, I saw a group of young Russians, men
and women, standing in the lobby. It was on the eve of-the
anniversary of the Russian Revolution. They saw me speaking
Russian to the attendant, so one young Russian approached me.
524 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

He was a small fellow, dressed in the Georgian manner with long

coat, hat and soft Caucasian boots.
"I think I know you," he said. "Weren't you in Moscow some
years back?"
"Yes, I was," I answered, surprised.
"Don't you remember my sisters Vera and Era?" Vera and Era
were two young women in our circle.
"Oh yes," I said, "how are they?"
"I was just a small boy wheri you would come around. Vera
married Patterson, the American Black man who came over with
the film troupe. He died in the evacuation from Moscow."
"Oh, I'm sorry," I said. "How is she doing now?"
"Fine," he said. "She has a nice apartment and her two sons are
coming along well."
I was just about to ask about Ina, who had also been a part of
that same circle, when he broke off, explaining that he had to go to
a performance as he was a member of a dance troupe.
"Meet me back here tomorrow night," he said.
I came back to the hotel the next night, but he wasn't there. He
probably had another performance. I didn't know his name or how
to ask for him. Sadly, I never saw him again.
Not tao lang after we arrived in M urmansk, we received word
that the Von Tirpitz had been sunk (November 12, 1944) in a
successful attack by twenty-eight Lancaster bombers of the Royal
Air Force. This was certainly welcome news for it meant the end of
the major German naval threat to convoys on the M urmansk run.
We were relieved to know our return trip would not be threatened.
The human enemy was more or less taken care of, but the old
enemy, the sea itself, was there to be reckoned with. The
N orwegian Sea was a brutal sea, particularly rough at that time of
year. Terrible gales buffeted the convoy and dispersed it over the
whole area. Separated from the rest of the ships, we were forced to
run alone. The decks, fore and aft, were awash continuously. We
struggled into Loch Ewe ane by one.
The return voyage was fairly uneventful. But even that late in
the war, German submarines were still a very real threat. I
remember we were almost home, just off Buzzards Bay in
 THE MERCHANT MARINES 525

Massachusetts. There was a submarine scare, and depth charges

shook the whole ship violently. One of our mates, a fireman, was
down in his quarters counting up his hours. He came up frustrated
as heil, "Everytime I started counting, a depth charge would go off
und l'd have to start all over."
It was seventeen below when we docked in Portland, Maine, on
.January 11, 1945. That night we took the train to New York City.
The Russians had given every seaman at Murmansk a gallon of
good vodka. On the way down to New York we broke them open
und shared them with the passengers. The first thing we did when
we got off the train was go to the Cafe Society downtown and see
Billie Holiday, the Black singer.
After a week or ten days in New York, I took the train home to
I ,os Angeles. I was happy to return to Belle and we had a warm
rcunion, exchanging stories, discussing the war and the political
dcvelopments.
It wasn't long before I became anxious to get back to sea. In
March I signed on a motorship we called the Turk's Knot. It was
s maller than the liberty ship, but brand new, just out of the yards.
It carried the most modem equipment, along with a crew of
thi��een plus the naval gun crew.
I We sailed in early March for the Pacific war zone. It was
understood that our destination would be the Philippines, with
stops in Honolulu, Wake, the Truk Islands and Guam. Our ship
would then shuttle between New Guinea and Manila carrying
installations and other war materiel the Americans had been
forced to leave behind as they moved northward island by island.
Our first stop in the Philippines was the port city of Cebu,
located on an island of the same name, right in the center of the
Philippine Archipelago. Cebu was next to the island of Mactun.
There in 1521, Magellan was killed while circumnavigating the
carth for the first time.
Cebu, surrounded by lush tropics, was a beautiful town as were
its people. Paul, our Filipino chief cook, took me on the rounds of
thc town, introducing me to many friendly and hospitable people.
We left Cebu for Manila, the capital city on the hig island of
Luzon. The Bay of Manila was clogged with sunken vessels, a
526 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

virtual graveyard of ships. They were undoubtedly an overspill

from the crucial battle for the Gulf of Leyte, which took place on
the eastern side of the islands in October 1944. It was here that
Admiral Nimitz's fleet had put the finish on the J apanese Navy and
MacArthur's troops returned as he had vowed.
The wreckage was so great we had to anchor a mile or two out in
the harbor and go into town on water taxis.
In Manila, a friend and I ran into a group of revolutionary
students and intellectuals who had ties with the Hukbalahap
guerillas, or "Huks." They had been active in the anti-Japanese
resistance movement and bitter struggles against the traitorous
compradors and landlords who had aided them. They told us how,
after the Huks and the underground had helped to recapture
Manila, they had been disarmed by American troops. They were
bitter and sharply critical of MacArthur's hostility toward the
popular democratic movement. His clear intention was to return
to the status quo of colonialism. They gave us lots of their
literature and during the following months of our shuttle we saw
them whenever we were in Manila.
From Manila we would sail southward to New Guinea.
Stopping at the small port towns of Hollandia, Wewak and
Oro Bay, all on the north coast of New Guinea, we would gather
our cargo of war materiel and return to Manila. The round
trip of some thirty-six hundred miles would take about fourteen to
twenty days.

HOMECOMING AT WAR'S END

In April we received news that Roosevelt had died. The news

saddened the crew, everyone seemed to realize that Roosevelt's
death marked the end of an era.
Early in the summer a letter from Belle reached me in Holland.
My fears were realized-the Communist Party had been
dissolved and the Communist Political Association (CPA) had
been founded in April 1944. Belle informed me of the recently
published Duclos letter and the removal of Earl Browder from
 THE MERCHANT MARINES 527

leadership. Duclos, then secretary- of the French Communist

Party, sent a letter to the National Board of the CP A which was
received on May 20. In this letter he characterized Browder's
Teheran thesis and the subsequent dissolution of the Party
as a "notorious revision of Marxism." 8 The publication of
the letter opened a floodgate of criticism with regards to Browder's
position. It came at a time when events were rapidly proving that
his theories of "class peace" and national unity under the
leadership of the monopolists were grossly incorrect and did not in
any way correspond to reality.
The Duclos letter opened the way for struggle in opposition to
Browder. The groundswell of opposition reached the national
leadership and led to the Emergency Convention of July 26-28,
1945, where the errors of the past were exposed and the Party was
reconstituted.
I was very excited by this letter and anxious to return to the
States. I was not disappointed, therefore, when we learned that our
ship had developed engine trouble and our scheduled twelve to
cighteen month voyage would be cut short.
We had scarcely left New Guinea on the trip home when news
came over the ship's radio that an atom bomb had been dropped
on Hiroshima. It was August 6, 1945. Three days later we learned
that a second and more powerful bomb had been dropped at
N agasaki. We knew then that it would not be long before the
.Japanese surrendered.
What we didn't know and what has generally been overlooked is
that the day after Hiroshima the Russians invaded Manchuria in a
powerful two-pronged offensive. The devastation wreaked by
the atom bombs was indescribable, but its details were not fully
known, either in Japan or the United States, until months
afterward. But everyone in Japan was aware of the Russian
invasion and it was probably this threat of war on two fronts which
was a considerable factor in forcing Japan to accept the reality of
its defeat. 9
I landed in San Francisco on August 24, 1945, ten days after VJ
day. I immediately called Belle and she came up to meet me. The
cmergency convention to reconstitut€? the Party had taken place the
528 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

month before. For the first time I was able to study the Duclos
letter, as well as the documents from the convention. Included in
these was the letter written by Foster, opposing Browder's Teheran
thesis. Foster had subrnitted the letter on Jan. 20, 1944, to the
National Committee where it was rejected overwhelmingly. It was
not until the ernergency convention that this letter was made
public and anyone outside of the National Committee knew of
Foster's opposition to Browder.1°
We spent a week or so relaxing and discussing what we should
be doing now. We decided to go back to New York. I went first to
find an apartment. Belle packed up our belongings in Los Angeles
and closed the apartment.
 Chapter 20

Browder's Treachery

When I arrived in New York in early September 1945, I went

directly to Party headquarters on East Thirteenth Street. The
receptionist informed me that Foster was expected at any moment
and told me to have a seat. A few minutes later Foster appeared,
looking haggard and tired.
I rushed to greet him with a warm, "Hello, Bill!"
He looked up, a frown crossing his face as he extended a cold,
limp band. "Hello, Harry, what are you doing here? I thought you
were out on the coast."
"I just got in from six m�nths in the Pacific," I explained. "I
came east to see what the Party wants me to do in this fight against
Browderism, what my assignment should be."
His frown deepened. "You had trouble in New York. You had
trouble in Baltimore. You had trouble in California. Now I
suppose you've come here to make some more trouble," he said
accusingly.
I was taken aback, flabbergasted, but before I could protest he
snapped, "I don't have time to talk now, l've got a meeting. You'll
have to come back later." He turned and strode away.
Stunned by the brush-off, I left the office. I didn't know what to
make of it. Foster had never been a warm person, but he had
always been friendly to me before. I guessed that his cold reception
reflected a change in the internat Party situation. The Emergency
Convention to reconstitute the Party had taken place a little over a
530 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

month before and undoubtedly the new National Board had

discussed the Party cadre. I suspected Foster's remarks reflected a
hostile attitude on the part of the new leadership toward me.
I decided to find out what was going on. Throughout the war, I
had been pretty much out of touch with the developments in the
Party and felt strongly it was time to get back into things. When I
discussed the Party situation with friends, I found most were
dissatisfied with the manner in which the struggle against Brow­
derism was being conducted. But it was not until a decade later
that I and other comrades were able to fully understand the effect
of Browderism on the Party.
Much of the history of the struggle against Browder's revisionist
line has been obscured by distorted and self-serving interpre­
tations written by right opportunists and professional anti­
communists. I want to trace this history as I now see it-from the
point of view of the left, that is, the tendency which fought for a
Marxist-Leninist line against the revisionism of the time. Muchof
the analysis of the inner-Party struggles of those fateful war and
immediate post-war years, of course, benefits from hindsight.
Browder's revisionism first appeared as a rounded-out theory in a
speech he delivered in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on December 12,
1943. 1 Its fullest ideological expression was in his hook, Teheran,
Our Path to War and Peace, published just a few months later. 2
Browder's theories were a systematic set of revisionist concepts
which promoted collaboration with and accommodation to, the
imperialist ruling class. It led to a series of right opportunist
policies which culminated in the liquidation of the Communist
Party. Browder's theory departed from the time-tested principles
of revolutionary class struggle basic to Marxism-Leninism. His
views emphasized liberal, reformist forms of struggle and left the
Party tailing after the bourgeoisie, eventually abandoning entirely
the road to revolution.
Browder drew upon the Teheran agreement, a pact hammered
out between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin in December 1943,
establishing unity among the allied powers in World War II and
opening the second front. He transformed concepts of an inter­
national and diplomatic character, important in the war against
 BROWDER'S TREACHERY 531

fascist Germany, into a full-fledged domestic program.

Browder declared that a harmony of interests had been
established between labor and capital. He called for a new
"national unity" to bring full employment, peace and an end to
periodic economic crises. He boasted that he was even willing to
welcome J.P. Morgan into this grand coalition and"clasp his hand
on that and join with him to realize it." 3 He promised that the
communists "will not raise the issue of socialism in such a form
and manner as to endanger or weaken that national unity," and
assured the ruling class that his program was consistent with the
fullest possible expansion of consumption by the wealthy and the
accumulation of their private incomes. 4
The starting point of his new "national unity" was to continue
operating the American economy at full capacity-as during the
war-by seeking foreign markets equal to the war market. He
proposed giant industrial development corporations of govern­
ment and business which would extend credit to and invest in "the
devastated and underdeveloped areas of the world," thus creating
"generations of peace and well-being in the world." 5
Essential to Browder's line were the same elements that
historically had lent themselves to right opportunism in America.
These included: A) American exceptionalism, which saw capital­
ism in the United States as exempt from the Marxist laws of
growth and decay which govern the capitalist world. Abandoning
all class analysis of bourgeois democracy, Browder put forward
the view that "Communism is twentieth century Americanism." B)
Fundamental overestimation of the power and stability of Ameri­
can imperialism, which led to the conclusion that revolutionary
struggle for socialism was impossible. C) Basic great nation
chauvinism which opposed the oppressed and colonized peoples'
struggles for liberation from the yoke of imperialism and instead
portrayed the imperialist ruling class as the bearers of prosperity
and democracy. D) The view that the United States would enter a
period of class harmony-a long post war period of class
peace during which time progress and prosperity could be
achieved within the framework of the "free enterprise" system.
E) Browder's belief that Blacks had achieved f�ll equality
532 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

through "peaceful" development of capitalism and abandonment

of the right of self-determination. Browder believed that Black
people had already exercised the historie right of self-deter­
mination and opted for integration into the country as a
whole. 6
The logical conclusion of Browder's principles was his con­
tention that the Communist Party-a revolutionary vanguard
party based on Marxist-Leninist principles-was no longer
appropriate for American conditions. It should be replaced by a
political association which worked for reforms within the pre­
vailing two-party system of the United States. This is precisely
what was done in May 1944, when the Party was dissolved and the
Communist Political Association created in its place.
Browder's revisionist line had not developed overnight. His
Teheran thesis was only the latest expression of a rightist trend
that had been developing within the Party for several years. The
origins of Browderism can be traced to his distortion of the united
front policy of the Seventh Congress (1935) of the Communist
International. This congress had called on communists to build
broad united front movements of peoples, governments and parties
to defeat fascism where it had come to power and to prevent its
spread to other countries. But the congress had also explicitly
warned against the danger of reducing the independent and
revolutionary role of the communist parties within such fronts.
Despite these warnings from the Communist International, the
CPUSA slipped into serious right reformist distortions of the
united front policy under Browder's leadership. Browder led the
retreat from the principles of class struggle which affected all areas
of the Party's mass work.
The Party's work in the Black liberation movement felt the first
effects of this retreat. Scarcely a year after the Seventh Congress
called on communists to strengthen their own ranks and maintain
the initiative within the united front, the U.S. Party moved to
liquidate a main revolutionary strongpoint of its work in the
South, the militant and communist-led Sharecroppers Union.
In the years that had followed my visit to Alabama, the
Sharecroppers Union had continued to grow. In 1936, it had a
 BROWDER'S TREACHER Y 533

membership of roughly 10,000, spread over five counties in the

Alabama Black Belt. It was growing throughout the lower South
with 2,500 members in Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana and North
Carolina. 7 But in October 1936, the SCU was dissolved and its
membership merged into the Agricultural Workers Union and the
Farmers Union of Alabama. 8 This latter was an organization of
predominantly white small farm owners and tenants based in the
northern part of the state, outside the plantation area. This union
was strongly influenced by the racist and right-wing Coughlinite
forces. 9
In retrospect, I believe that those responsible for liquidating the
Sharecroppers Union were motivated by a sort of crude trade
union economism, a desire to restrict the struggle of Black soil
tillers to economic issues (as if this were possible) and a feeling that
the existence of an independent and mainly Black union with the
explosive potential of the Sharecroppers Union would frighten off
our new democratic front allies: the Roosevelt New Dealers, the
Southern moderates and the CIO leadership. As Camp Hill,
Reeltown, and Dade:ville amply demonstrated, even the smallest
move to change the status quo could lead to armed conflict. In faet,
any demand to give Blacks a voice in determining sharecropping
conditions or wages was essentially revolutionary as it threatened
the existiilg set-up. Orte could almost hear the opportunists sighing
with relief upon the union's dissolution.
I recall in the late thirties listening to a garbled report
by one of our agrarian specialists in which he trie.d to explain the
reason for the move. The problem of Black soil tillers in the deep
South was just a part of the general agricultural problem, a matter
of getting Blacks and whites together against the common enemy.
The Sharecroppers Union with its militant program mainly
emphasizing Black grievances had become an obstacle to the unity
of Black and white Southern farmers.
I took issue with this chauvinist position, pointing out that it
contained a crass underestimation of the national character of the
struggle of the Black peasantry in the South. I expressed surprise
to hear, ten years after the adoption of our revolutionary line on
the Afro-American question, what amounted to a reiteration of the
534 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

old social democratic position which ignored the special position

of Blacks in the name of unity. The problem of theBlack peasantry
in the South was not exactly the same as that of the poor white
farmers in the South or in the rest of the country. It was a struggle
against semi-slave conditions reinforced by racist barbarism, and
in the long run, for the completion of the land revolution left in
default by the betrayal of Reconstruction.
The Sharecroppers Union had represented a renewal of that
struggle, a struggle that required special forms and methods of
oi"ganization, and its own leadership. But by 1936, the union was
dead and a grievous blow had been struck against the movement in
the South. In the face of the fiercest repression, a sizable Party
organization with an active YCL, ILD and remarkably high
political development had been built in the Black Belt. When the
Party backed down from the SCU, the whole Party structure
began to atrophy. By the end of 1943, all the major Party
concentrations in the South were formally dissolved and replaced
by non-communist education and press associations.
Despite such backsliding, the Party entered the war period with
a reputation as the leading fighter for equality and Black
liberation. Yet as Browder's line developed, it continually pushed
us into a position of tailing after Black reformist leadership. In the
thirties, the Communist Party had often been looked upon as "the
Party of the Negro people"; in the forties however, our line led to
repeated betrayals of the struggle. For a broad assortment ofBlack
reformists, it was just the opportunity they had been waiting for.
Still smarting from defeat in the Scottsboro campaign, they
jumped in to fill the tremendous void left by our retreat.
When A. Philip Randolph called for a dramatic march on
Washington to protest discrimination, the Party leadership
backed away from the issue and urged "unity" in the face of the
fascist enemy. The Party declared that the march would create
"confusion and dangerous moods in the ranks of the Negro
people." 10 B�ack newspapers and the NAACP popularized a mass
slogan of the "Double V" (Victory over Hitler abroad and
Victory over Jim Crow at home), but the Party leadership
rejected the slogan on the grounds that it detracted from the war
 BROWDER'S TREACHER Y 535

cffort!
Occasionally the Browder revisionists would give lip service
opposition to discrimination and segregation in the armed forces.
When it came down to a concrete situation, however, their support
was considerably less vigorous. For example, four Black W ACs at
Fort Devens, Massachusetts, were court-martialed for protesting
their commanding officer's demand that they should "do all the
dirty work." Outraged churches, unions, newspapers and civil
rights organizations quickly organized and forced the Army to
reverse itself.
The Party leadership, however, reprimanded the WACs. Ben
Davis stated, "The U.S. general staff has on many occasions...
proved that they deserve the full confidence of the Negro
people... we cannot temporarily stop the war until all questions of
discrimination are ironed out." 11
The slogan of the right of self-determination was officially
dropped in 1944. But i� was clear that the revolutionary line it
symbolized had been suppressed for some years. James Ford
explained the new perspectives for Black equality to the Party. He
st�ted that the economic expansion which Teheran promised
would "open up the South for unprecedented development that
will raise the standard of living from the degradation and poverty
which have held back the entire Southern people."
According to Ford, not only would reactionary Southern
Congressmen be driven from office under such conditions, but
"American democracy as a whole will be strengthened and the
Negro people will be fully integrated into our American society.
These advances will be irrevocably secured, providing the demo­
cratic, win-the-war forces, including the Negro people, stand
solidly behind our Commander-in-Chief." 12
The Party's work in the trade union movement also suffered
from Browder's opportunist distortions of the united front. 13 In
19,.39, the Party dissolved its system of trade union fractions,
factory nuclei and shop papers as a concession to the CIO's
leadership, a move which.seriously weakened the Party's strength
in basic industry. This move also accentuated the tendency to bide
the Party's face. In the U AW and TWUA (Textile Workers' Union
536 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

of America), the Party retreated from situations where it had the

support to elect one or more of its members to leadership and
supported other candidates.
During World War II, the Party supported the no-strike pledge.
While it was a generally correct policy for the situation, the Party
refused to fight for reciprocal pledges from business to curb war­
profiteering and ensure the workers' standard of living. Browder
opposed any struggle to extract such agreements from business,
viewing them as a disruption to war production. He attacked
slogans like "equality of sacrifice" -which was being raised by
some Pijrty trade unionists-as stemming from narrow factional
considerations. Thus, the Party found itself tailing behind the
labor bureaucrats on the day-to-day issues of safety, speed-up and
overtime pay for overtime work.
Browder's revisionist theories extended into the field of foreign
policy, resulting in nothing Jess than his approval of American
imperialism. 14 He argued that the peoples of Latin America should
place their trust in the Roosevelt administration and the con­
tinuance of the "good neighbor policy." He urged the Chinese
communists to "trust America" and in 1945 openly endorsed U.S.
foreign policy as "pressing toward the unity and democratization
of China." 15 Browder abandoned support for the struggles of the
oppressed and colonized peoples, arguing that they should rely on
the good intentions of the great nations to gain their liberation.
The ascendency of Browder's revisionism was based upon both
objective and subjective factors within the Party. Objectively,
bourgeois ideology had long penetrated the working class mave­
ment in the United States, had been nurtured during the reformist
years of the Roosevelt era and had thrived in an atmosphere of
inadequate Marxist-Leninist training of Party members and
leaders.
The liquidation of shop units and trade union fractions greatly
weakened the Party's base among the industrial workers,. and
weakened the leading role of the proletariat within the Communist
Party. Combined with a large influx of professionals and white
collar workers, this greatly broadened the social base for re­
visionism in the Party. The situation was further aggravated by the
 BROWDER'S TREACHERY 537

leadership's ousting of some 4,000 Party members who were

foreign bom because of a desire to "Americanize" the Party. This
chauvinist move turned away many of the most experienced and
ideologically steeled U .S. communists from Party activities.
Finally, a distortion of democratic centralism developed inside
the Party under Browder's leadership. Democratic discussion,
collective leadership, criticism and self-criticism, and ideological
struggle were abandoned. Browder consolidated an encrusted and
entrenched bureaucratic machine under the direction of his chief
lieutenant, Eugene Dennis. Democratic centralism gave way to, as
V.J. Jerome later put it, "dictatorial centralism." Browder himself
was glorified as the "greatest living American" and became
increasingly_infatuated with "contacting influential persons" while
actually isolating himself from the working class.
By May of 1945, however, Browder's visions of an all-class post­
war alliance were already beginning to clash with the harsh
realities of everyday life. Even before the war ended, layoffs and
strikes had occurred in a number of areas. Led by the U .S., the
western allies made no secret of the faet that their main target in
the post-war period would be the Soviet Union and the so-called
"communist menace" it represented. Under such conditions,
Duclos's letter had a sensational effect on the membership of the
CPUSA.
Upon its publication in May of 1945, the rank and file were
plunged into a series of discussions and debates. Discussion
bulletins were written and distributed internally; clubs and whole
sections engaged in heated struggle. It was an honest attack on
bureaucracy and for many this was the first time they had
cxperienced such open political struggle inside the Party. 16
Opposition to Browder gained rapid support and soon resulted
in the Emergency Reconstitution Convention which was held in
.July of 1945. At this convention, the Party was reformed and
Browder's opportunism exposed. 17 Threatened by the growing
rank and file revolt, the Party-and especially the leadership­
were forced to make self-criticisms.
The convention was significant in that it reflected the two trends
which were to mark the future history of the Party struggles
538 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

against revisionism. On the one hand there was the rank and file­
spurred to action by the Duclos letter and with at least a partial
understanding of the seriousness of the Part y's rightist errors-but
as yet without any clearly defined leadership. On the other hand,
there was the firmly entrenched Browderite leadership who saw
their main task as the squashing of the rank-and-file upsurge and
holding on to their positions at any cost. One day they spouted
Browderism, the next day they were repudiating his line-with
little genuine self-criticism in between. To me and many of my
friends, such self-criticism seemed to be mere breast beating and
verbal recantation.
It is no wonder, therefore, that there was much skepticism in the
ranks as to the ability of the old leadership, particularly of
Browder's ex-lieutenants like Eugene Dennis and John William­
son, to successfully wage a struggle against revisionism. The old
leadership was carried over almost intact into the newly re­
constituted Party. 18 But it was precisely these people who con­
trolled the Party apparatus.
Their main preoccupation at this time was to short circuit the
upsurge of the rank and file; to abort what was most needed at
that time-a thorough, open ideological struggle, and a period of
criticism and self-criticism which would be mainly directed against
the right. Almost immediately after the convention, however, the
new leadership began to shift the focus of the struggle away from
right opportunism to the so-called left sectarian danger. Thus
Browderism was exposed pragmatically (in specific manifestations
like Teheran), but the revisionist line it represented was never
repudiated in a fundamental way.
Along with this came a wholesale attack on the left which is best
described by Harrison George, a former editor of the Daily Worker
and People's World (the Party's west coast newspaper), in a
document titled The Crisis in the CPUSA. Here George related the
draconic measures that were taken against so-called Trotskyite and
semi-Trotskyite elements in the Party, many of whom were self­
proclaimed "premature anti-Browderites." As a left opposition
grew in strength foliowing the reconstitution of the Party, a number
of cadres were expelled. Many were veterans, even charter
 BROWDER'S TREACHERY I
539

members, who had laid their lives on the line for the Party. Such
men as Vern Smith, veteran labor writer for the communist press,
Bill Dunne, an experienced trade union cadre and at one time the
Party's representative to the Profintern, as well as Harrison
George himself, were expelled.
George states that these expulsions were followed by mass
expulsions at the local level and the dropping of a number of
dissidents. Many clubs were reorganized by national and district
level leadership, some cadres were expelled with an "increasingly
bureaucratic suppression of Party democracy, as membership
opposition passed over from a passive to an active form." 19
Eventually all that remained of democratic centralism was cen­
tralism.
A later phase of this struggle began with the National Com­
mittee meeting of 1947. This period saw the leadership postpone
the national convention and in so doing refuse to submit its
policies and programs to the membership for renewal or re­
jection. The Fourteenth Party Convention was finally held in
August of 1948. U ndoubtedly the right felt the need for more time
to consolidate its position. Such was the case in the period
following the 1945 Convention when they postponed choosing the
officers of the National Committee for a year.

PARTY CHAIRMAN WILLIAM Z. FOSTER

During this period, William Z. Foster rose as the unchallenged

leader of the Party. In 1945 the rank and file looked to Foster, and
Foster alone among-the leadership, to reconstitute the Party on a
truly revolutionary basis. The Party was at a crossroads and
Foster's task was a historie one.
He had a proud history in the Party and the revolutionary
working class movement. From his years in the IWW and the
Socialist Party, he came into the CP with a wealth of experience in
the trade union movement. Foster was a leader of the great steel
strike of 1919 which saw some 365,000workers walk offthejob: In
the twenties, he led the struggle against dual unionism and fought
540 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

for a revolutionary program for work within the unions.

The development of the prestigious Trade Union Education
League (TUEL) can be attributed to his leadership. As we have
already mentioned, Foster made some rightist errors in this work.
Slow to see the need for independent left-led unions, he later
criticized these errors and came to lead the campaign for industrial
unionism. He was one of the chief architects of the CIO.
But the task he was faced with in 1945, the fight against
revisionism, proved to be beyond his capabilities. While Foster
was the best of the old leadership, he was certainly no fearless
warrior against the right. Even before he was thrust into the
leading role in the Party, his pragmatism had come to the fore as he
consistently put political expediency ahead of ideological struggle.
For example, he and Sam Darcy had been the only two
members of the National Board to criticize Browder's line before
the fateful arrival of the Duclos letter. In January 1944, he
submitted a letter to the National Committee which criticized
Browder's line. Duclos himself had liberally quoted Foster. But
publication of the letter was suppressed by the National Com­
mittee.20 Foster did nothing for fifteen long months, never fought
for his line or fought to bring his case to the rank and file.
During the pre-Convention discussions of 1944-a period
which, according to the Party Constitution, is supposed to be
marked by the most open and frank discussions and scrutiny of the
Party's line-Foster maintained his silence. He presided at the
convention in May of 1944 which dissolved the Party and then
went on to nominate Earl Browder for president of the new
Communist Political Association-just four months after his
letter criticizing Browder's line. In turn, Foster himself was
nominated by Browder to serve as one of the association's vice­
presidents. At this same convention, Foster chaired the committee
which prepared the charges to expel Sam Darcy. Yet Darcy was
expelled for espousing in a more active form the same criticism of
Browder as Foster expressed in his January letter to the NC. 21
From the beginning of the struggle against Browderism, Foster
consistently underestimated the seriousness of the right <langer. At
the convention to reconstitute the Party, he cautioned against
 BROWDER'S TREACHER Y 541

"overcorrecting" the Party's past errors, and, in this spirit, he swept

the whole Browder crowd back into leadership on his coattails.
Not only was Foster denying the lessons of the Party's most recent
period, he actually overlooked the whole historie trend of the
working class movement in the United States. From the Socialist
Party to Lovestone to Browder, the main deviation had always
been right opportu.nism.
For a long time, Foster seemed to think that he could be a buffer
between the various factions and grnupings in the Party without
ever having to seriously confront the more rightist elements in the
leadership. In reality, this centrist position led him to play a
conciliationist role for the right. While paying lip service to the
primacy of the right danger, he actually leveled most of his guns at
the left. I assumed that his cold reception to me when I returned
from the Pacific was because he associated me with the "dis­
gruntled left sectarian" elements in the Party, some of whom, like
Bill Dunne, were old friends of mine.
In his concluding remarks at the Fourteenth Convention of the
CPUSA, Foster openly stated that rightism was the main danger
facing the Party. But he never detailed exactly what the content of
these right errors was. At the same time he informed the
membership that "our Party has had to conduct a fight on two
fronts" and that there were dangerous "Leftist moods" and
"Leftist renegade grouplets" in the Party, that this could be seen
in the revolts in a number of districts, including New York and
California. 22 He was referring to areas where some of the strongest
opposition to rightism developed and where many cadre and clubs
were either expelled or dropped out.
It is clear that Foster considered the threat from the right to be in
abeyance once Browder had been removed from leadership. He
saw the political struggle-the fight to oust Browder-as being
primary. In effect, he didn't understand the importance of fighting
the ideological influence of Browderism which still had a firm grip
on the Party.
What led Foster to so seriously underestimate the right danger
and to tacitly accept the expulsion of so many genuine commu­
nists? It can be safely asserted that these errors were rooted in.his
542 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

own tendency towards rightism. Like Browder, he underestimated

the leading role of the vanguard party. In his 1944 letter criticizing
Browder's line there is no mention of the dissolution of the Party!
Foster wrote a postscript to this letter and the two werepublished
in the July 1945. Political Affairs. In this postscript, Foster said
that he had opposed the dissolution of the Party at a board
meeting, but didn't actively pursue the matter because he thought
it was a lost cause. He ends with these words: "So I left the whole
question out of my letter to the National Committee. The
immediate task, as I saw it, was for me to help to keep the C.P .A.,
in faet, if not in name, the Communist Party." 23 Foster obviously
believed that the Party could continue to play a leading role even
when it was liquidated organizationally.
Again, while Foster correctly criticized Browder for over­
estimating the progressive aspects of the monopoly capitalists, he
himself overestimated the role played by FOR and the "liberal
labor combination." In the same letter in which he criticized
Browder, Foster writes,"We must understand clearly and definite­
ly that the basic forces of a progressive national unity are those
grouped, in the main, around Roosevelt's banners and we must
fight to help them extend and solidify their ranks. " 24
Foster was indeed a produet of the times-of a period in the
Party's history when the attack on Marxist-Leninist theory,
rightism and bureaucracy had seriously undermined the inner
workings of the Party. In all fairness, it must be said that his ability
to lead the Party was also greatly affected by his poor health.
Foliowing a heart attack in 1932,"Foster's activities were seriously
limited and he was forced to spend much of his time at home­
removed from the operative leadership of the Party.
In the final analysis, however, it was his pragmatism-empirical
and superficial methods of evaluating conditions in the Party and
the country-which led him to agree with the main tenets of the
right, most importantly the possibility of a peaceful transition to
socialism. It was this view that "the struggle is everything, the final
aim nothing," along with an unwillingness to rock the boat, which
most consistently guided his actions.
His failure to fully break with the right opportumsm of Browder,
 BROWDER'S TREACHER Y 543

with revisionism, left the door open for the resurgence of a

line which eventually liquidated the Communist Party as the
revolutionary vanguard of the working class once and for all. His
continued vacillation and conciliation to the right helped to lay the
groundwork for the final victory of revisionism in the U.S. Party.
It is a sad note that this outstanding leader of the American
working class was in the last years of his life putting forward such
revisionist theories as peaceful transition to socialism.
No one who lived through the years 1945 to 1948-with perhaps
the exception of Harrison George or a very few others-had a full
understanding of what was going on in the Party at the time. I
know that I observed right errors, but I merely saw them as
mistakes and tendencies which could be corrected, not as reflecting
a whole line that would lead to liquidation of the Party.
I didn't really trust the leadership, especially Eugene Dennis
(though I had little actual personal contact with the man). He
seemed to me to be the kind of guy who could never make a direct
statement. I knew that he had been Browder's right band man and
one of the leaders of the whole right deviation. Once all the breast­
beating was over, he became general secretary of the Party,
nominated by Foster. I wondered then how he had managed to
weather the change so well.
When the struggle first began against Browder in the latter part
of 1945, I was withdrawn-still reluctant to become involved in the
inner.-Party struggle. But I had seen an article by Claudia Jones, a
young Black woman communist from the West lndies who had
challenged Browder's lin� on the right of self-determination. The
article had greatly stimulated my interest. 25 I knew that the
ideological struggle inside the Party was far from over, and I
thought that I could play a role in restoring our position on the
Afro-American question. But I was still leery of plunging into the
struggle because of the self doubts that hung over me after my
battlefield experiences in Spain and my work in Baltimore. My
heart attack also held me back somewhat, and Foster's brush-off
had renewed some of the deep personal wounds that I felt.
I was therefore somewhat apprehensive when in DecemJ,er
1945, Charles Krumbein, my old Lenin School friend, and then
544 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

district organizer for New York, called me into a meeting. When I

arrived, I found in addition to Krumbein: Bob Minor, (I had
always had warm feelings toward Bob which I thought were
mutual, despite his close association with Browder); Steve Nelson,
former brigade commissar in Spain; and James Ford, one of the
few "casualties" from among the Browder leadership.
Charlie began the meeting by saying that they wanted to-discuss
my future work and resolve the Spanish problem once and for all.
As I recall, he said that he did not believe the rumors that I had left
the front without permission, and that Bob and Steve were in
Spain and could substantiate this.
It seemed to him that the rumors had been irresponsible
accusations directed at "one of our leading Negro comrades."
"One can just look-although it certainly isn't necessary-at
Harry's World War II seaman's record and see that the rumors
were not true," he said.
He concluded by saying that he felt it was time for all
disparaging rumors, none of which were ever made into direct
charges, to cease. And that "Harry should be encouraged to make
the kinds of contributions to the Party we all know he is capable
of." Bob Minor said a few words along similar lines and Steve
Nelson agreed. Only Ford expressed reservations but did not make
any specific charges.
Bob suggested that a restatement and elaboration of a revolu­
tionary position on the Afro-American question was urgently
needed. It had been nearly ten years since such a presentation had
been made. 26 I agreed. It seemed to me that there was every
indication of a renewed upsurge among Blacks and important
struggles were beginning to unfold which required a clear under­
standing of the question if the Party were to play a leading and
decisive role. The rank and file, especially the young Black cadres,
were aware of the crucial place th.e question held in the struggle to
root out the influence of Browderism. For all of these reasons, I
anxiously took up the task of writing such a hook.
I felt at the time that Krunibein and Minor were surely not
acting on their own, but rather as a committee of the Politburo set
up to investigate the matter. Therefore, I considered this
 BROWDER'S TREACHERY 545

meeting as an official clearance of all accusations stemming from

S pain, and felt free to concentrate all my efforts toward writing the
book. For the next two years I spent the major portion of my time
working on the manuscript and did a great deal of reading and
research while I was still sailing. I had decided then to concentrate
on developing an exhaustive examination of the agrarian situation
in the South as a basis for the restatement of the correct position
on the Afro-American question.
But in the meantime, I still had to earn a living. Belle had come
in from Los Angeles and set up a small apartment on West 138th
Street. She had gotten a job in a shoe factory and I decided to sign
on another ship.

CUBA

In early March 1946, I signed on the inotor ship the Coastal

Spartan, bound for Havana, as a cook and baker. She was a small
freighter of the same class as the Turk's Knot, the ship I had sailed
on my last voyage in the Pacific.
This was my first trip to Cuba. When we docked in Havana, a
young mulatto police sergeant who was in charge of the dock area
came aboard. The chief cook, a Filipino, introduced me to him as
Sergeant McClarran. This was not the cook's first trip to Havana,
and he whispered tome that McClarran was a good fellow. "He
looks after our people ashore," he confided. "And to show our
appreciation we always make sure he gets a couple of pounds of
butter, which costs a kit here."
The sergeant was a tall strapping fellow who spoke fluent
colloquial English. He explained to me that he had spent two years
in the United States at the Cuban Pavillion of the 1938 World's
Fair. Curious, I asked how he got his name. "Oh, my old father was
a Scotsman," he said, laughing.
On hearing that this was my first time in Havana, he offered to
show me the city. We walked out of the harbor area and along the
Prado, the main street. We sat down at a sidewalk cafe and ordered
some food. While we were talking the sergeant rose and hailed a
546 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

nattily dressed man with a military bearing.

He introduced me as a writer from the U.S. and we exchanged
pleasantries. The man passed on and I asked who he was.
''Oh, last month he was chief of police. I don't know what he's
doing now. I never liked him; he was a real reactionary, one of the
hangovers from Machado's times."
A few minutes later, after we had left the cafe, the sergeant
stopped to greet another man. When I asked who that was, he said,
"Oh, that's our new chief of police."
The sergeant seemed to be a progressive fellow, and he had
undoubtedly sized me up as a man of the left. As we walked, we
proceeded to discuss the current political situation. The periodjust
after the war was one of popular upsurge as the Cubans sought to
realize the democratic aims they had fought for in World War II.
Grau San Martin's people's front government was in power and
the Popular Socialist Party (communist) inspired and led many
struggles of the period. It was just prior to the reactionary
offensive, sparked by the cold war, which swept Latin America.
I told the sergeant that I was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War
and he insisted on taking me to a bar where some Cuban veterans
hung out. As we entered I saw one familiar face, a beautiful Black
woman whom I had met in Valencia. I had known her only
slightly; she was actually in the company of the General El
Campesino. The story was that she had played quite a role fighting
in the trenches against the fascists.
. Recognizing me at once, she exclaimed, "El Capitån!" We
stood at the bar with the sergeant, who seemed to kno� everybody,
and he translated when I needed it. I asked about other Cuban
Spanish Civil War veterans. I had met a few, but I had forgotten
their names. Most had transferred from the Fifteenth Brigade to
Campesino's brigade after Jarama.
Out in the street again, I thanked the sergeant and asked if he
could direct me to the Communist Party headquarters. Not only
would he direct me, he said, but it would be an honor for him to
escort me. We walked up a main boulevard along the bay and
stopped to look at the statue of Antonio Maceo on horseback.
Maceo had been a Black leader in the war of independence
 BROWDER'S TREACHERY 547

against Spain.
A few blocks further on we came to the headquarters of the
Popular Socialist Party. It was located in what appeared to be an
old mansion. We entered the door which opened into a large foyer.
There were large stairways apparently leading up to offices on the
second floor. But the stairs were blocked off by a barricade.Behind
it were a few husky-looking young security guards. They seemed to
know the sergeant who told them, "This is Comrade Haywood
from the American Party. He wants to see Blas."
One of them picked up the phone and repeated the message.
Finally, he turned and motioned us up the stairs. We went as
directed and entered an open door where Blas Roca, the general
secretary of the Party, was standing behind a desk. He shook my
hand and also the sergeant's, whom he seemed to know. Roca was
a light brown mulatto, as I recall, of short and stocky build.
"Sit down. Sit down," he said. He said that he had heard of me,
and asked about James Ford, whom he knew. Ford had attended a
congress of the Cuban Party as a fraternal delegate several
years before. I told him that Ford had stuck too long with
Browder and was not in the new leadership.
"Y es, we were also stuck with Browder, but we got unstuck
before you comrades did," he said. 27
He then asked about Foster. I told him what I honestly thought
at the time, that Foster seemed to be all right and that under his
leadership we were finally pulling out of the revisionist swamp.
We continued talking and he told me about the situation in
Cuba, how the Party had come through the revisionist period
more or less intact, and that they were now in an uneasy alliance
with Grau San M<J,rtin. It was getting shaky, however, "We're
under no illusions," Roca told me, "With the war ended we're
cxpecting a reactionary offensive."
He also asked about our work among Blacks. I told him that
despite the backsliding with Browder, the Party's prestige
remained high among Blacks. "There's a debate going on now, and
we're looking forward to restoring our position."
After we had talked for about an hour, I felt I had taken enough
of his time, and rose to leave. "Be sure to give my greetings to
548 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Foster," Rqca said in closing.

The sergeant and I walked back to the docks to sightsee along
the Prado and take in the night life of Havana. The ship pulled
out the next day for Matanzas, the sugar port in Oriente Province
where we loaded sugar for the States. The ship docked in Jersey
City on April 2, 1946.

THE FIGHT FOR OUR REVOLUTIONARY LINE

On my return, I began hearing more and more about the attack

on the left and rumors about old friends of mine who were under
attack. From what I could see, all was not well with the Party nor
was the rank and file satisfied with the course of the struggle
against Browderism.
To me, the one bright spot in all this was the struggle to reaffirm
our revolutionary position on the Black national question, for the
Party to once again take up the fight for the right of self­
determination in the Black Belt. I followed this whole question
very closely and it was clear to me that the impetus came mainly
from the Black cadres and particularly from the new blood that
had come into the Party in the last decade.
At that time, Blacks made up fifteen percent of Party member­
ship. Despite Browder's liquidationist policies, the Party still
maintained its reputation as a leader in the struggle for Negro
rights. 28 I felt that this was largely due to the outstanding
reputation the Party had built for itself during the campaigns of
the thirties-Scottsboro, the ILD, the Unemployed Councils­
and its yeoman work in building the CIO and organizing the
unorganized.
The Party maintained its fighting reputation through much of
the war, despite the opportunist errors that were made. During the
thirties and forties, this was the basis for the recruitment of large
numbers of outstanding young Blacks who quickly matured as
leaders at every level of the Party and the mass movements. This
core ofBlack cadres was further strengthened by the return ofBlack
veterans who were acutely aware of the gains made during the
 BROWDER'S TREACHERY 549

course of the war and of how these gains were now being
threatened.
These cadres played a leading role in the working class struggle
and their role in the Party's strong fight for seniority rights after
the war was particularly important. The layoffs of the late forties
had a harsh effect on Black workers, many of whom first entered
industry during the war and were often the lowest in seniority. A
spontaneous Black caucus movement arose in these years as the
top leadership of both the AFL and the CIO steadfastly refused to
take up the special demands of Black workers. In 195 l , these
caucuses united into a national organization, the National Negro
Labor Councils.
Such struggles deeply affected the cadres and reflected the rising
sense of struggle and militancy of Black people in general. I myself
was very much aware of this new spirit.
When my ship first docked, I spent a lot of time walking the
streets of Harlem. I was struck with the visible optimism on the
faces of the people passing me in the street. Black people would no
longer be cowed and bullied by Jim Crow. They had experienced a
mass political awakening as a result of their wartime experiences
and this was reflected in their manner.
The war served to· break the historie isolation of the Afro­
American people from the struggles of the peoples of the world.
Black men and women served over a million strong in the armed
forces and the wartime expansion of industry saw an unpre­
cedented number of Blacks, close to a million workers, come into
Lhe U.S. labor force. Through such involvement, Black people
were able to see more than ever that they had allies in the colonially
oppressed people abroad and in the U.S. working class at home in
their struggle against Jim Crow and monopoly capitalism.
Black people were deeply influenced by the colonial and semi:
colonial upsurge of World War II as people in India, China,
I ndonesia, Africa, Latin America and the liberated countries of
castern Europe rose up to oppose fascist and imperialist domina­
tion. National minorities within the boundaries of the Soviet
Union had been liberated by the socialist revoluti,on and were now
cxercising one form or another of self government. More than ·
550 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

ever, Afro-Americans were determined to fight for equality and

full democratic rights at home. There could be no turning back, no
return to the past.
During the course of the war, momentum had been building
toward an upsurge in the Black liberation movement and it burst
into full bloom once the war ended. There was a firm commitment
by Blacks to carry on the fight against Hitler at home. The post­
war period saw the !argest strike wave in history and Black
workers played a leading role in it. In militant strikes and actions
led by the Negro Labor Councils, Black workers demandedjobs,
upgrading and training into skilled jobs, along with greater
representation in unions and in the leadership thereof. At the same
time, they played a very important role in the liberation movement
as renewed struggle developed against lynchings, frame-ups, police
brutality and the general denial of equality and democratic rights.
As early as 1946, the Civil Rights Congress (CRC) was formed
to replace the ILD which had largely been liquidated under
Browder. The CRC was headed by my old friend William
Patterson and in 1951, it su bmitted We Charge Genocide, a
petition to the United Nations "For relief from the crime of the
United States Government against the Negro people."
This formidable document, inspired by Patterson, recounts
much of the terrorism of this period when lynchings and Klan
activity were on the rise throughout the country and especially in
the South. The frame-up in the case of a self-defense slaying and
subsequent life sentence of Mrs. Rosalee lngram and her sons in
Georgia, the burning and destruction of the entire Black commu­
nity of Columbia, Tennessee, and the frame-up on rape charges
and execution of the Martinsville Seven are but a few examples. 29
This spontaneous upsurge made it all the more pressing that the
Party once again take up the fight for the right of self-deter­
mination. Without such a revolutionary program, the Party would
never be able to play a leading role in the struggle or to unite Black
and white workers.
Many veteran Black cadres played an important role at this
time, but I especially remember the young people. For instance, as
I have already mentioned. Claudia Jones's discussion article that
 BROWDER'S TREACHER Y 551

kicked off a hugh debate in the summer of 1945, attacking

Browder's ideological and political stand on the Black national
question. Jones contended that Browder's line on self-determi­
nation was "based on a pious hope that the struggle for ful/
cconomic, social and political equality for the Negro people would
be 'legislated' and somehow brought into being through reforms
from on top." 30 Jones upheld the revolutionary position as "a
scientific principle that derives from an objective condition and
upon this basis expresses the fundamental demands (land, equal­
ity, and freedom) of the oppressed Negro people." 31
The debate began as an important phase of the struggle against
Browder. It continued in the clubs, the sections and the districts for
over a year. Almost every issue of the PA from the middle of 1945
through December 1946, carried an article relating to some aspect
of the struggle. Under the cover of a ringing denunciation of
Browderism, the right came forward to continue his liquida­
tionist line on the Black national question and to oppose the right
of self-determination. This time the banners were carried by two
college professors-Doxey Wilkerson, a Black man and formerly
a professor at Howard University, and Francis Franklin, a white
professor from the University of Virginia.
While couched in sociological and theoretical jargon and with
constant allusions to "new" developments in the Black Belt, their
arguments were just another rehash of the assimilationist devia­
tion on the question. While opposing the right of self-deter­
mination, both Franklin and Wilkerson discussed the growing
trend toward integration and disintegration of the Black majority
in the Black Belt, the breakup of the sharecropping system and
semi-feudal relations of agriculture, to support their argu­
ments.
Both tended to downplay the role of the national aspirations of
Black people and to portray the direct integrationist trend as the
only significant aspect of the mavement. They totally negated the
possibility of a national revolutionary upsurge, that the Black
liberation struggle would ultimately take an autonomous direction
towards political power as a guarantee for equality. Wilkerson and
Franklin failed to understand that in the Black Belt this
552 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

could mean nothing less than the right of self-determination, that

is, the option of autonomy, federation or secession.
Franklin's analysis was different from earlier liquidators only in
that he discovered a new dimension to the right of self-deter­
mination, "the right of amalgamation with the dominant nation."
While the struggle for unity has always been implicit in the right of
self-determination, Franklin had something else in mind. By
calling for the "right to amalgamate," he was actually advocating
the right to disperse, to disintegrate and blend into the rest of the
country.
Max Weiss, a member of the National Committee and formerly
a leader of the YCL, wrote a substantial article refuting Franklin's
line. In it, he stated what he perceives as Franklin's meaning: "The
right of self-determination means the right not to be a nation, the
right to put an end to its existence as a nation." 32
Rather than seeing it as a question ofthe masses of Black people
fighting for the right to control their destinies, Franklin saw it as a
struggle of the national bourgeoisie to control its own markets. In
a sort of inverted Jim Crowism, Franklin argues that a Black
nation can only develop under Jim Crow because that brings
about the development of a separate Black capitalist class. "It is
this separate Negro capitalism which has formed the economic
base for the emergence among the Negro people of the Black Belt
of separate national characteristics of their own." 33 Clearly, in
Franklin's estimation, the system of Jim Crow was breaking down,
and this was bringing about the elimination of the national
bourgeoisie and, with it, the possibility of the development of a
Black nation.
Wilkerson's line was slick, but even more bankrupt, as, based on
a few token gains, he painted a blissful picture of the uninterrupted
progress of Black people under imperialism. Wilkerson's per­
spective on the question is that the nation is new and embryonic
and it is therefore possible for it to develop in any number of
directions. In the case of the Black nation, it is going more and
more in the direction of full integration with Black people
becoming a national minority. Thus he states, "The perspective
for the Negro people in the United States is neither toward
 BROWDER'S TREACHERY 553

disintegration as a people nor toward statehood as a nation; it is

probably toward further development as a national minority, as a
distinct and increasingly self-conscious community of Negro
Americans. " 34
Wilkerson went so far as to state that the Black nation is too
embryonic even to be conscious of its own rtationhood. The
implication from this being that if Black people don't demand self
government, why should communists do it for them. In faet, there
had been strong waves of nationalism in the Black liberation
struggle-the Garvey movement, the Forty-ninth Staters
and the Sufis were but a few examples. Wilkerson would
have been astounded to hear of the number of subject nations
that had even less developed national characteristics, but neverthe­
less were still afforded the right of self-determination by commu­
nists.
In the twenties a Yugoslavian communist, Semich, had raised
similar arguments concerning the Croats and Slovenes in his own
country. Stalin spoke to Semich's argument in a speech entitled,
"Concerning the National Question in Yugoslavia."
In 1912, when we Russian Marxists were outlini'ng the first
draft of the national programme no serious movement for
independence yet existed in any of the border regions
of the Russian Empire. Nevertheless, we deemed it necessary
to include in our programme the point on the right of nations
to self-determination, i.e., the right of every nationality to
secede and exist as an.independent state. Why? Because we
based ourselves not only on what existed then, but also on
what was developing and impending in the general system of
international relations; that is, we took into account not only
the present but also the future." 35

Wilkerson's theories were refuted in two well documented and

well formulated articles by James Allen. 36 To Wilkerson's claim
that more and more Blacks were leaving the Black Belt, Allen
countered that this has been an historie trend since the end of the
Civil War. Nevertheless, the Black Belt was still an area of
Black majority and still maintained the remnants of slavery in the
sharecropping system. While Wilkerson contended that the right
554 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

of self-determination can only mean secession, Allen correctly

pointed out that federation and various forms of autonomy were
also encompassed within the right of self-determination.
Linking the working class struggle with the Black liberation
movement, Allen stated, "History has taught us, and our present
political experiences teach us, that every forward step of the
progressive movement, every advance toward the unity of white
and Negro workers, and every democratic gain ... makes self-deter­
mination of the Negro people more realizable." 37
I had been doing a lot of study and writing at this time and saw
that the Party needed to have a basic program for agrarian reform
in the Black Belt; the kind of program that had been liquidated
with the dissolution of the Sharecroppers Union. "Toward a
Program of Agrarian Reforms for the Black Belt," a two-article
series, was my contribution to developing such a program. 38 Later,
much expanded and deepened in Negro Liberation, these articles
re-examined the agrarian system in the South based on current
data.
The essential thesis of the articles was that lying at the root of the
oppression of Blacks is the unsolved agrarian question in the
South. The Southern plantation system, with its deeply-rooted
semi-feudal characteristics, is being forcibly maintained by the
imperialist ruling class in alliance with the Southern oligarchy
through the system of Jim Crow laws and lynch terror. It is, in faet,
continually reproducing Black inequality in all walks of life,
condemning Blacks to Jim Crow in the South and throughout the
country. With a long range program of self government for the
Black Belt, the articles also included such immediate demands as
reduction of land rentals, written contracts between landlord and
tenant, and abolition of all laws and practices supporting peonage.
The culmination of this intensive period of debate and struggle
was the restoration of the revolutionary position on the Afro­
American question. At a National Committee plenum in De­
cember 1946, the Party adopted a resolution which reaffirmed its
support of self-determination for the Black Belt. This victory in
great measure must be attributed to the militancy and deter­
mination of the younger comrades who played such an important
 BROWDER'S TREACHER Y 555

role.
The Party's rededication to this revolutionary fight had par­
ticularly important consequences for work in the South, which
had been most seriously affected by dropping the position. In
1947, two years after the Party was reconstituted in the South,
membership was up to 2,000-higher than it had ever been. Cadres
began playing a leading role in building the fight for equal rights
and in the anti-lynching campaigns, in the trade unions and
organizing the unorganized. Communists led two important strikes
in North Carolina which saw some 17,000 tobacco workers come
under union contract for the first time. Miranda Smith, a young
Black woman and a member of the Southern Negro Youth
Conference, was an outstanding and militant leader in the strike.
Unfortunately, she died soon thereafter. 39
A part of the brief upsurge of Party work in the South was the
1948 Progressive Party campaign in which communists were very
active. Paul Robeson and Wallace made an unprecedented joint
tour of seven Southern states-loudly refusing to obey the Jim
Crow laws governing meeting, eating and sleeping places, and
attacking white supremacy head on. The Wallace campaign in the
South was in many ways a mass protest movement against
segregation.
Party members also helped build the New Orleans Youth
Conference, an organization of over 500 Black and white youth. It
picketed New Orleans stores in protest of discrimination against
Blacks and integrated busses and street cars in defiance of local
laws. Eventually the NOYC merged with the Southern Negro
Youth Conference.
In the spring and summer of 1948, I participated in two
important meetings on the agrarian question. These meetings were
valuable because they were part of the struggle to reconstitute the
Party in the South. I was very enthusiastic about the first of these
which was held in Atlanta, because I hadn't been in the South since
the thirties. There was still harsh Jim Crow but there was
something else afoot. Though I was only there a short time, I could
see it on the streets�a part of the general post-war upsurge of
Black people. but with its own special Southern character. Busses
556 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

were still segregated, but Black people no longer waited until all
the whites were on board before they themselves got on. This was a
small step, but I knew it wouldn't stop there.
The meeting, which was attended mainly by Southern cadres,
was to summarize some of the past mistakes and begin to draw up
a program. It was at this meeting that I first learned in some detail
of what had happened when the SCU had been liquidated.
Following this, there was another meeting in New York to
discuss the agrarian question. At this meeting, I found the
rightist tendency to lump the special oppression of Black share­
croppers and tenants in the South into the more general farm
question was still prevalent. I remember that we held a very long
discussion on this point and after considerable struggle, we were
able to win the majority to the correct line.
Out of these meetings came general agreement with the need for
a revolutionary program of agrarian reform in the South-based
on the right of self-determination for the Black nation. As a result
of these discussions, the Agrarian Commission developed such a
program and it was published in Political Affairs in March of
1949.40 Unfortunately this program was never put into practice,
nor did it ever take on any organizational form.
In general, this victory in the field of Afro-American work was
to be only short lived as the right opportunist trend hovered
forebodingly in the wings. The main political thrust of the
leadership at the time was to build a coalition with the forces
arrayed around the Truman Administration. This was merely a
continuation of the rightist united front policies of the Browder
period and had important implications for the Party's work.
Faced with such a strong movement among the rank and file,
however, the Party leadership was forced to accept reaffirmation
of the revolutionary line. I strongly suspect that their intentions
from ihe beginning were to subvert that line.
This is evident in Dennis' remarks at the December 1946
Plenum of the National Committee. "I think we would make a
serious and harmful mistake if we were to associate the realization
of the right of self-determination solely with the realization of
socialism in the United States," he stated. And further:
 BROWDER'S TREACHER Y 557

If the American people, the la bor movement in alliance with

the great Negro people and all progressive and democratic
forces, can check and defeat the onslaught of pro-fascist
monopoly reaction, and bring into power, as an important
phase of that struggle, a progressive presidential ticket and
Congress in 1948, with all that this would entail, many things
will be possible, including, at least, tremendous strides toward
the full realization of equal rights of the Negro people in the
Black Belt. 41
This statement clearly cuts away· at the revolutionary heart of
the right of self-determination and puts it in the context of a
program of electoral reform. It was a crude attempt to make the
slogan acceptable to the liberal and reformist leaders the Party saw
as its allies. It is an utter denigration of the slogan, reducing it to a
reformist character and fastering the illusion that such profound
changes in the lives of the Black masses can occur without mass
revolutionary struggle against monopoly capitalism.
Dennis's position had sounded a little off to me from the start. I
felt all along that he had never agreed with the slogan, and
certainly I had never heard him defend it befare. In the same
speech, he seemed to be hedging on the question. It appears to me
now in looking back that it was some form of apology for the
period of backsliding and vacillation under Browder.
In a manner that could easily be used by the right to justify
dropping the principle of self-determination, Dennis referred to
past sectarianism in application of the slogan, as though this had
been widespread. 42 lt's true that there had been some sectarianism
when the position was first adopted in 1928 and then again in the
early thirties when we had little practical experience.
There were those who tried to decide in advance what the final
solution would be for Black people; for instance, Pepper's demand
for a Negro Soviet Republic. But these "left" sectarian errors had
never been the main deviations in our work. It seemed to me that
Dennis was again trying to raise a straw man on the left to avoid
dealing with the main danger of right opportunism.
The Party leadership had already undertaken the liquidation of
left-led centers in the mass movement, and soon after the plenum
the once influential National Negro Congress was dissolved. The
558 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

leadership contended that Black comrades should move into the

"mainstream of Negro life" (as hest represented by the NAACP)
and not become isolated in so-called sectarian organizations
like the NNC.43
That this was not the view of the majority of cadres was
dramatically illustrated to me a couple of years later at an enlarged
meeting of the National Negro Commission in New York. This
meeting was attended by thirty or forty of the Party' s top cadres­
mostly Black-in the field of Afro-American work.
I remember that I made a speech questioning the liquidation of
the NNC and calling for the formation of a left-led united front
organization to take its place. Paul Robeson, a great human being
and an ardent fighter for Black liberation, had just returned from
Europe and was at the height of his popularity. 44 I reasoned that
we might take advantage of Robeson's acclaim by asking him to
head such an organization and to build a broad, mass based
movement.
Betty Gannett and Pettis Perry, representing the leadership at
the meeting, spoke vigorously against this proposal, saying that it
was sectarian and that there was no need for another organization
among Black people. I had expected such a response from them,
but I was surprised by the overwhelming support my proposal
received from the cadres, especially the young Blacks. They spoke
so forcefully in support of my proposals that Gannett and Perry
had to retreat, saying that they certainly would bring the mattter
before the national leadership. I don't know whether or not they
did, but this was the last time I ever heard anything about it.
Despite the important gains made in the field, the rightist
tendency re main ed very persistent. It expressed itself mainly in the
form of the "coalition concept" and affected not only the work
among Blacks, but all areas of mass work, the trade unions in
particular.
This policy was actually an extension of Browder's liquida­
tionist line which was never thoroughly rejected by the new
leadership and left the Party tailing the liberal and reformist
leaders.
The political basis for such a concept could not be found in the
 BROWDER'S TREACHER Y 559

harsh realities of the cold war and the attack on communism

worldwide, but only in the minds and hearts, and the most wishful
thinking of those who propounded it. The 1945 Reconstitution
Resolution states, "The Truman Administration, like the Roosevelt
government from which it is developing, continues to receive the
support of the Roosevelt-labor-democratic coalition, and re­
sponds to various class pressures." 45 Not only does this reflect the
Party's classic overestimation of the Roosevelt forces in particular,
but also a failure to understand the role of such forces as
representatives of the imperialist class as a whole.
Un,derlying this outlook was the "failure to recognize the re­
alignment of class forces, especially the sharp swing to the right on
the part of the top leadership of the CIO and labor generally," as
well as the old line reformist leadership of the NAACP. 46 While the
Party remained spellbound by this line, seemingly oblivious to the
world around it, anti-communist resolutions were passed in the
trade unions. So called progressive-center labor leaders like
Walter Reuther and Phillip Murray bolted with lightning speed
to the side of the imperialists. The NAACP leaders involved
themselves in a vicious red-baiting campaign, .as the government
began gearing up the machinery for full enforcement of the Smith
Aet. 47 All such measures were fully backed by the courts, the
police, federal agents and all levels of government.

CLASS STRUGGLE IN THE NMU

I could see the obvious effects of this policy in the National

Maritime Union (NMU). The cold war realignment of forces was
bringing on a crisis of the left in the trade union movement-a
clear employer-government drive against communists, a drive to
break up the left-center coalition.
While this shift had already begun before the war ended, it was
clear that they really meant business at the 1946 CIO Convention
in Atlantic City, when the CIO Declaration of Policy on Commu­
nism was passed. The statement held that the convention delegates
"rcs.ent and reject efforts of the Communist Party or other
560 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

political parties and their adherents to interfere in the affairs of the

CIQ."48
This mave signaled the first round in the post-war attack:
on the wages and living standards of the working class and
was a clear victory for the monopoly capitalists. In faet, there was
no organized opposition to the right wing block which was led by
social democrats, Trotskyites, Christian Fronters and Coughlin­
ites. The CP delegates also voted for the resolution, while the Party
press took an "it could have been a lot worse" kind of stand. This
left the masses of delegates a confused and easy prey to the
demagogy of the right wing.
Thus sacrificing democratic rights for "unity," and an inde­
pendent stand for coalition at any price, the Party suffered blow
after blow at the hands of the Reuthers, Murrays and Currans.
When in 1948 it had become clear that the trade union bureaucrats
were unalterably lined up against the left, the Party halfheartedly
tried to shift gears-calling for a rank-and-file upsurge in support
of the communists. But this mave was unsuccessful in that the
Party refused-even in the face of vicious reaction-to fully break
with its policy of tailing the bureaucrats, leaving large
sections of the rank and file to become consolidated behind the
right-wing leadership of the unions. The Party refused to play the
bold independent role that was necessary if we were to exert any
kind of leadership in the labor mavement.
The NMU was a crucial arena of this struggle. Built by the
Communist Party, it was the most left and democratic of all the
unions. Communists were in the majority on the National
Board. NMU ships were a school for ideological and political
struggle-not only around the day-to-day issues on the ship, but on
the broader political questions as well. Communism, Trotskyism,
Stalin and the Black national question were regular topics of mass
ideological debate. NMU seamen had served proudly in the
Spanish Civil War.
The NMU had a reputation as the finest, most progressive and
democratic union in the country. Ships crewed by the union were
the first in the maritime industry to have checkerboard (Black and
white) crews. Jesse Gray, a Black seaman and friend of mine who
 BROWDER'S TREACHERY 561

began sailing when he was sixteen or seventeen years old,

described the general feeling that Blacks had about the union at
that time.
"One thing that was really exciting...you had to have been in the
NMU to really feel, it was like another world. lt's like going to
China, to the Soviet Union on a trip if you've never been there. If
you've always lived in the South in the U.S. where racism was so
sharp, and to go to the NMU where Blacks and whites were on the
ship, they were together, worked together-it was a real hig thing.
And that was only as a result of the sharp struggles of the more
advanced political forces." 49 As to the role of Black workers, Jesse
said, "Black workers in particular gave leadership to the NMU,
and arose then as a tremendous, conscious force-Black workers
and their allies were the most powerful bloc on the waterfront." 50
One would have thought that we communists were so strong
that we could never have been driven out of the union. We built it,
we fought for it, but we reckoned without our host. They had a
plan which had been developed over a number of years and which
included the use of government training schools to develop cadres
of seamen. This was an organized attempt to create a split among
members in the union with payoffs to right wingers and union
thugs. While the Party vacillated and refused to take a stand
against such chicanery, the shipowners and the government scored
victory after victory. And NMU President Joseph Curran was
their man.
Curran had been a leader of the union since its founding days in
1936 as a militant split off of the bureaucratic and corrupt
Seaman's International Union (SIU). A rough and tumble sailor
whose home ashore had once been Battery Park, Curran had
experienced a rapid shift in fortunes since the founding of the
union. He had once been a militant fighter and before the break up
of the left-center coalition had been counted among the left in the
union. The Party was very slow to understand what was happening
and to change its strategy accordingly when Curran began shifting
to the right in late 1945 and 1946.
I noticed this changed atmosphere as soon as I got back on ship
in the fall of 1946. We were sailing on the USS Washington. She
562 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

had been a troop ship during the war and had been reconverted by
her owner, United States Lines, to her old status as trans-Atlantic
passenger liner. She traveled the New York-Southampton-Le
Havre route, sometimes stopping at Cobh, lreland, in County
Cork. It was a sixteen or seventeen day voyage and I stayed with it
off and on for a year, while I was writing my hook.
She was a hig old ship, damp and drafty, with a crew of about
700. Conditions in general were poor and seamen were always
being injured. Accommodations in the crews' quarters, the glory
hole, were unbearable. Under such conditions there was quite
naturally a good bit of struggle on board. And here is where we
clearly saw the new alignment of forces-it was the rank and file
against the Curranites all the way.
Curran's men would faithfully tail the company's line. At that
time the ship owners had a major campaign to put all their ships
under foreign flags in order to enjoy cheap wages and get rid of the
union. This necessitated temporarily shutting down a number of
ships which sailed under U.S. flags. When the company would
threaten to take the Washington to the ships' graveyard up the
Hudson River, the Curran forces would say that we should
withdraw all pending grievances or face the loss of700 jobs. "Save
jobs at all costs," they said. We of course oposed this line; as lang
as we had jobs, we would fight for our rights.
Curran had a willing and ready accomplice in the Trotskyite
Socialist Workers Party. The Washington crew in 1947 rep­
resented for the first time a large concentration ofTrotskyites and
they were clearly out to get the Party. They thought if they could
tail behind Curran, even get a few places on the Curran slate, they
could help in wiping communists out of the industry and emerge as
the sole, unchallenged, left wing leadership. The second half of
their plan was never to come to fruition, but they certainly served
the cause of Curran and the ship owners well.
lnstead of joining us on the basic issues, they firmly took up the
collaborationist policies of the Curranites in opposing strikes and
other such actions in order to save jobs. They became Curran's
goons. When the Coast Guard screened all the communists out of
the industry, the Trots were saved-partially in payment for their
 BROWDE�STREACHERY 563

meritorious service to the government and partially because thcy

represented no threat to the Curran leadership.
But the progressive, communist-led left was very strong on thut
ship. We controlled the stewards' department-400 men, about
two-thirds of whom were Black and Puerto Rican-and also had
strong forces on deck and in the engine room. The right couldn't
openly oppose us so they had to resort to more underhanded
tactics. Often they would use guys like Frank Ryan to try and
infiltrate our ranks. An able-bodied seaman and a very capable
bastard, he had been around the trade union movement for quitc a
while and had been port agent in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Ryan wus
elected ship's chairman for one voyage of the Washington. Later
he became a lieutenant of New York City Transit Union boss,
Mike Quill. As far as the right was concerned, he was a flaming
radical; but when it came down to brass tacks, he was just another
Curran man in disguise. He caused a lot of trouble, but he never
fooled us.
Jesse Gray, who was then about twenty-one years old, wus
chairman of the steward's department and, on one or two voyages,
had been elected ship chairman. He was a militant organizer and a
great strike, leader as I recall. Many years later Jesse and I
reminisced about all the many strikes we had on ship. "We had all
the workers joining us and we could tie the ship up in a minute­
nail it to the pier," he said.
I recall one occasion when the crew went straight to the union
hall-right up to the national board to present their grievances.
Curran was there and, as could be expected, opposed the strike.
After a lot of milital)t anti-Curran rhetoric, the board nevertheless
went along with him and voted against the strike. I remember Jesse
talking to the crew after that, he sure didn't want to go along with
the board. But the majority voted to accept their decision and
cverybody went back to work.
The NMU held a convention in October 1947 at the Manhattan
Casino. It was a Curran sweep both locally and nationally,
uccomplished with the able bodied support of the local police and
C'urran's own henchmen and thugs in the union. He would carry
his men from port to port, just to vote in and help "supervise" local
564 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

elections.
A friend of mine tells a story about a seaman meeting a shipmate
of his in New Orleans. "I thought you were just in New York the
other day. How did you get down here so fast?" he asked.
"I caught a fast freighter," was the terse reply.
Despite this offensive, the left slate which was headed by Blackie
Myers and Ferdinand Smith, a Black man, won 15,000 out of
60,000 votes nationally. 5'
I was at the national convention and remember that there were a
couple of dozen police scattered around the hall where the voting
took place. Paddy wagons waited expectantly on the outside. A
police lieutenant would from time to time take the microphone
and warn the crowd against creating disturbances, as brawls
between the Curranites and the rank and file broke out all over the
room. Curran was at his demagogic, red-baiting hest, foretelling
the dire consequences of a communist takeover of the union. He
warned that the ship owners would never bargain with the reds.
With this election, union democracy was thrown out the
window. The constitution was rewritten with the bureaucrats now
firmly in charge of what had once been the most democratic union
in the country. The Coast Guard began backing up the attack on
the left by issuing passes. It became mandatory for merchant
marines to carry Coast Guard passes and none were being issued
to militants. By the late forties, communists were effectively
barred from shipping out of any port in the country.

THE 14TH PARTY CONVENTION

I stopped sailing on the Washington in March 1948, to devote

full time to writing the hook. This was made possible by Paul
Robeson. I had met him through Bill Patterson, the two were close
friends and Bill had helped bring Robeson into the left progressive
movement.
Many tributes have been written about Paul and I knew them all
to be true. He was a great musician, singer and actor. But more
importantly, I knew him to be a great human being and an ardent
 BROWDER'S TREACHERY 565

fighter for Black rights. We had often discussed the book I was
working on. Robeson was sympathetic to what I was doing and
anxious to see the book, the first of its kind by a Black Marxist, in
print. When Bill explained it would be possible to finish the
manuscript in a few months ifl could work full time on it, Paul was
more than willing to subsidize me, offering a hundred dollars a
month.
During the next few months I worked hard on the manuscript. I
was very fortunate to have a good editor who was of invaluable
help to me and a very capable political consultant as well. The
encouragement of my wife Belle and other friends was also most
important and helpful to me. At the same time, I was teaching
classes on the Afro-American question at the Jefferson School and
Party training schools in the district. I found these tasks com­
plemerµed each other nicely. In the classes I was able to use
material I was working on for the book. The lively discussions
provided useful criticisms and the questions helped to clarify my
ideas and formulations.
·In the fall of 1948 my book, Negro Liberation, was published. 52
It received great acclaim in the communist press, both here and
abroad, and was published in a number of languages: Russian,
Polish, German, Czech and Hungarian. It came to be regarded by
the Party as a basic text in its field. Meetings and seminars were set
up which discussed the book. Shortly after its publication,
I spoke at mass meetings in Detroit, Ann Arbor and
Chicago.
The position of the book was not new, but a reaffirmation of the
revolutionary position developed at the Sixth Comintern Con­
gress in 1928. The heart of this position is that the problem is
fundamentally a question of an oppressed nation with full rights of
self-determination. It emphasized the revolutionary essence of the
struggle for Black equality arising from the faet that the special
oppression of Blacks is a main prop of the system of imperialist
domination over the entire working class and the masses of
exploited American people. Therefore the struggle for Black
liberation is a component part of the struggle for proletarian
revolution. It is the historie task of the working class movement, as
566 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

it advances on the road to socialism, to solve the problem of land

and freedom of the Black masses.
What was new in the book was the thorough analysis of the
concrete conditions of Black people in the post-war period. I made
extensive use of population data; the 1940 census, the 1947
Plantation Count and other sources, in order to show that the
present day conditions affirmed the essential correctness of the
position we had formulated years before.
I was very happy when the book was finally finished and in
print. I felt that combined with the positive ideological struggle on
the question which resulted in the 1946 resolution, the book laid a
solid foundation for the Party's future work in the field. I felt that
as future crises developed and the oppression of the masses
intensified, the Black movement for equality and freedom
would take a nationalist direction towards a struggle for political
power and some form of self-government. For this reason, a
program based on the principle of self-determination is an
essential weapon in welding together the powerful revolutionary
alliance of the Black masses and the working class movement.
Just prior to the publication of Negro Liberation, the Party's
Fourteenth Convention was held in New York City. The con­
vention took place in the midst of a growing reactionary offensive.
It was a period of mounting cold war, Taft-Hartley anti-labor
legislation, loyalty oaths and direct measures to illegalize and
destroy the Party. At the same time, every effort was being made to
discredit and wipe out all progressive traces of New Deal
legislation.
The sharp swing to the right had just recently resulted in the
expulsions of the left from the Cl O unions, a crushing defeat for the
communists. At the same time, top leadership sections of the Black
reformists were shifting to support for Truman's anti-communist
campaign and imperialist designs as embodied in the Truman
Doctrine (early 1947) and the Marshall Plan (June 1947).
And if clearer indication of the growing attack on the left
generally and the communists in particular were needed, the
Justice Department provided it with the indictments of almost the
entire Party leadership. In July 1948, the entire National Board
 BROWDER'S TREACHERY 567

was indicted on violations of the Smith Aet.53

This was the setting for the Fourteenth Party Convention held
August 2-6, 1948, in New York. With the reactionary offensive
intensifying, the Party clearly needed to make a sober and accurate
assessment of its strengths, of its base of support and its ability to
rally the masses ( especially workers and oppressed nationalities)
against the ruling class attack. Rather than do this, the Party
leadership sank further into the illusions of the "grand coalition"
which had so dominated their policies since the reconstitution of
the Party in 1945.
There were of course a great deal of militant sounding phrases to
cover the retreat. Rhetoric about being "the party of socialism," 54
building a "fighting Communist Party" 55 and deepening "our
theoretical understanding of the role of the Party," 56 was common
in the speeches and reports. But underlying all of it was the
fundamental rightist orientation that placed a premium on being
in the "mainstream" of the people's coalition.
This was clearly seen in the grandiose assessment of the Wallace
campaign. Wallace was not seen as representing the advocates of
free enterprise, non-monopoly capital, nor was it understood
that his campaign was the tail end of the wartime progressive
coalition, the last breath of the dying liberal reformist movement.
Rather, the convention's draft resolution portrayed the Wallace
Party as a powerful movement on the verge of launching a
sweeping attack on the monopolists' reactionary war-mongering
policies. "The formation of this new party...marks the beginning of
the end of the two-party system through which Big Business has so
long ruled....it represents a permanent structural force in Ameri­
can politics." 57
This obviously rightist assessment is furthered by Dennis's
characterization of the Progressive Party as having a strong
working class base of support. "The new Progressive Party,
is becoming a mass people's party, and already embraces the most
active and politically conscious sections of the new labor and
people's coalition." 58
In work among Blacks, the Party was still in the vise grip of the
"coalition concept." Despite the faet that most ofthe leadership of
568 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

the N AACP had swung behind Truman's anti-communist dema­

gogy and launched a vicious ted-baiting campaign, the Party
pursued a policy of conciliation to the reformists.
In practice this meant the liquidatiqn of any left-led organi­
zations. Speaking at the convention, Ben Davis criticized "left"
errors which were "reflected".in the failure to give main attention
to aiding and supporting the N AACP. This organization is the
largest, most authoritative, and most representative among the
Negro people. It must be assisted and built." 59
No better example of the Party leadership's inability to
accurately assess its strength can be seen than Foster's concluding
remarks in his discussion of the upcoming struggle to prevent
conviction of the Party's indicted leadership. "There are tre­
mendous powers arrayed against us-the Government, the press,
the trade-union bureaucratic leadership, the Republican Party,
the Democratic Party, the courts, and all the rest of the machinery
of capitalism. But we have one great force on our side-the great
masses of American people."60
Why was the Party so divorced from reality-so unable to
accurately assess its position and strength in the working class and
oppressed masses and make the necessary steps to defend itselfl To
do this would have required a sharp break from the rightist and
tailist policies which had eroded the Party's base and influence. It
would require a thorough-going self-criticism and struggle to
break the grips of the rightism which had been carried over from
Browder and still remained strong in the new leadership.
This the Party's leadership was unable to do for they were
themselves the architects of the policy. They had short circuited
the emerging rank-and-file struggle against Browder and had led
the attack which brought the expulsion of the so-called disgruntled
left guilty of nothing more than attempting to complete the
struggle against Browder. And now they were just as fervent in
their refusal to re-evaluate post-war policies.
Foster led the way by declaring that it was "utterly false" to say
that at the 1945 Emergency Convention, the Party had not carried
through the struggle against Browder. He arrived at a centrist
solution, attributing such a view to "leftist renegade grouplets." He
 BROWDER'S TREACHER Y 569

steadfastly declared that "events since then have proved the

correctness of the coursc we then took" and that any weaknesses
stemmed from "failures .and shortcomings in carrying out a
fundamentally correct line."61
Thus the 1948 convention set the stage for another inner-Party
crisis. The upcoming trials would provide the opportunity for
expression of a full theoretical rationale---.---that of peaceful trans­
ition to socialism-for these basically liquidationist policies, and
leave the Party in the depths of a crisis from which it would never
recover.
 Chapter 21

A Party Weakened
from Within

By the morning after the November 1948 election, the Party's

house of cards was already beginning to collapse. In a surprise
upset over Republican Thomas E. Dewey, Truman was re-elected
president, with Henry Wallace receiving a scant million votes. The
illusions most Party leaders had held· of launching a third party on
firm foundations of farm-labor support were smashed, reflecting
our gross overestimation of the whole Progressive Party move­
ment. I and many of my friends wondered then what would
happen to the leadership's designs for the grand coalition.
It was in an atmosphere of increasing isolation and a rising red
scare that the Party prepared for the trial of the eleven indicted
leaders which began in January 1949. Since the end of the war, the
government had been winding up the machinery for a full scale
attack on the left. The Smith Aet, which had been passed in 1940,
was now being fully enforced.
Knowing full well that the Party still had strong roots among the
masses, the cold war offensive became U.S. imperialism's response
to the growing trend of world revolution. Imperialism emerged
from World War II in a greatly weakened position, as the Eastern
European countries joined the socialist camp and popular move­
ments swept the developing countries. "The popular forces of
revolution were on the march in all countries without exception,
Asia, Africa, Latin America and the West Indies," said R. Palme
Dutt. 1 The breach in the structure of world imperialism was
 A PARTY WEAKENED FROM WITHIN 571

widened by the emergence of socialist countries in eastern

Europe.
But most important, from the standpoint of its effect on colonial
people, was the victory of the Chinese Revolution. The success of
the national and socialist revolutions in China extended the
world's socialist sector to one-third of humanity, transforming the
balance of world forces in favor of the camp of socialism and
national liberation, giving sweeping impetus to the anti-imperialist
revolution. It was through this widening breach that the revo­
lutionary movements of the third world surged toward political
independence and the establishment of new sovereign states.
Objectively speaking, these developments could have greatly
strengthened our position in the fight against the government's
anti-communist offensive. The Party should have boldly opposed
this assault and done broad propaganda and agitation on the
source of these attacks. Instead, the right-wingers chose the
defeatist policy of furthering our retreat from the masses.
Personally, I often found inyself being trailed by FBI agents. I
couldn't get a job and found it difficult renting a place to live
without the FBI intervening. I remember my wife threatening to
call the health inspector on one of our slum landlords.
"Mrs. Hall," he said slyly, "I care about the health inspectors
about as much as your husband cares about the FBI."
Scores of communists and activists in the labor movement, the
Black movement and various anti-fascist committees were arres­
ted, indicted or brought before Congressional and Senate commit­
tccs to testify. 2 It was the era of deportations, theTaft-Hartley anti­
labor law, the loyalty oath and blacklists. 3 Gerhart Eisler, a
German who had been a Comintern rep to the U.S. in the thirties
nnd a good f riend of mine, was arrested and deported as a "master
Npy."
A group of ten Hollywood producers, directors and writers were
hlacklisted for their supposed communist leanings and served jail
Ncntences for refusing to testify before HU AC. Eugene Dennis was
convicted of contempt of Congress in June 1947 for refusing to
tcstify. Bill Patterson was charged with contempt of Congress after
hcing called a "nigger son-of-a-bitch" in a Senate hearing . and
572 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

shouting "Y ou're another son-of-a-bitch!" in response.

Pat and I were good friends at the time and also did some
political work together. One day in the summer of 1948, he called
me up on the phone. "Come on over here, Harry, there's somebody
I'd like you to meet."
I went around the corner to the building where he lived and
walked up to the apartment. Sitting there was Haywood Patterson,
one of the few remaining Scottsboro frame-up victims who had
not been paroled. He had just escaped from Kilby Prison. I
recognized him right away because he looked like his mother,
whom I had met in Chattanooga. He was a handsome young
man-about thirty-three at the time, well built and above average
in height-but his most outstanding feature was his big luminous
eyes.
Patterson told us the harrowing story of his prison escape and
about his experiences while in prison. As we sat there talking,
somebody, I don't remember who, got the idea that it would be a
good thing to get young Patterson's story down on paper. Pat
then suggested that we call Earl Conrad.
I thought this was a fine idea. I knew Conrad and thought a lot of
his work. As a young white man, he had done a good bit of writing
about the Black liberation struggle, even written for some Black
newspapers, and enjoyed wide respect among the masses.
Conrad came over to the apartment and immediately agreed to
work on the book. He took Haywood with him to his apartment
and, in two weeks, they wrote the story of Scottsboro Boy.
Haywood Patterson later went to Detroit to stay with his sister.
The Civil Rights Congress initiated a campaign to stop his
extradition, and Michigan's Governor G. Mennen (Soapy) Wil­
liams refused to sign the extradition papers, saying that the man
could not get a fair trial in Alabama. Unfortunately, Haywood
Patterson was soon after convicted of a murder resulting from a
barroom brawl. He was to remain in prison until he died in 1959.
In January 1949, I was looking for a way to make some money
and thought about sailing again. I wondered whether I would still
be able toget on a ship, since communists were being screened by
the Coast Guard. But I was lucky. They didn't seem to know me
 A PARTY WEAKENED FROM WITHIN 573

and I was able to get a Coast Guard pass. I signed on my old

wartime ship, the Moore-McCormack liner Uruguay, for a thirty­
eight day cruise to Buenos Aires as a waiter. It was my last voyage
as an NM U seaman.
As far as the crew was concerned, it was a different hall game.
The Curranites were firmly entrenched by this time and dominated
the ship. It was the first time I had sailed under such conditions and
only knew a few old shipmates who hadn't yet been screened out.
Congressman Bob LaFollette, Jr., .a progressive of the Henry
Wallace type, was a passenger on that cruise and was invited to
speak to us. I guess it was a sign of the times that a man of such
liberal reputation delivered as vicious an all-out attack on reds as
he did on that occasion.
I pretty much kept to myself on the trip. It was a pleasant though
uneventful voyage, the first time I had been in South America. We
stopped in Trinidad, curved out around the coast of Brazil to
Bahia, a city rich in the early history and culture of the Africans
brought over as slaves. Theo on to Rio de Janeiro, Santos (the port
of Sao Paolo), Montevideo, and finally Buenos Aires.
On returning to New York, I was assigned to do research for the
defense in the trial of the eleven communist leaders. I was glad to
get the assignment, glad to be doing some Party work for a change.
My job was to help Benjamin Davis and Robert Thompson in
preparation for their depositions and to anticipate questions that
might be asked by the prosecution. We worked closely with their
attorney, Harry Sacher, a very energetic and bright guy.
Like the other defendants, Thompson and Davis were charged
under the Smith Aet with conspiring to organize the CPUSA, "a
society, group, and assembly of persons who teach and advocate
the overthrow and destruction of the Government of the United
States of America by forces and violence, and knowingly and
willfully to advocate the overthrow and destruction of the
Government of the United States by force and violence." 4 The
other major charge was that of liquidating the CPA and conspiring
to reorganize the CPUSA.
Bob Thompson was a war hero who had fought in Spain and in
New Guinea during World War li, where he won the Distinguished
574 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Service Cross. At the time of his indictment, he was one of Foster's

proteges and was secretary of the New York District. He was
eventually sentenced to three years and, while in jail, was beaten
severely by a fascist thug. He never fully recovered from the head
wound he received as a result.
Ben Davis was by that time a member of the New York City
Council and the leading Black in the Party. He was a long-time
acquaintance of mine, as I have already mentioned, and we had
developed considerable political differences over the years. I was
nevertheless pleased to be working on his defense.
It was at this time that I met George Crockett, a young and very
idealistic Black attorney from Detroit. (Today he is ajudgein that
city.) I think some of his illusions about bourgeois democracy were
lost at this trial. He was once moved to tears of amazement at one
of the more crude and arbitrary rulings of Judge Medina. Crockett
spent thirty days in jail for contempt, along with the other
attorneys in the case: Sacher, Abraham Isserman, Louis McCabe
and Richard G ladstein.
The trial, which was held at the Federal Courthouse in Foley
Square in New York, lasted nine months. From the start, it was
clearly not a trial, but an inquisition of the Communist Party. The
press willingly colluded with the government attack and the
outcome of the case was a foregane conclusion. Presiding at this
mockery of justice was the eminent jurist, millionaire and
landlord-Judge Harold Medina. I went to the courtroom every
day and sat through the interminable, boring sessions. I saw the
viciousness and red-baiting of Medina and the prosecutor, Francis
McGohey, first band, as well as the unseemly array of stool
pigeons the government had mustered to its side. Much has been
said and written about this trial, and I will not go into much more
detail here.
It was significant in that it was here that the theory of peaceful
transition to socialism was first put forward as Party policy. 5 The
defense had two choices in terms of a legal strategy for this trial.
An offensive strategy would have meant proclaiming the right to
advocate revolution, to stand firmly on the First Amendment, to
make the courtroom a tribune of the people as Dimitrov had done
 A PARTY WEAKENED FROM WITHIN 575

when the Nazis charged him with burning the Reichstag in 1933. A
defensive line would have meant trying to prove that the defen­
dants didn't do what they were charged with and would involve a
lengthy explanation of the history of the communist movement
worldwide.
There was some struggle over these two lines, but it was the
defensive strategy which was in the main adopted. Foster's
deposition served as one of the Party's main lines of defense. In it
he outlines a course of the workers' struggle for socialism via a
people's front government, the perspective for achieving socialism
in the U.S. along constitutional and peaceful channels.
Foster elaborated some on this point a year and a half later:
The establishment of a people's democracy in the United
States would signify that the coalition of workers and their
allies had won a decisive political victory over monopoly
capital and that a government had come into power, com­
mitted to the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of
socialism. Such a government ...might evolve either from a
people's front coalition government through an internal
regrouping of forces, or it might be elected by the masses of
the American people after the people's front government had
served its ...function. In either event the working class and its
allies ... would carry through their democratic program, curb­
ing all violent and illegal efforts of monopolist reaction to
defeat it and set up a fascist state. 6
Foster obviously saw the development of this theory not just as
a defensive legal strategy, but as a political line. He was later to
describe it as, "the most important theoretical advance ever
made by the CPUSA on its own initiative."7
On October 14, 1949, the eleven were convicted. All received
five year sentences, except Thompson whose sentence was reduced
because of his wartime record. The case was appealed all the way
to the Supreme Court, where the convictions were upheld. They
started serving their sentences on July 2, 1951, with the exception
of Thompson, Hall, Winston and Green, all of whom went
underground. 8 They too were eventually captured or turned
themselves in and served some time behind bars.
Released from my assignment on the defense team, I again
576 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

started looking around for a way to support myself. I would have

liked to continue as a seaman, but that was impossible since it was
only a matter of time before the Coast Guard would catch up with
my record. Some friends suggested that I write a sequel to my
book, which had been translated in all of the European socialist
countries with the exception of Yugoslavia. If I got to China, I was
sure it would be published there. Writers' unions in the various
countries would undoubtedly sponsor lectures for me and ask me
to write articles.
The more I thought of the idea, the more I liked it. I discussed it
with Belle and she was enthusiastic, agreeing to come along as my
secretary. All we needed now was an OK from the Party. I raised
the matter in the Negro Commission, which was at that time
headed by Pettis Perry. The project was approved and we were
given a green light to raise funds.
Everything went along fine. A few fund raising parties were
given-one by Paul Robeson. Some affluent individuals were also
solicited. Dashiell Hammett contributed a thousand dollars and
said that he would be satisfied if I wrote another hook as good as
the first. In a few weeks, several thousand dollars had been raised
and Belle and I booked passage on the French liner DeGrasse.
A couple of days before sailing, I stopped in at the Daily Worker
office to pick up a press card. To my profound surprise, the editor,
Johnny Gates, refused to give me one. This was all the more
astounding in view of the faet that Gates himself had sent a letter
accompanying my application for a passport, supporting my claim
that one of the purposes for my going abroad was to write a series
of articles for the Daily Worker. When I asked Gates why he
refused, he mumbled something about not giving press cards out
to everybody.
Stunned and speechless, I went upstairs to the national office
where I saw Henry Winston, national organizational secretary. At
that time I thought a lot of Winston. He had given me much
needed support in overcoming the opposition of sundry bureau­
crats and white chauvinists to publishing my hook.
I told him what had happened. "What goes on here?" I asked.
"Anybody can get a Daily Worker card. Why am I refused one on
the day of my departure?"
 A PARTY WEAKENED FROM WITHIN 577

Winston looked perturbed. He went back into the office, I

presumed either to call Gates or to consult with other members of
the Secretariat. He came back with an embarrassed expression on
his face and said, "We can't do anything about it now." (Evidently
it was Gates's decision, and the Secretariat felt they could not
overrule him at the time.) He then said, "What's a Daily Worker
card, Harry, you really don't need one."
"At least it would be some kind of credential," I replied. At the
time I only had a press card from the California Eagle, a
progressive Black newspaper in Los Angeles which was published
by Mrs. Charlotta Bass, and a letter from the Council on African
Affairs.
Winston went back into the office again and upon returning he
asked, "Harry, weren't you a friend of Bill Dunne?" (Dunne was
among those who had been expelled as a "left sectarian.")
I was astounded. "Sure. So a lot of people were friends of
Dunne. William Foster was also a friend of his. Is that a reason for
denying me a press card?"
He told me that I had been seen shaking hands with him
recently.
"That's a lie," I said. Then I remembered. Some members of the
staff of the Jefferson School had given a reception forme on the
occasion of the publishing of my hook. While speaking, I noticed
Bill Dunne in the audience. As I stepped down from the platform,
he rushed forward to shake my hand. Knowing it would put me on -
the spot in front of a lot of people, I turned my back on him. Later,
I felt very bad about it too.
I told Winston all of this and then asked if there were someone
accusing me of a political association with Dunne. He evaded all
my questions and said that the matter could not be settled then. ·
"Go ahead, Harry, get on the ship." We shook bands and I left
the office.
I called up James Ford, who, since his fall from leadership, had
bccome much friendlier to the left. I told him what had happened.
I-le said that "they" were trying to keep me from going. I didn't
know who "they" were, but I certainly knew that I had enemies in
the Party.
578 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

PARIS

We sailed at noon the next day, and a number of friends saw us

off. Someone asked, "What are you looking so gloomy about? You
should be happy."
"I am," I lied. We were leaving under a cloud and I had a gnawing
premonition that there were storms ahead. We were depressed
during the voyage across despite the faet that our fellow passengers
included Lena Horne, her husband, Lenny Hayton, Chico
Hamilton and his band, and Kenneth Spencer, the well known
basso. All were friends of the left.
It was April 1950, and our spirits rose at the sight of Paris in the
spring. We put up at a small hotel on the Rue Montmartre and
immediately set out to contact friends and people who would be of
help to us in our project. Our most important contact in Paris was
an old friend, Bill Gebert.
Bill was Polish. He had been secretary of the Illinois District of
the Party and lived half his life in the U nited States, but he had not
succeeded in getting citizenship. He had been among the group of
foreign comrades who had been rounded up and deported a couple
of years before. Returning to Poland, he was assigned to trade
union work and had become a representative to the World
Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) and a member of its
secretariat located in Paris. We were delighted to see each other.
After giving him the low down on the situation in the U.S., I told
him about my project and asked if he could be of help.
He immediately picked up the phone and called the Polish
Ambassador, who invited all three of us to dinner at the Polish
Embassy the next evening. We met the ambassador, the well­
known Polish poet, Jerzy Tutrament, who after hearing about my
project suggested that we make Poland our jump-off place. We
were fortunate, he said, for a world writers' conference was to be
held in Warsaw that summer.
It would be easy for him to arrange for me and my wife to attend
it as guests of the Polish Writers' Union. We could then stay in
Poland while making contacts and arrangements for a visit to
other socialist countries. He said that he would take the matter up
 A PARTY WEAKENED FROM WITHIN 579

immediately with the proper authorities and assured us there

would be no difficulty. He asked us to come around to the Polish
Consulate during the next few days and apply for visas. He would
personally see that they were put through.
What a relief! At last we were on our way.
It was at this time that we were introduced to Blackman, a West
African poet and then editor of the English edition of the World
Peace Movement magazine, which was published in Paris. He
knew William Patterson and Paul Robeson, and later proved to be
one of the best friends we had in Paris.
We met Gabriel Marie D'Arboussier, a representative from the
lvory Coast, who was then vice-president of the French Union, a
member of the Chamber of Deputies and general secretary of the
African Democratic Rally, a liberation movement embracing the
former French colonies of West Africa. It was through him that I
met a number of black deputies and senators, including Felix
Houphouet-Boigny, president of the rally. Although a millionaire
and owner of a large plantation, he was then considered a
progressive. (Today he is president of the Ivory Coast Republic
and quite conservative.)
Then there was a young Frenchman named Herve, who was the
editor of Action magazine, a progressive Parisian journal. He
interviewed D'Arboussier, Belle and myself for his paper. We had
a very cordial discussion of the similarities and differences between
the struggles of the colonially oppressed people in Africa and
Black people in the U .S. Stimulated by this discussion, I wrote an
nrticle on the condition of Blacks in the U.S. for the paper of the
anti-colonialist youth movement at the Sorbonne.
One of my most memorable experiences in Paris was the Bastille
Day Parade of July,14, 1950. Tens of thousands of people gathered
to march through the working class districts of Paris. Communist
Party leaders like Maurice Thorez and Jacques Duel os shared the
speakers' platform with Black deputies, senators and other dig­
nitaries from the former French colonies with whom they had,
through the post-war years, developed a close relationship.
Belle and I were in the parade and it was a very exciting
and invigorating experience for us both. The Korean War had just
580 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

broken out and I remember the militant chants of "La Coree aux
Coreens (Korea for the Koreans). "We saw thousands of Algerians
lining up in the side streets and preparing to join the march.
In Paris we were never bored. Our new friends took us
everywhere. D' Arboussier took us to his home in the country. We
also visited Houphouet-Boigny at his chateau about thirty kil­
ometers from Paris. We met a number of African senators and
deputies, and D' Arboussier was organizing a banquet in my
honor.
By this time, however, we began to worry about our project. It
was drawing near the date of the Writers' Conf erence in W arsaw,
and even some American delegates began passing through Paris
on their way to the conference. For instance, we heard that Joe
North, a well-known communist writer, was in town on his way to
Warsaw. Others, like Mrs. Bass, were going to the World Peace
Conference in Prague. Still we had received no word from the
Polish Embassy. We had called there several times, and we were
told that the visas had not come through yet.
Bill Gebert was out of town on a long tour of Asia and North
Africa for the WFTU, so we had no way of finding out what was
behind all the delay. We had been in Paris almost three months
now and to add to our anxiety, we were pretty sure that we were
being followed. When the conference convened in Warsaw, we
knew very definitely that something was wrong. Then we realized
that we hadn't seen D'Arboussier or Blackman in days.
While sitting in our hotel room one night in deep depression,
there was a knock at the door and a good friend of ours, an African
(whose name I won't mention in this context), entered. He was
frowning and we knew it was bad news. "What's up?" I asked.
"I've got some bad news for you," he said. He then proceeded to
tel1 us that a few days earlier he had been called in to see a
representative of the Central Committee of the French Party and
had been told that they had it from reliable sources that Harry
Haywood was a spy of the U.S. State Department.
Our f riend said that he had been horrified by the news and
insisted that it could not possibly be true. "I told him that I had
known you only in Paris, but that you had come with !etters of
 A PARTY WEAKENED FROM WITHIN 581

introduction from Paul Robeson, William Patterson and others.

Since then I had received !etters from other friends, verifying your
credentials and asking me to do everything to expedite your
project. So I told him," he continued, "that they were making a
horrible mistake. But the representative of the Central Committee
insisted that their sources were reliable, that they had the
information from their security people. Furthermore, it did not
originate from here, but from over there (in the U.S.)."
He told me further that the French Central Committee had sent
word out to all progressive organizations in Paris, warning them
about me and requesting that I be barred from all of their offices as
an enemy agent. "He then warned me, under pain of disciplinary
action, to sever my relationship with you and under no cir­
cumstances was I to inform you of these charges. I thought about
this a few days and finally decided to violate their discipline
because I was sure that they were wrong. It was terribly unfair to
you and your wife not to have told you about it."
We sat there stunned. Finally our friend asked, "Harry, do you
have any bonafides besides the !etters from the Council on African
Affairs? Haven't you got anything from the Party itself?"
I admitted I had nothing.
Then he said, "You had better get in touch with them as quick as
possible." He rose and said, "I wish you good people the hest of
luck. I'm sure that things will turn out all right. And that we will
meet under more pleasant circumstances." He embraced us and
left.
Now, it had become clear why we had not received our Polish
visa; why D'Arboussier and other friends had stopped coming
around; why we were being tailed, probably both by the U.S.
Embassy and the French Communist Party; and why I had heard
no more about the affair being planned for me by the African
Democratic Rally. We were now completely isolated.
We went immediately to the Grand Hotel on the Boulevard des
Capucines, across from the Opera House, where I telephoned
Patterson in New York. I told him of our predicament and asked
him to relay the message immediately to the Secretariat. He was of
rnurse astounded and promised he would do so first thing in the
582 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

morning. He told us to keep our spirits up and that I would hear

from someone in a few days.
That night I had my first ulcer attack. The next morning, I called
the WFTU to see if Gebert had returned. Fortunately, he had and
we took a cab to his office. As I told him the story, he kept shaking
his head and muttering, "Unbelievable." Finally, after I had
finished, he said, "I had heard things were not so good back there,
but I didn't think they were that bad." He then told us that
Tutrament had been assigned a new job as president ofthe Polish
Writers' Union and that there was now a new ambassador.
He then picked up the phone and called the Polish Embassy to
find out what had happened to our applications for visas.
Listening intently for a moment or two, he put down the receiver,
then shook his head and said, "They say, Harry, that they did not
find it possible to give you a visa at this time. That's all they would
say." It was now apparent to me that the word had been spread
throughout the international communist community that I was a
spy. But by that time I had become quite immune to shock.
Several days later, I received a letter from Patterson in which he
stated that he had brought the matter before the Secretariat. They
were all profoundly shocked and all disclaimed any knowledge of
the source of the spy charge, denying that it came from there. He
said that they were taking the matter up and that I should stand by
to hear from Winston in a couple of days.
The letter from Winston arrived, expressing his regrets and those
of the other leading comrades over the unfortunate turn of events
which had prevented me from proceeding with my project. He
assured me that they all had the fullest confidence in my integrity
and were profoundly shocked by the charges. He went on further
to explain that during the war, communication lines with other
parties had been broken. They had not yet been fully restored and
per haps that was the source of all this confusion. He suggested that
we return to the States while they straightened the matter out and
then start over again, this time under the auspices of the Party,
with the proper credentials.
It was August and we ran into the rush of Americans returning
home when we tried to book passage. The only thing available was
 A PARTY WEAKENED FROM WITHIN 583

first class passage on a ship, sailing from Antwerp, Belgium, in

nhout two weeks. Winston wired me $600 for fare and expenses.
With time on our hands and anxious to get out of Paris, we went
to Amsterdam to visit Otto and Hermie Huiswood. After serving
ns head of the International Negro Trade Union Committee in
Hamburg, Germany, and being forced to flee from one country
ufter another in the face of the fascist advance of the thirties,
Huiswood returned to the U.S. just before the fall of France. With
l/ .S. entry into the war, however, he returned to his native Dutch
Guyana where he was soon thrown into a concentration camp by
lhe Dutch. When he was released after the war, the U.S.
government refused to let him back into the country. Huiswood
und his wife then decided to settle in Holland where he was
rccognized as a citizen.

COLD WAR

Finally we boarded the ship at Antwerp for an uneventful

passage home. We were met at the dock in New York by Maude
White and her husband, Arthur Katz. Immediately upon landing,
I got in touch with the national office. I was told that a meeting of
the Secretariat had been arranged for the next morning.
Arriving at the national office, I was met by my old friend,
Claude Lightfoot, whom the leadership had brought in from
Chicago especially for the occasion. "Now Harry, hold your
lemper, keep cool," he pleaded with me. "Just keep cool and we'll
work things out." Nearly the whole of the Politburo was present
for the meeting, including Hall, Stachel, Winston, Perry and
Davis.
I was very angry and demanded that something be done. "After
all," I said, "the French said it came from here." No one in the
leadership appeared to have any knowledge of where the rumors
had originated. After considerable discussion, the meeting came to
a very unsatisfactory conclusion. While it was generally agreed
that I should return to Paris with proper Party credentials, nothing
to my knowledge was ever done to get at the source of the security
584 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

breach.
A few days later I went to see Louis Burnham, a young Black
friend of mine who had been enthusiastic about my project and
had helped to sponsor and promote it. Lou was then editor of
Freedom, Paul Robeson's paper, and he greeted me warmly.
"What the hell happened over there?'' he asked, and I ran down the
whole story for him.
He said he had heard about the charges against me at a meeting
of the staff. "We were dumbfounded." He named the staff
members, all of whom I knew. Then with a thoughtful look he said,
"One guy said, 'I am not surprised to hear that about Harry.'"
"Who was that guy?" I interrupted.
Lou suddenly clammed up and refused to tel1 me.
I pleaded with him, but he only said, "Ah, it doesn't matter,
Harry. It occurred in a staff meeting, and I can't go around
circulating stories about what happened in staff meetings."
I left Lou and walked down 125th Street, wondering who my
accuser was. I never found out and never went back to Paris.
On returning from Paris in the fall of 1950, I could see thatthe
Party was in a state of panic and hysteria, retreating in the face of
the government's attack on the Party and the left. The McCarran
Aet had just been passed, making communism a foreign con­
spiracy and communists foreign agents. Described by many as a
blueprint for fascism, the aet called for the registration of
communists and laid the basis for deportation and prosecution
under the Smith Aet of thousands of Party members.
In September 1949, I had been among a crowd of 15,000 at a
peace rally in Peekskill, New York, when a gang of fascist thugs
attacked the crowd just as Paul Robeson was on stage singing. In
late 1951, eighty-three year old W.E.B. DuBois was tried on a
charge of espionage for his sponsorship of the World Peace
Appeal, a petition against the war in Korea. The government
accused a quiet young Jewish couple from the Lower East Side,
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, of being master atom spies. They were
arrested in July 1950 and executed three years later, despite a
massive international defense campaign on their behalf. Following
the jailing of the Party leaders in 1951, secondary Party leaders
 A PARTY WEAKENED FROM WITHIN 585

were indicted in a number of states. These included Elizabeth

Gurley Flynn, Claudia Jones, Pettis Perry, Betty Gannett, Al
Lannon, Oleta O'Connor Yates and Steve Nelson.
Years of illusions about bourgeois democracy had left the Party
virtually unprepared for this governmental assault. Our Party had
clearly never expected such a development and had not built an
effective secret apparatus.
When we did make a feeble attempt to set up some sort of
underground in the early fifties, its main purpose was not to
continue the work under changed conditions, but to bide the
Party, to weather the storm, so to speak. This period of repression,
which would normally have been anticipated and planned for by
communists, came as a surprise to our leadership.
Their immediate response was to greatly overestimate the
attack. Party offices and sections were closed down, mass work cut
back and membership consciously allowed to drop off. The
Politburo dissolved the Southern region of the Party.
This approach only served to increase the hysterical atmosphere
in the Party, as well as taking a concrete step toward its
organizational liquidation. I went to see Henry Winston at the
national office the day before he was scheduled to begin serving his
sentence, but no one was there except Ben Davis.
I asked him what he thought I could do to help the Party, but
decided not to take his advice when he said, "Aw,just go out and
lose yourself."
Thousands of other Party members, however, were actually
directed to go out and start new lives for themselves, to have no
contact with the Party, to do no political work. Many were never
heard from again.
While the top leadership was in jail, Pettis Perry and Betty
Gannett became the administrative committee of the Party, a sort
of caretaker leadership. They made day-to-day policy decisions
und provided the main link with the underground section of the
lcadership. Foster remained as Party chairman, but his health kept
him mostly confined to his apartment in the Bronx.
Gannett anci Perry actively fostered such liquidationist moves.
While many comrades feared to re-register, the Party also
586 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

deliberately lost contact with hundreds of its members. There are

some high level Party functionaries who believe that a secret
decision was made by the National Board at this time to drop one­
third of the membership in order to make the Party a smaller, more
manageable cadre organization. 9
Whether or not this actually took place, it is in effect what
happened. In 1956, Foster evaluated the period of the cold war and
characterized the "approach taken to security" as "the worst
error of the whole Cold War period. It did our Party great injury in
losses of members and mass contacts," he wrote. 1 ° Foster incor­
rectly characterized this error as "leftism," instead of seeing it as
part of the whole rightward retreat of the Party. Police and FBI
infiltration reached new heights in this period.

THE PARTY'S PHONY WAR

Things weren't easy for Belle and myself at this time either. We
were still broke, unemployed and unemployable. I was working
with the Party's Education Department and teaching some classes,
as well as working with William Patterson on We Charge
Genocide. But none of this paid any money.
It seemed that the FBI was always about one step behind me.
When I did get ajob, usually as a waiter, I would be fired a few days
later for some inexplicable reason. Eventually a friend helped me
get into Local Six of the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union,
and I was then able to hold down some jobs with a measure of
security.
Against this background of panic, hard times and police
infiltration and harassment, the Party continued its march to the
right. lnevitably our revolutionary line and program·on the Afro­
American question was·Ieft to fall by the way. Concomitantly,
white chauvinist attitudes and practices were once more on the
rise. What was needed was a reaffirmation of our revolutionary
line and an intensive campaign of education, in combination with
 A PARTY WEAKENED FROM WITHIN 587

mass work. The leadership responded instead with what I would

characterize as the "phony wat against white chauvinism."
Rather than coming out wholeheartedly in support of our
rcvolutionary position, a kind of moral crusade was launched
which was completely divorced from any mass work. Refusing to
cxamine the full implications of Black oppression as national
oppression, it was assumed that chauvinist practices could be
climinated by wiping out wrong ideas and attitudes of the Party
rank and file. White chauvinism came to be considered as a sort of
phenomenon; a thing in itself, separate from the fight for Black
rights and proletarian revolution.
In the end, white chauvinism was strengthened as a result of this
"phony war." In discussing the period, I cannot overemphasize the
effects of FBI and police infiltration, provocation and incitement
and their consistently and consciously disruptive activities. I am
sure that agents were involved from start to finish on both sides of
the fence, although none were actually exposed through the
campaign.
The struggle began with an article in the June 1949 Political
Affairs which was written by Pettis Perry, newly appointed head
of the National Negro Commission. 11 Perry pointed to numerous
manifestations of white chauvinism which undoubtedly the Party
had to overcome in order to play a leading role in the rising civil
rights struggles of the time. But Perry was not capable of giving
correct leadership to this struggle since he shared the general
rightist orientation of the National Committee. In faet, all this
activity on his part it seemed to me was a cover for our failure to
boldly take up or initiate mass struggle in the Black movement,
leaving us to tai] the NAACP.
From the start, the struggle emphasized administrative solu­
tions (expulsions, penalties and removing people from leadership)
in a complete distortion of proper communist methods of criticism
and self-criticism. The purpose of criticism is to strengthen the
Party, to consolidate the cadres behind the correct line and
practice through exposing errors and rectifying them in practice.
When Yokinen, the Finnish communist from Harlem, was found
guilty of white chauvinism in 1931, his program for rectification
588 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

involved playing a leading role in the movement for Black rights.

Y okinen did this, fully vindicating himself in the eyes of the Party
and the Black masses.
No such actions were taken in the "phony war." lnstead,
inquisitorial type hearings and committees were set up-veteran
cadres raked over the coals (often with little or no cause), censured,
and many expelled. A view developed which contended that the
Party could not move forward, that mass work had to wait, until
all vestiges of white chauvinism were driven from the ranks. This
view was thoroughly idealist and contradicted the experiences of
the socialist countries, where the struggle against great nation
chauvinism goes on even in the period of socialist development.
This purist approach led the fight to take on a sort of intramural
character in which success was measured not by the organization
of mass struggles in defense of Black rights, but in the number of
comrades against whom disciplinary action was taken.
It was an atmosphere which was conducive to the development
of a particularly paternalistic and patronizing form of white
chauvinism, as well as to a rise in petty bourgeois narrow
nationalism among Blacks. The growth of the nationalist side of
this distortion was directly linked to the breakdown of the basic
division of labor among communists in relation to the national
question. This division of labor, long ago established in our Party
and the international communist movement, places main respon­
sibility for combating white chauvinism on the white comrades,
with Blacks having main responsibility for combating narrow
nationalist deviations.
When Pettis Perry came forward as the "chief prosecutor" of
white chauvinists, this division of tasks, so essential to building
firm unity of the races, was clearly violated. On the one hand it
allowed the leading white comrades to abdicate their respon­
sibilities in fighting chauvinism and rallying white workers in
defense of Black rights;. while on the other, it left Perry and other
leading Blacks as the "defenders" of Blacks against white chauvin­
ists. The dangers of narrow nationalism were ignored.
The view developed that any aet by a white person which any
Black resented was, ipso facto, white chauvinism. Such an analysis
 A PARTY WEAKENED FROM WITHIN 589

was of course completely devoid of class content. In the final

analysis, it was used to attack our revolutionary line on the Black
national question which was always based on the fight for
international solidarity of the working class.
Both tendencies, racist paternalism and narrow nationalism,
merged in a line of capitulation to the imperialist ruling class. The
common denominator of both, their theoretical foundation, rested
in the treatment of peoples comprising an oppressed nation as a
socially undifferentiated mass. All Blacks, regardless of their class,
were considered revolutionary.
At the time, I wrote about the character white supremacy took
on, saying, "In this case, the capitulation of white comrades to
Negro nationalism is in itself an expression of white chauvinism,
reflecting a hangover of bourgeois liberal, paternalistic attitudes.
Of all forms of white chauvinism," I wrote, "patronization is the
most subtle, insidious, and perhaps most pernicious type, because
it parades under the banner of 'concern' for the Negro (sometimes
hiding a real desertion of the struggle for Negro rights). /tis a form
which tolerates, coddles, encourages, and panders to Negro
bourgeois nationalism as it retreats before it. " 12
A double standard existed whereby white comrades might
criticize other whites, but not Black comrades. A white making a
criticism of a Black comrade for narrow nationalism was usually
branded a chauvinist. This denied Blacks the benefit of criticism
and self-criticism. I remember how such patronization thoroughly
angered many of our working class Black cadres.
As the struggle wore on, and it lasted a good four years, it
assumed a more and more vicious character. I have no doubt that
the FBI considered it a job well done. White comrades began to
fear visiting Black comrades, afraid they might do or say
something that could be considered white chauvinist. The war was
even carried into the realm of semantics. Comrades who used
expressions like "black coffee" or "black sheep" were liable to be
charged with chativinism. 13
I was at the wedding of a mixed couple when someone, whom I
and others strongly suspected of being an agent, led a walkout in
protest of the wedding cake. The bride and groom at the top were
590 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

both white. Earl Conrad was a very close friend of the Party.1 4 In
1950, he wrote Rock Bottom, the story of a Black woman in the
Florida Everglades, where Blacks lived under very primitive and
slave-like conditions. 15 Somehow this hook, which was based on
actual interviews, was construed to be degrading to Black people,
and Conrad was heavily censured by the Party for white chau­
vinism. There were countless other incidents like these.
The whole thing really struck home when Belle was accused of
white chauvinism in early 1953. She had been working as a
manager at the J efferson School lunchroom. One day a young
Black man returned to the counter where she was serving and
stated that she had given him twenty-five cents too much change.
Belle thanked him and asked how she had made the error since she
didn't want to repeat it. The young man opened his hand with
change still in it and Belle pointed with her index finger, noting
that she had given him too many quarters. Later that afternoon,
the young man came back and told her he resented her aet.
"What aet?" she asked.
"The aet of white chauvinism when you went into my hand."
.Belle explained that she had only meant to check herself and
certainly intended no insult. The student refused to be mollified by
this and insisted that it was white chauvinism.
Belle refused to accept this view .and they debated a few minutes,
when suddenly he asked, "Who is your husband?"
"What does my husband have to do with this?" she asked,
refusing to answer his question.
"You're a white chauvinist, like all the rest of white Americans,"
he shouted and left the cafeteria.
Belle reported the incident to Doxey Wilkerson who was on the
staff of the school. At the time, he agreed with her that no aet of
white chauvinism was involved. He explained to Belle that there
was a tendency to distort the struggle against white chauvinism
among some of the younger students. About a month later,
· however, a committee was set up to investigate the matter and
found Belle guilty of seventeen separate acts of white chauvinism
stemming from the incident, and of developing an entire white
chauvinist line.
 A PARTY WEAKENED FROM WITHIN 591

It was to be eight months before she was cleared of these

charges and even then the leadership tried to cover up the political
questions in order to "establish peace." Involved in the accusations
that were brought against Belle were not only the school staff, but
representatives of the state leadership as well. All exhorted her to
accept the view of the student, since her refusal only "com­
pounded" the errors of white chauvinism.
The student later admitted that he had asked about her
husband because he believed that "most women who marry
Negro men are more chauvinistic than others." Not a word of
criticism of the student was raised with regards to this slander. In
faet, his position was openly supported by a Black woman on the
school staff and by the state representative.
The attack on my wife was unmistakably directed at me as well.
If Belle were a white chauvinist, then what must her Black husband
be? Surely the most base, groveling conciliator of white chau­
vinism. The incident clearly served the interest of the rising
reformist trend in the Party.
Such situations were fertile ground for the enemy, whose
infiltrations were stepped up both within and without the Party.
l'd often find two characters from the FBI waiting for me at my
doorstep, and they would follow me down to the subway station a
few blocks away at 103rd Street and Central Park West.
"Hey Harry, how long are you going to stand for what they're
doing to you and your wife?" they would ask.
"Look what they did to you in California, and in Spain! Why
don't you get next to yourself, man, and cooperate with us? We
don't want you to take the stand."
I would walk along, paying them no mind, until we reached the
station entrance. It was early morning rush hour and hundreds of
people, including many progressives and CP members who knew
me, were entering the station.
The agents would follow me right up to the rail and then holler,
"Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Haywood. Thank you very
much."
The idea of this kind of harassment was obviously to break
down my defenses and add yet another recruit to their roster of
592 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

informants and stool pigeons. I got to know this pair quite well, as
they were my regular tails for several months.
In the meantime, I became more and more concerned with the
Party's so-called war on white chauvinism. The whole method and
atmosphere surrounding Belle's case, the persecution of a devoted
working class cadre, smacked to me of the most crass form of
opportunism and stool pigeonry. During all the meetings con­
cerning the matter, there was no attempt to get at the substance of
the charges, only to convince Belle that she was guilty. It amounted
to no more than political bullying and a bureaucratic stifling of all
criticism.
I prepared a document in protest of the frame-up and presented
it at a meeting where the charges were finally dropped. In the
paper, I discussed not only Belle's case, but the broader implica­
tions such distortions had for the unity of Black and white students
at the school and in the Party as a whole. I was convinced that
something more had to be done about the situation and went to
talk about it with Foster at his apartment in the Bronx. He and
Belle were old friends from the miners' struggles in Kentucky and
Pennsylvania. He was concerned about her case, as well as the
general situation in the Party. He told me that the Party in Denver
had been virtually liquidated through just such distortions. I
showed him the document I had prepared and he invited me to
attend a meeting of the National Board to discuss the matter.
When the topic came up on the agenda, Pettis Perry began his
usual ritual recounting of yet another incident of white chau�
vinism. But I took the wind out of his sails when I pointed to the
many distortions in this struggle. "Yes," I said, "there is white
chauvinism in the Party, but it has combined with petty bourgeois
nationalism and we must wage a fight on both fronts."
I was very angry when Foster cut me off. True, the Party had to
stop this campaign, it had gone too far, he said. There were too
many excesses. But there was no danger of petty bourgeois
nationalism. What was involved here, according to Foster, was
that old perennial Party menace, "left sectarianism." This line
seemed absurd to me, but Foster was able to win over the National
Board with it. Following the meeting, Foster wrote an article,
 A PARTY WEAKENED FROM WITHIN 593

"Left Sectarianism in the Fight for Negro Rights and Against

White Chauvinism," which was successful in putting an end to this
most vicious and destructive campaign. 16
Foster's line of attack, however, effectively took the heat off the
right and capitulated fully to the bourgeois reformists in the Party.
Foster failed miserably to understand how the whole campaign
served the right all along the way, from the further physical
liquidation of the Party to pulling back from a leading role (or any
role) in the mass movement, to substituting petty bourgeois
nationalism and demagogy for our revolutionary line. White
chauvinism was actually strengthened, becoming increasingly
entrenched in the Party.
I tend to think that a number of honest comrades were not able
to take a correct stand in this struggle because of a failure to
understand the class basis of petty bourgeois nationalism and the
potential threat it posed to the Party. The view was then prevalent
that narrow nationalism was only a "reflex," a subjective reaction
to white chauvinism. To combat it, one need only take up the fight
against white chauvinism.
This view is fundamentally incorrect, although chauvinism
certainly does stimulate such tendencies. Narrow nationalism has
its own social and economic base among the ghetto nationalists of
the Black petty bourgeois and bourgeois strata. The nationalism of
these sections reflects, in the main, the struggle of the small Black
cntrepreneur or the middle class professional whose market and
sphere of activity is confined almost exclusively to the ghetto. Such
strata find themselves in competition both with small and
medium-sized white business in the Black community, as well as
with the monopolists. The nationalism of these strata has two
aspects, one expressing their aspirations for social equality and
against Jim Crow, the other expressing the tendency to retain the
segregated market. Thus their stand toward imperialism is con­
tinually vacillating. I think too many comrades tended to confuse
the progressive national aspirations of Black people forliberation,
with narrow nationalism as an ideology.
I can now see in retrospect how well all this fit in with the
growing attack on the Party's revolutionary line, which based itself
594 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

on the fighting, principled unity of Black and white, and the

leading role of the working class in the struggle for equality. As
manifested within the Party, the petty bourgeois nationalist
deviation reflected a lack of faith in the working class and its
communist vanguard. How, the pessimists wondered, could the
"inherently" racist white working class ever be rallied to support
the fight for Black liberation? This pessimism was extended even
to Black comrades who seriously fought for the internationalist
position in the Party, as was evident in the attack on Belle and
myself. This position is actually one of retreat before the ideology
of white chauvinism, equivalent to giving up to the white
supremacist enemy.
The "phony war" created hostility, bitterness and distrust
among formerly close comrades. This was reflected in the break up
of the Party organization and individuals into hostile camps. The
constant pressures of outlandish charges, unprincipled accusa­
tions, police harassment and seemingly unresolvable antagonisms,
had a telling effect on many individual relationships, including my
relationship with Belle. Such circumstances eventually led to the
breakup of our marriage in 1955.
A prime example of the ideological confusion and lack of clarity
which accompanied the distorted struggle against white chau­
vinism was the Jefferson School Memorandum, whose principal
author was Doxey Wilkerson. This document originated as papers
prepared for an educational conference on "race theories" held by
the school in the fall of 1951. The purported reason for the
conference was to develop further "the Marxist conception of the
Negro question as a national question." 17 But in the guise
of polemics against "bourgeois racist ideology," it turned out to be
another attack on our revolutionary position.
The authors' position was cloaked in a lot of pseudo-scientific
verbiage, but boiled down to the outlandish argument that race
and racial characteristics had nothing to do with the special
oppression of Afro-Americans. The position was based on two
fallacious ideas. The first was that "there are no races of
mankind and the term 'Negro race' has no meaning and should be
abandoned." The second was that the definition of "Negro"
 A PARTY WEAKENED FROM WITHIN 595

referred to a person who "shares the common psychological make­

up of the Negro people of the United States." 18
I was quite alarmed when I first read this memorandum.
Coming as it did in the midst of the destructive campaign against
white chauvinism, I felt it would further distort the struggle and
introduce new confusion into an already poorly understood area.
Just how would the Party explain to the masses of Blacks that
race was nota factor in their subjugation? How would the Party
develop struggle against white chauvinism among the white
workers if the "Negro race" did not exist? How would the Party
uphold the special internationalist responsibilities of Afro-Ameri­
cans to support the struggles of blacks in Africa and Latin
America? Obviously, adopting Doxey's line would lead to isolat­
ing the Party from the masses of Blacks, abandoning the struggle
to build a mass movement in support of Black rights among white
workers, and undermining the militant solidarity of Afro-Ameri­
cans with blacks in the third world.
I immediately wrote a rebuttal which I planned to give to the
editorial board of Political Ajfairs. I argued that racial persecution
of the Negro people is a particular form and device of national
oppression, and that it was wrong to counterpose the two. 19 It was
clearly idealism and not Marxism to try to overcome the
phenomena ofracial differences and white chauvinism by discard­
ing the term "race." This denial of reality was one of the more
bizarre forms taken by assimilationism.
The publication and circulation of the Wilkerson memorandum
touched off considerable debate and discussion, which would last
for almost a year. When I submitted my article to Political Affairs,
I felt it would add to this discussion and help clarify the issues. I
found, however, that Doxey and the co-authors of the memo­
randum had a protector in Betty Gannett. She was very reluctant
to publish my article for its sharpness might discredit these
"important leaders," members of the Party's Educational Depart­
ment. After all, she said, the matter was still being discussed and
meeting s were scheduled to clarify the matter.
Despite its timeliness and my insisten�e, the publication of my
article was postponed. I attended several of the meetings to discuss ·
596 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

the position put forward by the memorandum. Even with the

sharp discussion and the difficulty the authors had in defending
their position, many comrades were reluctant to characterize the
position for what it was-a harmful deviation which undermined
the struggle against white chauvinism. In faet, the position struck
at the roots of our revolutionary line by denying the concrete facts
and particular forms of national oppression of Afro-Americans.
I realized that if Betty Gannett had her way, publication of my
article would continue to be postponed. In early spring, several
months after I submitted the draft to Political Aff airs, I sent a copy
to Foster and asked his opinion. I received a replyonApril2l, 1952,
in which he agreed with the main line of the article. He offered
several criticisms which helped strengthen the document, and I
incorporated them into a new draft. Evidently, he also sent copies
of these !etters to Political Affairs and to the Jefferson School. It
wasn't long after I received his reply that I was called into another
meeting with Lil Gates, Theodore Bassett and Alberto Moreau,
the education director of the New York district. Doxey, Howard
Selsam and David Goldway from the Jefferson School staff were
also present.
I made a rather lengthy presentation at this meeting, reading my
doctiment. Doxey attempted to defend his position, but quickly
found that those present no longer agreed with him. At one point
Selsam exclaimed, .. Doxey, you're talking like a bourgeois
professor!" Doxey's position was thoroughly rejected and it was
agreed that my article would be printed in the PA.
I was somewhat surprised, therefore, to see it wasn't in the next
issue of the journal. I couldn't understand what had postponed its
publication. My answer came in the August 1952 PA in an article
titled "Race, Nation, and the Concept 'Negro' " by Doxey Wil­
kerson. The article was a lengthy self-criticism, rejecting his earlier
formulations and characterizing it as a "theoretically unsound and
politically harmful...deviation."
I found that he had adopted most of the criticisms I had made of
his position. This recantation had been long in coming and its
timing took much of the sting out of my polemic, rendering it as a
rather anti-climactic part of the struggle. Finally, in October 1952,
 A PARTY WEAKENED FROM WITHIN 597

it was published, changed somewhat in light of Doxey's self­

criticism. The long delay showed clearly that the leadership was
not willing to give credit or prominence to any spokesman for the
revolutionary tendency in the Party.
Wilkerson's theory was in itself of little significance, it was too
preposterous to have any lasting impact. lts real significance was
in the manner in which the Party leadership was able to use it to
obscure the real issues and suppress the ideological struggle
necessary to reassert a Marxist-Leninist position on the national
question. By protecting and promoting Wilkerson's theory, the
leadership forcibly shifted the focus of the debate away from the
key questions: self-determination and the Party's leadership role in
the Black liberation and working class struggle.
It was no accident that Wilkerson's assimilationist approach
developed to muddy the waters in this period of the march to the
right. It left the field open for all sorts of liberal bourgeois theories,
and was an expression of the rising trend in the Party to tail after
the bourgeois assimilationist leadership of the NAACP. Re­
formism in the field of work among Blacks would politically
cxpress itself much more clearly in the coming years with the
complete acceptance of the NAACP as the vanguard, "the vital
center of the Negro people's movement."20
The resurgence of this right wing trend in the Party was given
added encouragement by the prosperity of the war and immediate
post-war period. Figures from the Department of Labor reveal
that during these years, for the first time in history, there appeared
a trend toward closing the gap between Black and white living
standards. From 1939 to 1947, earnings of Blacks increased from
41.4% to 54.3% of white wages.21
Big business in the U.S. was pushing more funds into the
corruption and cooptation of Black leadership, the building up of
a token elite as a contingency against future Black revolts. This
corrupting influence was greatly stepped up during the cold war.
The Truman Administration made a rash of appointments of
Black assistants to the department heads and agencies of the
federal government. A Black woman, Mrs. Edith Sampson, was
appointed to the American Delegation to the United Nations.
598 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Black "good will" ambassadors were dispatched to the former

colonial nations of Asia and Africa to polish up the new image
which Uncle Sam sought to present as the champion of peace,
freedom and democracy. "Ambassadorial Uncle Toms," quipped
Earl Brown, ajournalist and later Harlem councilman. According
to Black leaders, however, "integration was right around the
corner." These hopes were later embodied by the NAACP's
slogan, "Free by '63."
Direct and imminent integrationism was to continue as the
dominant trend through the early stages of the Black Revolt until
the rise of the Black power movement in the middle sixties. But the
economic base of this brief Black prosperity was actually de­
stroyed with the series of recessions that followed the Korean War.
A structural type of unemployment developed, the result of
permanent destruction of jobs by automation, rather than merely
cyclical layoffs. The blow hit Blacks the hardest because they had
the lowest seniority having entered industry the latest. The crisis in
the cities was aggravated by the farm cdsis which thrust a million
Black soil tillers upon a shrinking labor market at a time when the
skills they possessed were made obsolete by the new technology.
As a prelude to the Revolt of the sixties, deep unrest engulfed
Black communities across the country. A small cloud no bigger
than a man's fist, Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam, had
already appeared on the horizon-a harbinger of the great Black
power nationalist upsurge to come.

INTO THE MAINSTREAM

Despite such ominous portents, the right reformist tendency in

the Party continued to gather strength in its attempt to subvert and
overthrow our revolutionary position. It began at first covertly, as
a sneak attack by the liberal integrationists like Jackson and
Dennis, who formed the controlling group on the National
Committee. We of the opposition found ourselves fighting a
defensive action, unaware at first that the whole line was under
attack. We struggled locally in clu bs and sections, but we were
 A PARTY WEAKENED FROM WITHIN 599

rapidly overwhelmed by the integrationists who maintained the

upper hand at all times. We were barred from the press and all
other channels of inner-Party communication.
A full scale reformist offensive was kicked off by articles and
writings of some leading Black communists, who exaggerated the
progressive role of the NAACP leadership in the liberation
movement. Such theories downplayed the need for a fight within
the movement for the leadership of Black workers as a guarantee
of the development of a consistent and militant struggle for Black
rights. The theory for this position was elaborated by Charles T.
Mann (pen name for James Jackson) in his pamphlet "Stalin's
Thought Illustrates Problems of Negro Freedom," published in
1953.
Mann characterized the modem national liberation movement
of colonial and subject peoples as primarily a "bourgeois effort," a
struggle of the national bourgeoisie for control of its national
markets, rather than a movement of the masses against imperialist
oppression. This pamphlet was widely distributed in the Party and
was understood to mean uncritical acceptance of Black right
reformist leadership. It served as the opening gun in the attack on
the Party's Black and working class cadres, especially its trade
unionists, who according to Mann's position were "left sectarian"
for not accepting bourgeois leadership.
With the Supreme Court decision of 1954 (Brown vs. the Board
of Education, Topeka, Kansas) outlawing school segregation, the
Party's pro-integrationist leadership threw all caution to the winds
and went into panegyrics over the NAACP leadership. The
revisionists unreservedly embraced the pro-imperialist swindle of
imminent, peaceful, democratic "integration" of Black people into
all aspects of American life under imperialism-dovetailing as it
did with the Party's developing theory of peaceful, parliamentary
transition to socialism.
In 1956, Ben Davis wrote that "a realistic perspective has opened
up for a peaceful and democratic achievement of the full social,
political and economic equality of the Negro people within the
framework of our specific American system and tradition." 22
Agreeing wholeheartedly with the NAACP, the Party leadership
600 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

concluded that the Jim Crow system was threatened with immi­
nent destruction and the Supreme Court decision was the triumph
of the NAACP's policy of legal opposition. Doxey Wilkerson
hailed Thurgood Marshall, then a member of the NAACP's legal
staff, as the "hero of the Supreme Court battle."
But the facts are that this decision, historie in its effect, was a
tactical concession. lts objective was to lull the rising Black
movement at home, bolstering the faltering bourgeois assimila­
tionist leadership and quieting adverse criticism from abroad. Dr.
Mordecai Johnson, then president of Howard University, put this
forward at the 1954 CIO convention in Cleveland. Johnson
alluded to the faet that the decision had been immediately
translated into forty languages. "One could conclude from that
that the power of world socialism wrested this concession from the
American ruling class circles," he said. 23
During this period the Party completely underestimated the
explosive nature of the Black m_ovement, denying the possibility of
a revolutionary upsurge of Blacks. According to the revisionists,
the Black struggle did not have an independent character, but was
simply an offshoot of the larger workers' movement.
Just two years before the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala­
bama, James Jackson wrote: "To the Negro masses in the South
who have yet to win their elementary democratic right to vote, to
remove the Jim Crow pale in the street cars, to sit in the public
parks-such a slogan of action would be rejected, considered
'utopian.' " 24
In the year of the boycott, Jackson actually went so far as to
compare left centers in the Black movement with dual unionism. 25
These influential left centers were actually liquidated in the course
of the general retreat of the rightists. The thinking behind this
policy was that the NAACP covered the field, and there was no
need for us to intervene.
It was at this time that the Civil Rights Congress was dissolved,
despite the militant mass campaigns it had waged on behalf of
Dixie lynch victims and the impact of We Charge Genocide. The
South.ern Negro Y outh Congress was allowed to fall apart as early
as 194 7, when leading Black cadres were assigned to other areas of
 A PARTY WEAKENED FROM WITHIN 601

work. The liquidation of the Council on African Affairs, which

was headed by Dr. DuBois, Dr. Alpheus Hunton and Paul
Robeson, immediately followed the historie Bandung Conference
in 1955. 26 Freedom, the sole organ of the left in the Black liberation
movement, was also closed down at this time. By the mid-fifties,
the Party in the South had, for all intents and purposes, once again
been liquidated.
The National Negro Labor Councils (NNLC) was the largest
and potentially the most influential organization dissolved by the
Party in this period. The NNLC drew about 1,000 delegates,
mostly Blacks from the basic industries, to its first three con­
ventions and led numerous mass struggles against discrimination
on the job. 27
After the war, there were large concentrations of Black workers
in auto, steel, the packing houses and other heavy industries. These
workers demanded leadership in the fight against company and
union discrimination. The NNLC, calling openly for unity be­
tween the Black freedom struggle and the labor movement,
supplied this leadership in successful campaigns to get Blacks
hired at Sears and many other companies;
The Councils mobilized Blacks and some whites to oppose
the chauvinist leadership in unions like UAW Local 600 (Ford's
River Rouge plant). The NNLC was also active in Black commu­
nities, as in Louisville, where their successful campaign for jobs
showed a militant working class alternative to the increasingly
conservative NAACP.
When the Black movement surged forward in 1955, it cried out
for Black working class leadership that the CP, the NNLC and
Freedom could have provided. But the CP leadership united in
opposition to everything that diverted the masses from the
"mainstream" of the NAACP and the AFL-CIO.
With the consolidation of this liquidationist line, the Party
lcadership attacked the NNLC. In June 1956, Benjamin Davis
openly criticized the work of these councils and said that they had
led to the "isolation of many Negro trade union cadres from the
main body of the Negro and white workers," and that as a result
lhcse cadres became "almost powerless to affect the mainstream of
602 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

organized labor." 28 The dissolution of these centers left a void in

the movement, with many Party and non-Party cadres becoming
demoralized, resigning from activity.
With as good a sense of timing as ever, A. Philip Randolph
stepped into the void that the Party had left behind. In 1960 he
founded the Negro American Labor Council (NALC) with the
intent of harnessing the militant caucus movement under the firm
control of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy. Randolph, and under his
leadership the NALC, refused to take a firm stand against
discrimination. Randolph openly stated at the founding conven­
tion that discrimination in the unions was "no reflection on the
leadership of the AFL-CI0." 29 At the 1962 convention, the
councils failed to take up the NAACP petition to the NLRB,
which would have had two unions decertified for failure to
represent Black workers.
The rightist line on the Afro-American question was of course a
part of the whole rightward drift in the Party. Under the slogan of
"getting into the mainstream," the Party attempted to liquidate all
left centers and independent communist work. A number of
articles were written at that time, many of them coming from
underground leadership, which criticized "purism," "self-isola­
tion" and "left sectarianism" in our work, characterizing "leftism"
as the main danger in the Party.
In December 1952, the "Draft Resolution on the Situation
Growing Out of the Presidential Elections" authorized by the
· National Committee stated that "it was incorrect to have favored
departure of Wallace forces without the masses of the Demo­
cratic Party." 30 According to the resolution, the major, if
not exclusive, hope for progress was to be found in the Democratic
Party. If the masses of workers weren't ready to desert the
Democrats, neither was the CPUSA. This move also signalled the
beginning of the destruction of the American Labor Party in New
York State, where it still maintained considerable strength.
Consequently, the Party lost influence among many progressives.
A more mature ex pression of this revisionist line came with the
Draft Program which appeared in April 1954, a month before the
historie Supreme Court decision. The major slogans of action put
 A PARTY WEAKENED FROM WITHIN 603

forward in the document called for"A NewCongress in 1954" and

a "New Administration in 1956." The draft Program boldly
asserted that "what is needed is a new administration which starts
to build again where the New Deal left off."3 1
This document excluded all mention of the right of self­
determination. I questioned this at a meeting of the program
committee prior to the passage of the resolution. I asked Betty
Gannett what had happened to the right of self-determination.
Why wasn't there a mention of it in the Program? True, we were
discussing the Party's minimal program and self-determination
certainly wouldn't be fully laid out and explained in such a
document. Yet it was a strategic slogan which, like socialism, had
to be mentioned in relation to the Party's minimal demands.
N either Gannett nor Pettis Perry, who was also present, knew
what to say. They didn't seem prepared to discuss the question at
the time. It was at this meeting that I first began to suspect that the
leadership might once again try to liquidate the right of self­
determination and the revolutionary program for Black libera­
tion.
In the face of such open reformism, it isn't difficult to see why all
attempts to do independent mass work were attacked and labeled
"left sectarian." I was working in Harlem with my old seaman
friend, Josh Lawrence, and his organizational secretary, Pat
I ,umpkin, a very energetic and forceful Black woman. We had a
hell of a fight with Lil Gates and BlakeCharney, New York's organi­
:,.ational secretary, who tried to liquidate our work. We waged a
good battle against them, but in the end very little was accomp­
lished. As a result of the internat struggle, we did little mass work,
and this was a general tendency in the Party at the time.
It was in this period that all proposals for mass work---'-in the
mainstream or anywhere else-and any attempt by communists to
play a leading role were discouraged, condemned and fought
ugainst by the leadership. Those of us who did try to do mass work
wcre not helped or encouraged in any way, but rather castigated
und beaten down, accused of being "left sectarian." We were told
to have respect for the bourgeois reformists in the Black liberation
movement, for the bureaucrats of the trade union aristocracy, to
604 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

"lay off' and "wait for favorable conditions to arise" for our full
participation. Through such policies, the Party increasingly lost its
once important roots in the shops, mills and Black working class
communities.
In the course of these years I married Gwen Midlo. She was a
young Jewish woman whom I had met earlier in Paris, when she
and her hus band were both music students there. She came from
New Orleans, where she had been an active member of the
Southern Negro Youth Congress, participating in the Wallace
campaign, the Civil Rights Congress and many other mass
campaigns of the Party in the South. We had political agreement
on the major questions and in particular on the Black national
question.
 Chapter 22

Revisionism Takes Command

By the time of the April 1956 National Committee meeting, the

Party was in the throes of its most serious crisis since 1944. The
meeting itself was historie in that it was the first time that the top
Party leadership had met together since 1951. With the exception
of Gil Green and Henry Winston who were underground and
Rob Thompson and Gus Hall who were still in jail, the National
Committee was up from underground and out of prison. Right
opportunism, which had been thriving and undergoing continuous
growth in the fifties, erupted into a full fledged liquidationist line
whose only logical conclusion would be the complete destruction
of the Party as a revolutionary force.
Fresh out of the Atlanta Penitentiary, Eugene Dennis gave the
main political report at this meeting. This one-sided, thoroughly
negative report placed all the blame for the Party's mistakes and
isolation upon dogmatism and "left sectarianism." He called for a
"new look" at our past errors and the development of a mass party
of socialism.
The effect of this report was to open the floodgates to the
blatantly liquidationist faction led by John Gates, editor of the
Daily Worker. Gates and his cronies on the Daily Worker and in
the New York State Committee attacked theCP from all sides with
lhc express purpose of dissolving the CP as a Marxist-Leninist
vunguard party. Gates pushed for the abandonment of the Party's
lcading role and the development of pressure group politics whose
606 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

organizational form would be a political action association-very

much like Browder's CPA of 1944.
Gates called for a "critical reevaluation" of Marxism-Leninism.
"If anyone asks me whether I base myself on the principles of Marx
and Lenin, I want to be able to answer which of those principles I
believe in and which I do not." 1
This open liquidationist faction made skillful use of the
confusion that resulted from Khrushchev's anti-Stalin "revel­
ations." The secret revelations stunned the American Party and in
effect deprived the anti-revisionist forces of an ally we had relied
on in the past. 2 The international communist movement had
historically lent the weight of its influence and prestige to the left in
the American Party. For example: the Third International's
assistance in bringing together the two principle organizations­
the Communist Party and the United Communist Party to form
the Communist Party USA in 1921; Comintern leadership in the
struggle against the factionalism of the twenties and Lovestone's
American exceptionalism; and the Duclos letter which helped
initiate the struggle against Browderism.
Rather than finding a source of support in the Soviet Union, we
on the left were thrown completely off balance by the new
"revelations." At first we couldn't believe Khrushchev made such a
speech, thinking it must be some imperialist propaganda stunt.
When this initial reaction passed we tended to give the new Soviet
leadership the benefit of the doubt and failed to grasp the full
implications of this attack on Stalin.
The liquidationist right used this as an excuse to attack
proletarian internationalism in general, calling for a sweeping
reevaluation of our line. They bitterly denounced our past history
as one of slavishly clinging to imported doctrines, the bankruptcy
of which was now being proven. Under the guise of "fighting
dogmatism" inherited from the era of the "cult of personality,"
the Gates crowd concluded that Leninism was nothing more than
Marxism applied to the peculiar, backward condition ofRussia­
a purely "Russian social phenomenon"-and therefore not ap­
plicable in the U.S. They found Lenin's theories of the bourgeois
state as an instrument of class rule to be particularly outmoded
 REVISIONISM TAKES COMMAND 607

under U .S. conditions. It was in this spirit of "reexamination,"

that the entire National Committee-with the exception of Foster
and Ed Strong-voted to condemn the use of Soviet troops against
the reactionary CIA-inspired counter-revolution in Hungary in
October 1956.
Personally, I was most interested in the role that Ben Davis
played at the April board meeting. We had met earlier in the year,
not long after Davis got out of jail. We had had some friendly
discussions. He said he wanted to get my ideas on the develop­
ments in the Afro-American question in order to help him prepare
for the report he was going to make at the meeting. Despite the
sharp disagreements we had had in the past, I felt then that we were
largely in agreement. I thought that perhaps his years in jail had
changed him, given him cause to reevaluate our past differences.
We concluded this series of meetings on a friendly basis.
In May, however, I learned it was the same old Ben-the same
sly, ruthless politician, who used his authority and that of Foster to
further his own personal power and influence. In his report, Davis
slrongly attacked our revolutionary position, dropping com­
pletely the right of self-determination. At the National Committee
meeting in June he restated this position: "It would seem that the
slogan of self-determination should be abandoned and our
position otherwise modified·and brought up to date." 3 This sharp
11ltack took me by surprise because he had given no indication
whatsoever in our earlier discussions of any major differences.
Plans for the Sixteenth Party Convention to be held the
foliowing February were being made at this meeting. A draft
resolution was to be prepared as soon as possible and pre­
convention discussion and debate begun. But the draft resolution
was not published until September 1956, providing little time for
ndcquate discussion and rebuttal from the opposing points of
vicw. Dennis, who had come under attack from the Gates faction,
hnd made some amendments to his April report. But the draft
resolution was still more or less a restatement of his position at the
April meeting, characterizing "left sectarianism" as the main
<langer in the Party.
The draft carried the hallmarks of much of what we know today
608 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

as the liberal and reformist program of the CPUSA. Central to a

peaceful, parliamentary, constitutional transition to socialism
would be the development of an anti-monopoly coalition through
"labor and popular" forces gaining "decisive influence in key
Democratic Party state organizations and even liberal Repub­
lican political movements." Thus would develop the "American
Road to Socialism." The Communist Party would remain on the
sidelines to "support and endorse" such progressive campaigns.
On the Afro-American question, the right of self-determination
was completely omitted and the Party urged wholehearted
acceptance - of the NAACP slogan of "Free By '63."
Working class leadership and proletarian revolution were
entirely excluded from this document. The National Board
voted in favor of the resolution, Foster and Davis voting a
q ualified "yes."
In October 1956, Foster, who had been vacillating all along,
changed his mind and voted against the resolution. In an article
entitled "On the Party Situation," he outlines the reasons for this
change. 4 Citing the development of a "new Browderism" and
a re-emergence of American exceptionalism in the Party, he
attacked the attempts to openly liquidate the Party, to drop
Marxism-Leninism from the preamble of the constitution and the
failure to see rightism as a cancer to the Party. Foster also attacked
Dennis's support of a "mass party of socialism." 5
The article for the first time indicated to the rank and file the
nature of the factional split then going on in the leadership and
stimulated much debate over the genuine criticism of rightism that
it raised. In the final analysis, however, the article failed to provide
a firm basis for a consistent fight against the right because of
Foster's basic unity with the other factions on the question of the
main <langer. To Foster ultra-leftism was unquestionably the main
<langer, and as an example he cited the hesitancy with which the
Party took up the theory of peaceful transition! He failed tota:lly
to understand how this very estimate of the main <langer had
through the years fostered and nurtured the cancer-like growth of
right opportunism and stifled the fight against revisionism in the
Party.
 REVISIONISM TAKES COMMAND 609

Pre-convention discussions around the draft were hot and

heavy. The right contended that we had to "seriously" and
"creatively" scrutinize our past history, reevaluate our goals.
They passed off any criticism of their position as "old" and
"dogmatic," a refusal to consider fresh approaches or make a new
start. Anyone who attacked them was immediately labeled a "left
sectarian."
I attended several meetings of the National Negro Commission
as part of the pre-convention discussions that fall. The leadership
inundated these meetings with articles conceming "new data" on
the Black Belt, a reevaluation of the Black Belt theory in light of
massive outmigrations from the deep South. I argued against
these positions, that the development and existence of an op­
pressed Black nation in the South was not merely a question of
nose-counting. As I later wrote in Fora Revolutionary Position on
the Negro Question (1957):
This approach blurs over the main essence of the question.
Even with the outmigrations ofthe war and post-war period,
the old majority Black Belt area contains the greatest
concentration ofthe Negro people in the U.S. Approximately
five million Negroes, nearly a third of the entire Negro
population in the country ( 17 million) and nearly one-halfof
the Negroes in the South are still concentrated in the old
Black Belt majority are!l. The faet is that the Negro popu­
lation in the Black Belt is larger than the total population of
34 countries who are members of the UN! 6
I was heartened to see that I was not alone. A number of Black
comrades were opposed to this "reevaluation" by the right and the
dropping of our revolutionary position. I remember particularly
Ed Strong-a stalwart young Black man who spoke very strongly
in defense of our position.
Ed was then a mem ber of the NC and it seemed to me that he had
great potential as a leader of the left. As a young seminary student
in Chicago, he came into the movement in the early thirties
through the National Youth Congress. He became national
secretary of that organization and was a founder and first
executive secretary of the Southern Negro Youth Congress. He
610 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

eventually was elected chairman of the youth committee of the

National Negro Congress and, at the time of these discussions, was
organizer of the Eastern Pennsylvania District of the Party.
Unfortunately, Strong was never able to attend the Sixteenth
Party Convention. By that time, he was hospitalized with terminal
cancer and died in April 1957. His death was not only a personal
loss, but a blow to the left forces in the Party.
These discussions and the pre-convention meetings in the
districts served to begin the consolidation of a genuine
Marxist-Leninist left. For a short time, the left forces were able to
build a tentative tactical unity with the Foster-Davis faction which
made some show of wanting to fight the openly liquidationist
Gates faction. This unity, however, was quickly shattered with the
Foster-Gates unity deal at the New York State pre-convention
meeting.
Foster, who was in danger of not being elected as a delegate to
the convention, made the infamous deal on "name and form" of
the Party in exchange for the votes of the Gates faction. While
rejecting the dissolution of the Party, a resolution was passed with
Gates's support which held that "any and all proposals to change
the name, form or policies of the Party can and should be
examined and discussed on their merits" -thus leaving the door
wide open to future proposals from the Gates bunch. 7
Widely separated and lacking central leadership, the left forces
nonetheless continued to grow. We began to gain ideological
clarity through criticizing the opportunistn of the Party line. The
pre-convention meetings were the first organized means on a
national level of examining the Party's line since the Fifteenth
Party Convention in 1950. Since that time, those who opposed the
growing revisionism in the Party remained dispersed and con­
fused, with no regular access to any of the Party machinery
through which to air their views. The leadership deliberately kept
Marxist-Leninist education to a minimum, as part of their attempt
to maintain the status quo.
They had systematically suppressed dissent and all forms of
inner-Party democracy. Many of the cbmrades who came together
in the left caucus at the Sixteenth Party Convention had locally
 REVISIONISM TAKES COMMAND 611

and individually raised struggles against revisionism in their

districts, but were pretty much unaware of how widespread dissent
was in the Party as a whole. We were pleasantly surprised to see
just how many cadre there were who still had agreement on the
basic principles of Marxism-Leninism for the dictatorship of the
proletariat and socialism, for the right of self-determination in the
deep South, in support of proletarian internationalism, and
against the theory of peaceful transition to socialism-although
there was some confusion on this point as a result of the
Khrushchev revelations.
Al Lannon became the leader of the caucus and one hell of a guy
he was too. He was a member of the National Committee and the
Party leader on the waterfront. I had always liked and admired Al
as a man with both feet on the ground, and with a keen ability to
combine theory and practice. He was an old Lenin School man and
had been a seaman for many years before becoming a Party
functionary in 1938.
He was a fearless, dauntless fighter and had just recently been
released from a stint in prison on a Smith Aet conviction when he
came to the convention. I could see that he was sore as hell with the
revisionism of the leadership, grabbing the microphone at every
possible opportunity. Other members of the caucus included Joe
Dougher, a leader of the anthracite miners and a member of the
NC; James Keller, the D.O. of Chicago; Armando Roman, a
Puerto Rican leader on the waterfront in New York and a member
of the New York State Committee; Ted Allen, a young guy and
former D.O. from West Virginia; Angel Torres, another water­
front cadre; Olga, a Venezuelan comrade who had played a
leading role in the struggles of Latino people in New York City; my
wife Gwen; and many others.

THE SIXTEENTH PARTY CONVENTION

By the time of the convention, February 9-12, 1957, three

distinct factions had emerged on the right. Gates led a blatant and
vulgar far right group which was openly anti-Soviet and supported
612 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

both the ideological and physical liquidation of the P arty. Aside

from Gates, it included men like Blake Charney, organizational
secretary of New York; Joseph Clark, a Daily Worker reporter;
and Steve Nelson, the D.O. of Western Pennsylvania.
The center-right faction was led by Eugene Dennis and included
James Jackson and Jack Stachel. A more covert and insidious
right danger, this faction called for ideological liquidation of the
Party's vanguard role, but favored the maintenance of some sort of
social democratic structure from which to wield power. They also
supported the Soviet Union.
The left-center faction was represented by Foster and his allies:
Ben Davis, Will Weinstone and Bob Thompson, who was at the
time 'still in jail. This group perceived a right danger in the Party­
the other two factions-but still conceded that leftism was the
main danger. They also had more reservations abO\Jt openly doing
away with the vanguard party.
All three factions had unity on the basic politi�al questions­
support for the theory of peaceful, parliamenta ry and consti­
tutional transition to socialism; a bourgeois assimilationist posi­
tion on the Afro-American question; a view of left !ilectarianism as
the main danger historically in the Party; and a wavering stand at
hest, total abandonment at worst, on the question of proletarian
internationalism.
This was particularly blatant in the convention's refusal to
change its position on Hungary, or to acknowledge the various
criticisms of the Party's revisionism as put fotwa.rd by Jacques
Duclos and various Latin American parties. As if to proclaim its
independence from Marxism-Leninism, the convention refused to
take a stand against U.S. intervention in Latin America and in
support of independence for Puerto Rico.
The Sixteenth Party Convention was a fateful turning point in
our Party's history-the point from which the Party turned
inevitably and unalterably down the road to revisionism, the point
from which the task of building a new anti-revisionist communist
party became the primary task of Marxist-Lenini!!lts.
In discussing this historie event, I must say something of the
despicable role played by James Jackson. Earlier h(:: had been sent
 REVISIONISM TAKES COMMAND 613

South by Eugene Dennis and at the time was secretary of the

Southern region of the Party. It became obvious at the convention
that Dennis had sent him South for the purpose of presiding over
the liquidation of the Party in that region. Jackson never did see
the need for a vanguard party in the South and openly stated in the
pre-convention discussions that the existing reformist-led move­
ment organizes "the maximum political, economic and moral
strength of the Black masses and their white allies to bear upon the
monopoly ruling circles. " 8
Jackson brought several Southern delegates with him to the
convention, but in the main, the South was represented by
proxies-many of whom had never been further South than
Brooklyn. He claimed that it was too dangerous to bring Southern
delegates to the convention. I thought this was rather interesting
since we had managed to bring such delegates, including Black
sharecroppers, in the midst of the worst lynch terror of the thirties.
Jackson actually used these "Southern" proxies to build a
cheering section of his supporters on the floor. The main thrust of
the line he pushed was to drop the right of self-determination,
which, given the strength of the left at the convention, meant
avoidi°ng entirely a discussion of it! Jackson contended that we
could develop a program of practical action and deal with the
political line at some other time. Together with Carl Winter and
Doxey Wilkerson (a member of the Gates faction and soon to quit
the Party), he wrote the main resolution on the Afro-American
question-a thoroughly reformist document that avoided anv
fundamental discussion of line or of the right of self-deter­
mination.
Jackson's efforts to forestall discussion were given material
support by an arrangement between our caucus and Foster. It was
obvious that Gates was then out to liquidate the Party right there
on the spot. Foster approached us, seeking to block against Gates,
and asked that we support a move to take the question off
the convention agenda, postponing discussion and leaving settle­
ment of the matter to a special national conference on Afro­
American work to be held within sixty days of the convention.
First things first. The main question before the convention was
614 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

to "save the Party" from the open liquidationism of Gates. Foster

argued that full discussion of the Black national question would
have split the conference wide open and played directly into the
bands of the Gates faction. At the time, we thought it was the right
thing to do and went along with Foster's deal. But, as we shall see,
the promised national conference on Afro-American work was
never held.
There was a very widespread rumor about Ben Davis at the
convention and I have no doubt that it's true. The story goes that
someone in the Dennis faction asked Davis why he and Foster
were going around making deals with the "ultra-lefts." Davis
replied, "We've got to deal with Gates first. When we've dealt with
him, then we can handle the left sectarians."
The convention proceedings, which strictly followed Roberts'
Rules, were characterized by extreme bureaucratic suppression of
the rank and file. Even so, I thought we did pretty well on the floor.
Lannon was the fastest on his feet and got the microphone more
than the rest of us. The revisionists have chosen to print pr�cious
few of his speeches in the official transcript of the convention
proceedings, but there were still a few important remarks included.
For instance: "On the question of social democracy, I think the
effort here is to slur over and obscure the differences that exist
between ourselves and social democracy. We are not discussing
here what are the possibilities for a united front-that's one thing,
but no united front is possible without a clear understanding of
what our differences are. United fronts come about not by slurring
over differences and hiding them ....I'm for a united front with
social democracy, but always making clear that we are not social
democrats. We have a different program, and united front is based
on certain common needs which both agree towhile we disagree."
And: "On the question of a mass party of sociafism, I think that's
just...pie in the sky, and will divert, because I think the pre-condi­
tion to that is centering all of our work on the rebuilding and
reconstituting of a Marxist-Leninist Communist Party." 9
I was able to speak only once and used the little time I had to
attack the Party's line on the Black national question. While the
revisionists thought that the question could be solved peacefully,
 REVISIONISM TAKES COMMAND 615

as more and more Blacks left the South and became part of the
industrial working class, I pointed out that these developments­
particularly the proletarianization of Blacks-actually sharpened
the fundamental contradictions involved.
I further contended that the Party failed completely to under­
stand the tremendous potential of the revolt then gathering in the
South. On a world scale, this revolt held particular significance as
'"a national revolutionary movement in the heartland of U.S.
imperialism, the bulwark of world reaction." Calling on the Party
to stop tailing the bourgeois assimilationists, I stated "It is not
enough to greet these new, heroic struggles in the South. The
embattled Negro people want our help. They cannot win alone.
They need our Party, movement, and the international working
class movement, to support their struggle." 10
To be sure, such views were drowned in a swamp of revisionism.
When all the hoopla was done, the September draft resolution was
passed pretty much intact with all three of the right wing factions
declaring a great victory, a new "unity of all trends," and a
"defeat against revisionism." Dennis-the arch conciliationist­
came out in the strongest position, indicating throughout the
convention the future course he would take in fully conceding to
the far right.
Dennis spoke strongly in defense of the rights of minorities,
arguing in typical Dennis doublespeak that "there is also a
realization that the more truly democratic we become, the more we
need to be a cohesive and united organization which guarantees
the minority's right to dissent at all times." Indicating the extent of
his own unity with the line of the Gates faction, he went on to say,
"Further, I believe that there is much sober thought being given to
what we mean by a new and sounder relationship with other
Marxist parties, including those in the socialist countries." 11
It was clear from the start that all the talk of expanded
democracy and minority rights would not be extended to the
Marxist-Leninist left, which posed the main threat to the other
three factions.
Gates, who was unsuccessful in his bid for a political action
association, nevertheless came out of the convention fairly strong,
616 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

with a num her of his supporters on the NC and in key positions in

state organizations. During the last session of the convention, he
was moved to say that "no matter who lost, the Party has won." 12
Foster, who had initially expressed the strongest opposition to the
line of the resolution, stated, "I too, want to support this recom­
mendation. I think it is the hest we can do under the circum­
stances," 13 and then informed the delegates that he had voted for
every document in the resolution.
This was the last Party convention that Foster, then seventy­
seven years old, was able to attend. A New York Times article,
which appeared to be based on inside sources, reported that
"William Z. Foster suffered a stinging humiliation yesterday... .ln
the voting to elect a seventeen member executive committee out of
the sixty-six member National Committee, Mr. Foster was said to
have failed of election. He obtained a place only when a motion
was adopted to expand the group from seventeen to twenty." 14
Whether or not this report is accurate, Foster's influence dwindled
in the following years until his death in the Soviet Union in
September 1961.
He wrote a number of articles in this period, amohg them "The
Party Crisis and the Way Out," 15 which indicated that revisionism
had not been defeated at the Sixteenth Party Convention,
though "ultra-leftism" still remained the main <langer in the
Party. Foster suffered a stroke around the time of its publi­
cation, but recuperated sufficiently to · write several other
articles. In collaboration with Ben Davis, he wrote "Notes on
the Negro Question," 16 which supported the Party's assimilationist
line.
Perhaps the most controversial was a letter Foster wrote per­
sonally to Chairman Mao in which he praised the progress China
had made in the struggle to build socialism and discussed
the situation in the U.S. and the world. 17 He received a warm
response from Chairman Mao, who thanked Foster for his letter
and said, "Allow me, on behalf of the Communist Party of
China and the Chinese people, to extend hearty greetings to you,
glorious fighter and leader of the American working class,
and wish you an early recovery." 18 The letter had been sent in
 REVISIONISM TAKES COMMAND 617

December 1958, without the approval of the Party's Secretariat.

They would have liked to have overlooked the matter entirely, but
were unable to do so when Foster's letter and Mao's response were
published in the New York Times. 19 The Party was finally forced
to publish the exchange in the March 1959 Political Affairs.
The so-called "unity of all trends" reached at the Sixteenth
Party Convention represented a compromise on fundamental
questions and principles, arriving at a formula which legalized the
open liquidationist Gates faction within the Party and stifled the
necessary ideological struggle against revisionism. Thus, although
the Party avoid.o:d an open split, it was saddled with a concilia­
tionist line in a period when ideological confusion was rampant in
the ranks. The Sixteenth Party Convention was characterized by
the total abandonment of revolutionary line and principle on all
questions in favor of a sham unity of the right wing, with each of
the three right factions scrambling for position.
A gallop to the right under the guise of "unity" followed
the convention, with Dennis putting into practice the thoroughly
revisionist program adopted there. The liquidation of the Party as
a Marxist-Leninist vanguard was further intensified as Dennis
made repeated concessions to the open liquidators. In an effort
to keep peace with the Gates faction, "democracy" and public
criticism of the Party was greatly expanded. "Freedom of
criticism" in this case meant the freedom to further basten the
conversion of a communist party into a social democratic party of
reforms, the freedom to counterpose bourgeois theories to com­
munist theories.
While the leadership cried "unity of all trends," they actually
meant the unprincipled unity of the three right factions in
opposition to the Marxist-Leninists. We in the left attacked
this phony unity at the reconvened district conventions and
played a major role in upsetting the "unity slates" at the
New York State, Brooklyn and Manhattan County conventions.
However, we were unable to prevent the Davis-Charney unity deal
at the New York State Convention. Ben Davis became state
chairman, while Charney, a Gates man, became executive
secretary.
618 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

The tactics of three groups-the open liquidators, the right­

center and the "left" conciliators-were very similar. They kept
trying to forestall any kind of meaningful discussion. The
revisionists continued their effort to separate a program for mass
work from any basic, fundamental discussion of line. Ben
Davis and others ushered in the demagogic slogan of "let's
get going." "The party membership is sick and tired of internal
strife and bickering over nebulous ahstractions," said Davis in
the Party Voice. 20
I made a speech at the reconvened convention in Harlem,
fighting for restoration of our revolutionary position on the
Afro-American question and an end to tailing after the leacier­
ship of the NAACP. Davis immediately attacked me. "Left to
Harry here, he and me would be left alone fighting it down to the
ropes. We can't afford that, we gotta get to work!"
Following the state conventions, the Lannon forces were strong
enough to be elected to a number of posts on the New York State
Committee and were well represented on the Manhattan County
Committee. Gwen was a section -leader in Brooklyn, and we had
actual leadership in two vital concentrations-the waterfront and ·
Harlem and lower Harlem. Our strength was considerable when
one takes into account the faet that the New York district
comprised over half the membership of the Party at that time.
The promised national conference on the Negro question was
stalled, postponed and inevitably never held. Many of our Black
cadres resigned or were driven out by the revisionist bureaucracy.
Dues payments and club attendance dropped, Daily Worker
circulation was down to 5,000 daily and 10,000 on S.unday. 21
It was becoming more and more evident that the leadership
actually had a plan to drive the left out of the Party through
bureaucratic suppression and harassment. James Jackson acting
as Dennis's lieutenant personally supervised a campaign to drive
militant Blacks out of the Party. It was clear to us that the
Ieadership would never hold a national conference on work among
Blacks while there were still cadres left to fight for the revo­
lutionary line.
In the face of growing pressure from below, however, they were
 REVISIONISM TAKES COMMAND 619

forced to sponsor a few local conferences. This was done with the
expressed purpose of holding down dissent, while continuing to
postpone any fundamental discussion of our line.
I remember one conference'in New York where the revisionists
packed the meeting with white trade union cadres, many of them
right wingers and covert white chauvinists, who at a signal from
Davis or Jackson would begin chanting, "Get to work, get to work!"
Jackson pulled off an outstanding piece of demagogy as he
stood up with Paul Robeson's hook Here I Stand, 22 and pro­
claimed "Program? This is all the program we need." The hook,
while an excellent exposition of Robeson's political views as a
militant anti-imperialist and class-conscious fighter, could by no
means serve as a fundamental program for the Party's work in the
Black movement, and Jackson knew it!
In late 1957, I completed work on Fora Revolutionary Position
on the Negro Question. A summation of a number of
unpublished articles I had written against reformism in the fifties,
the struggles at the Sixteenth Party Convention and afterward, it
was intended to give ideological clarity to the emerging left in the
Party and was later adopted as an official document of the Provi­
sional Organizing Committee (POC). The paper attacked the
Party's right wing line and Jackson's view that it would be an
"unwarranted interference" for the Party to continue its support of
the right of self-determination, undermining the correct leadership
of the bourgeois assimilationists. My paper attacks the revision­
ists' failure to understand the basic orientation on the question,
that "without the perspective of Political Power, the Negro
peoples' movement is reduced to an impotent appeal to the
conscience or humanitarian instincts of the country and the
world." 23
It was essential in this paper to answer James Allen's latest
theories. Abandoning his former support for the right of self­
determination, Allen had become the main theoretical gun of the
revisionists. His basically economic determinist approach was to
describe an inevitable disintegration of the Black Belt nation now
in process as a result of the "forces of capitalist development of
great expansive power, which has lasted well into the era of
620 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

monopoly capitalism." 24 According to Allen, this disintegration

was heralded by the failure of the elements of nationhood not only
to exist in the Black Belt, but to be in afullstateofmaturation. He
failed to understand that "imperialist oppression, in stifling the
development of nations, creates the conditions for the rise of
national revolutionary movements which, in this epoch, are a
special phase of the struggle for socialism. This creates the basis for
the revolutionary alliance of the oppressed peoples with the -
international working class in the struggle against the common
enemy, imperialism." 25
On November 16, 1957, a declaration was signed in Moscow
which had a major effect on the CPUSA. This was the"Declaration
of Cornmunist and Workers Parties of Socialist Countries,"
referred to as the "Twelve Party Declaration." (The signatories
included the Communist Parties of Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary,
North Vietnam, East Germany, China, North Korea, Mongolia,
Poland, Rumania, USSR and Czechoslovakia.) The declaration
held that proletarian internationalism as could be understood
through the lessons of history required "support of the Soviet
Union and all the Socialist countries who, pursuing a policy of
preserving peace throughout the world, are the mainstay of peace
and social progress. "26
The Gates forces were adamantly opposed to our officially
adopting the statement and resented the arguments of the more
pro-Soviet elements in the leadership. The debates surrounding
our adoption of the declaration and the threatened liquidation of
the Daily Worker, which by this time consistently carried anti­
party, anti-Soviet and anti-communist propaganda, brought the
resignation of John Gates in January 1958. (The declaration was
adopted at the next NC meeting in February 1958.) A stream of his
supporters resigned foliowing this. The whole incident brought a
factional realignment in the leadership at the February 1958
National Comrnittee meeting, with the Dennis right-center and the
Thompson-Davis left-center sharing the leadership, although
Dennis was definitely the top man.
Gates's departure signalled the end of ''all trends unity," the end
to the era of "freedom of criticism," and a new cry in the leadership
 REVISIONISM TAKES COMMAND 621

for centralism. Factionalism was outlawed and Thompson issued

an ultimatum to the left at the June 1958 NC meeting. "Our
Party... has the capacity to declare war on factionalism ... whether
from the direction of revisionism or the direction of dogmatism,"
said Thompson. 27 With the leadership slapping themselves on the
back for their so-called "victory against revisionism" -the resig­
nation of Gates and friends-it was obvious that the immediate
task was to get rid of the "ultra-lefts."
Our strength and influence were growing and with Gates's
resignation, conditions were favorable for advancing the struggle
against revisionism and conciliationism-for strengthening the
leadership and prestige of the consistent Marxist forces. In spite of
this situation, however, our left forces under the political leader­
ship of Armando Romån fell into a series of ultra-left errors which
in the long run led to the dissipation of our prestige and influence
and eventually to our isolation from a large number of honest
forces who were in agreement with us.
We had gradually become more and more oriented towards the
narrow, inflexible tactic of attack and exposure. Under these
conditions, the fundamental political questions upon which the
caucus was founded became relegated to secondary importance as
we largely confined ourselves to attacking the Party's position.
Our purely oppositionist tactics, combined with a refusal to
participate in mass work, enabled the Party leadership to portray
us as anti-Party and disruptive elements. Some of the most
blatant ultra-left errors of this period included a refusal to accept
posts on the Manhattan County Staff (particularly Armando's
refusal to accept the key post of education director of the county);
the boycott of the Daily Worker, even after the resignation of
Gates; and the failure to fight for publication of articles stating our
political position through the official channels of the Party.
I must admit self-critically that I tended to overlook these errors,
thinking they were just individual mistakes of a tactical nature­
not the reflection of an entire ultra-left line. After years of fighting
arch right-wingers, many other comrades in the caucus made the
same mistake. With Thompson's ultimatum to the left, many of us
began to think that we would very soon be expelled and
622 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

agreed with Armando's view that we should openly split with the
Party-a decision which I now think_ was incorrect and played
directly into the hands of the revisionists, who were able to isolate
us even further from the rank and file. This decision resulted in the
formation of the Provisional Organizing Committee for a Com­
munist Party (POC), founded in August 1958.
Some eighty-three delegates, mostly Black and Puerto Rican
working class cadres, attended the founding conference in New
York. There was much enthusiasm, even euphoria, at the confer­
ence-we thought we were really on the way to building a new
party. Joe Dougher and myself were elected co-chairmen, Arman­
do became the general secretary. Other members of the executive
committee included Admiral Kilpatrick of Cleveland, Ted Allen
from West Virginia, Angel Torres and Lucille Bethancourt from
Cleveland.
For all our fond hopes, the POC continued under Armando's
leadership in an isolationist line and soon deteriorated into an
ultra-left sect. There was an absolute refusal to apply theory to
practice and become involved in the day-to-day work among the
masses; a rejection on principle of any compromise under any
circumstances over any question, even over purely practical
matters. Those who opposed such dogmatism were promptly
labeled "conciliators." The POC was rife with inner caucus
witchhunts, personal slander and character assassination. Ar­
mando set himself up as an infallible demigod who instinctively
could sniff out not only the "conciliators" in our ranks, but the
"conciliators of the conciliators." There was, to many of us, the
distinct smell of police agentry about all this.
In October 1958, Armando called together a rump conference to
have Gwen, myself and a number of other comrades expelled from
the POC. This followed a number of splits with leading comrades
like Lannon, Jim Keller in Chicago and Pat Lumpkin, all ofwhich
had been initiated by Armando. I had unwittingly allowed myself
to be a part of some of this. It began to smell a little fishy to me
though, and I demanded an investigation and the opening of all
files. The result was a slander campaign against me-questioning
my motives and charging me with abandoning principle-and
 REVISIONISM TAKES COM MAND 623

finally my expulsion.
Our hopes for a new party went pretty much down the drain
with this and I was at loose ends. I wondered what I would do next.
I hadn't yet been expelled from the CPUSA, though everyone else
around me had been. I figured that they wanted to isolate me
completely before they expelled me. I was then working as a waiter
in a French restaurant in Greenwich Village and was quite happy
with my wife and young son, Haywood, bom in June 1956. Mean­
while Gwen had lost custody of her son, Leo Yuspeh, and their
visits were restricted by the court to a few hours every other week
in a public place. She lost meaningful contact with him and found
the situation very painful.
With all these problems converging on us at once, we decided to
go to Mexico to get a fresh perspective on things, study and write. I
didn't know whatelse I could do. I flew down to Mexico and Gwen
and Haywood Jr. followed me a few weeks later. We settled first in
Cuautla, Morelos, and later in Mexico City, where our daughter
Becky was bom in 1963.
We were able to eke out an existence living off my disability
pension from the V A and a little money that Gwen had. I kept in
touch with things at home through correspondence with my old
friend Cyril Briggs in Los Angeles. Briggs was then about seventy­
two and as a leading member of the Party's local Negro
Commission was waging a pretty staunch struggle against the
revisionists. 28
Only in 1959, with most of the left out of the Party, did the
leadership fully expose their political positions in the draft
resolution for the Seventeenth Party Convention. The reso­
lution represented the nearly complete victory of the right and an
indication to me of just how insidious and dangerous an enemy
revisionism is-having point by point, step by step, cut away at all
our revolutionary principles in the name of fighting for them. The
right wing of the Party were not just less militant fighters, but
objectively the agents of the bourgeoisie who had succeeded in
gaining control of the Party.
After seeing Jackson's crude and blatantly reformist program
on the Black national question, I decided to write an article for the
624 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

PA as part of the pre-convention discussion. By tbis time, Jackson

had developed the Party's reformist line to its logical conclusion, a
full blown melting pot theory, and I lambasted bim accordingly.
My article was never printed, but Briggs rewrote it in his name and
reportedly it was distributed at the Seventeeoth Party Con­
vention by the California delegation. Though the paper caused
quite a stir, the revisionist line on the Afro-American question was
officially adopted at the convention-the right of self-determin_a­
tion formally dropped.
Briggs's paper was just what Dennis and Jackson needed to get
rid of me. Following the convention, Jackson toDk a trip across
country. On his way to Los Angeles, he stopped i� Mexico City
and met with a number of friends there. My good fnend Elizabeth
Catlett Mora was among them and asked Jackson about me. '"Oh,
he's been expelled," he said. "He 's a good guy, t,ut we just had
some differences." And that's hciw I found out after thirty-six years
that I had been expelled from the Communist PiJrtY USA.
And so the right was ultimately victorious in tlle Party's third
major crisis. Under the guise of attacking an often elusive and
ephemeral "'left sectarianism" and "dogmatism," they destroyed
the Party as a vanguard force, irrevocably shoving it down the
road to revisionism and counter-revolution. It's true that there
were from time to time ultra-left currents in the Party. These
currents mainly developed in response to the rightism of the Party
leadership, as a result of the failure to involve the cad res in political
education and play a leading role in the mass movernents . But only
with a few exceptions could these leftist deviations have been
considered the main <langer to the Party. Most of what had been
labeled by the leadership as "left sectarianism" were actually
honest attempts to oppose the rightist bureaucracy, not the purism
and isolationism, the running ahead of the masses which charac­
terizes ultra-leftism. 29
In basing themselves on the thesis that left sectarianism
constituted the main danger and was primarily responsible for the
isolation of the Party, the right obscured the whole Jiistory of class
struggle in this country. It was right opportunism wb.ich destroyed
the once-powerful Socialist Party. It was as we hive seen, right
 REVISIONISM TAKES COMMAND 625

opportunism, expressed in Lovestone's theory of continued

prosperity and American exemption from economic crisis, which
provoked the first Party crisis in I 927.
It was the crass opportunism and bourgeois reformism of
Browder's theories of "progressive capitalism" and an extended
period of "harmony of interests between capital and labor" which
threw the Party into its second major crisis.
And once again, it was right opportunism, this time expressed
largely in the slogan of "peaceful, parliamentary and consti­
tutional transition to socialism," which plunged the Party into its
third and fatal crisis. In this crisis, the right successfully threw the
Party into a fervor over "left sectarianism," exaggerating this error
in order to obscure the history of the struggle against the right
danger and prevent the Party from carefully and thoroughly
tracing right opportunism to its systematic maturation during the
post-war years.
The proposition that left sectarianism constituted the main
historical <langer in the CPUSA ignored the constant pressures
exerted on the Party by the forces of bourgeois ideology and
capitalist development. The particular conditions which American
capitalism developed under-a frontier, vast resources and nat­
ura} wealth, bourgeois democracy, an ability to temporarily
mediate economic slump and recession, relative periods of pros­
perity-all this has tended to aet as a force which retards the class
consciousness of broad sections of the labor movement, fostering
illusions that basic change can take place within the capitalist
system and inequities be solved through reform.
The development of capitalism into monopoly capitalism,
imperialism and the corresponding plunder of the Caribbean
nations, the Philippines and Asia, brought superprofits into the
coffers of the ruling class, enabling it to cultivate and encourage­
through money, prestige and influence-a la bor aristocracy which
serves as the lieutenants of capital within the labor move­
ment.
This small elite section of American labor, based among the
upper strata of skilled and higher paid workers, has through its
leadership in the trade unions, inundated the working class with
626 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

bourgeois ideology, promoting reformism, narrow self-interest

and rampant jingoistic chauvinism. This "labor bureaucracy" is
particularly susceptible to the imperialist propaganda of white
chauvinism and has served to intensify the antagonisms between
white and Black workers, dividing and splitting the working class
into hostile groups, retarding the development of revolutionary
class consciousness.
These objective conditions combined together to provide fertile
soil for the maturing of right opportunist class collaborationism
and chauvinist ideas, outlooks and policies which undoubtedly all
heavily affected our Party. It was out of these concrete conditions
that right opportunism developed as themain danger in the working
class movement. My experience in the Party confirmed what the
history of the working class struggle has shown, that in order to
develop as a revolutionary vanguard, the CP must constantly
struggle against the powerful pressures of bourgeois ideology
within its own ranks. The Party is not separated by a Chinese wall
from the corruptive influences of the bourgeois world. In the post­
war period, bourgeois influences within the Party combined in
effect with the pressures of imperialist repression upon the
Party. As a source of revisionism, illusions about the vitality of
American imperialism were reinforced now by the imprisonment
and terror employed by the government against the Party.
Under these circumstances, the shallowness of the "correction"
of 1945 became apparent. Illusions about the possibility of
continued alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie continued to be the
center of the political orientation of the Party leadership. Simul­
taneously, under the pressure of the Smith Aet prosecutions, the
Party leadership developed the theory of peaceful transition to
socialism.
Without a thorough purge of Browderism, the Party preserved
and built up a bureaucracy effectively insulated against the
operation of the Marxist-Leninist practice of criticism and self­
criticism. In this way, not only was the ideological level of our
Party forced to remain at a low level, but at the same time,
unification, purification and corrective replacements of leadership
were made almost impossible. The end result is a party which
 REVISIONISM TAKES COMMAND 627

today acts as a mouthpiece for Soviet social-imperialism, the

labor aristocracy and the pro-detente sections of the U.S. ruling
class.
 Epilogue
The evil system of colonialism and imperialism grew up
along with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in
Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the thorough
emancipation of the black people.
Mao Tse-tung 1

By the late fifties, those of us who had defended the revo­

lutionary position on Black liberation had been driven from the
CP-either expelled or forced to resign. The Party's leaders
insisted that Blacks were well on the way to being assimilated into
the old reliable American "melting pot."
But the melting pot suddenly exploded in their faces. In the
sixties, the Black Revolt surged up from the Deep South and
quickly spread its fury across the entire country. Advancing wave
upon wave-with sit-ins, freedom marches, wildcat strikes, and,
finally, hundreds of spontaneous insurrections-the Black masses
announced to their capitalist masters and the entire world
that they would never rest until their chains of bondage were
completely smashed.
This new awakening of the Afro-American people evoked the
greatest domestic crisis since the thirties and it became the focal
point for the major contradictions in U .S. society, the most urgent,
immediate and pressing questions confronting the U.S. corporate
rulers and the revolutionary forces. In its face, the ruling class
employed counter-revolutionary dual tactics, both terrorist at-
 EPILOGUE 629

tacks on Black people, especially in the deep South, and reformist

legal maneuvers in Washington.
First developing as a civil rights struggle against Jim Crow, the
Revolt increasingly took on a nationalist character, culminating in
the Black Power movement and projecting into the heart of
modem U.S. society the demands of the unfinished democratic
revolution of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
In a decade of mass movement, which saw demonstrations and
uprisings in virtually every ghetto in the country, the Afro­
American people put all existing programs for Black freedom to
the test. Their struggle shattered the myth of peaceful imminent
integration, revealing the bankruptcy of the "Free by '63" program
of the old reformist leaders and their supporters in the revisionist
CPUSA.
The Black upsurge had its fueling sources domestically in the
combined influences of the failure of legal democratic integration
and the catastrophic deterioration of the economic position of the
Black masses, both absolute and relative to whites. In the fifties,
the further monopolization and mechanization of agriculture had
precipitated a deep agrarian crisis, throwing tens of thousands of
rural Blacks off the land in the South. At the same time, the
impending economic crisis, together with growing automation of
industry, created an entire generation of ghetto youth in the urban
areas, a "lost generation"-both north and South-with no work
or prospects for work within the existing economic system. With
the dispossessed Black population growing by leaps and bounds,
the potential of the movement for Black Power escalated.
IThe Revolt was further fueled and inspired by the successes of
the anti-imperialist movements of the third world, especially in the
newly independent nations of Africa. This worldwide revolution
of color broke the age-old feeling of isolation among the Black
masses. As Malcolm X put it, "The oppressed people of this earth
make up a majority, not a minority."2
Thus the struggle was transformed from an internat, isolated
one against an apparently "invincible" ruling class, into a compo­
nent part of a worldwide revolutionary struggle against a common
imperialist enemy. U.S. defeats in Korea, China, Cuba, and then,
630 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Vietnam, further exploded the myth of U.S. "invincibility." Many

Black Power militants drew upon the experiences of the third
world liberation struggles in developing a strategy for the move­
ment here, as well as in many instances openly expressing solidarity
with liberation struggles in Vietnam, Palestine and Africa.
This anti-imperialist outlook reflected the rising mood of the
times. Thus the Revolt's development confirmed our thesis that
the Black movement would inevitably take a national-revolution­
ary, anti-imperialist direction, culminating in the demand for
political power in the areas of Black concentration. Far from being
simply a fight for reforms, as the revisionists claimed, the Black
liberation movement became a spark, a catalyst pushing forward
the whole working class and people's struggle in the U.S.
This latter point underscored the treacherous depths of the
revisionist betrayal. The CPUSA did not even attempt to mobilize
labor support for the Black struggle, and the labor aristocracy
maintained hegemony over the workers' movement. Thus aban­
doned to the leadership of the chauvinist bureaucrats, sharp
divisions were sown between Black and white workers. This was in
clear contrast to the unity built by communists in the thirties when
the Party and the working class had played a leading role in
fighting for the special demands of Blacks, making the Scottsboro
Boys a household word from the tenements of New York to the
ghettos of Watts.
Though the revolutionary outlook and organization of commu­
nists never became the leading factor in the Revolt, the movement
nonetheless made considerable gains in the course of its develop­
ment. As I see it, the Revolt developed in three periods. The first
began with the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56 and ended
with the 1963 March on Washington. This latter protest event
brought in its wake a widespread disillusionment with the
reformist, legalistic and non-violent strategy of such organizations
as SCLC, the Urban League and the NAACP.
The growing isolation of these "responsible" leaders and the
break-up of the Kennedy-backed civil rights coalition (the "Big
Five"-SNCC, SCLC, CORE, Urban League, the NAACP and
the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund) ushered in the
 EPILOGUE 631

second phase of militant open revolt. This period was marked by

widespread rebellions in the cities and the demand for Black
Power. But lacking a Leninist vanguard linked to the masses, the
movement at this point was unconsolidated. Its nationalist
leadership splintered into a variety of petty bourgeois tendencies­
separatist, pan-Africanist, cultural nationalist and even some
terrorist tendencies. Thus the bourgeoisie was able to usher in a
third phase by buying off the right wing of the Black Power
movement and establishing its own brokers within it. The 1969
Black Power Conference in Newark, which was generouslyfunded
by the Ford Foundation, was the signal that this phase of the
movement had begun in earnest.

FROM THE COURTROOM TO THE STREETS (1955-63)

The stage for the Black Revolt was set in 1954, the year of the
Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation. This
decision, historie in its effects upon the future of the Black
movement, was a tactical concession forced by the rising move­
ment at home and especially by criticism of Jim Crow from third
world and socialist countries. NAACP leaders, however, hailed
the decision as a vindication of their legalistic policies.
For its part, the federal government gave hardcore Southern
reactionaries the opportunity to organize and unleash the most
planned and purposeful campaign of anti-Black terror since the
defeat of Reconstruction.
In response, the Black mavement in the South burst out from
under the wraps of the old elite leadership of the NAACP and took
on a mass character-defying segregation laws and directly
attacking the Jim Crow system. The spark was ignited in the
Montgomery, Alabama, Bus Boycott of 1955-56 under the leader­
ship of Martin Luther King. The flames spread. In 1960, the
Student N on-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) began sit­
in demonstrations which swept the South.
Freedom riders under the leadership of the Congress for Racial
Equality (CORE) took over the spotlight in 1961 and won national
632 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

support for their campaign to integrate transportation facilities. In

the spring of 1963, the struggle reached a high point in the Battle of
Birmingham and from there leaped over regional boundaries and
spread throughout the country, uniting various classes and strata
of Black people under the slogan of "Freedom Now"!
The movement exerted tremendous attractive power on all
sections of the population, especially the youth, drawing sections
of the white community into support and participation. The
summer of 1964 saw hundreds of college students travel to
Mississippi to participate in a voter registration project.
It was also in the South that the armed self-defense movement
was initiated in North Carolina by Robert Williams, whose
NAACP local was suspended for these activities. Based upon
Black workers and war veterans, other armed groups like the
Deacons for Defense and Justice in Louisiana and Mississippi won
important victories against the Ku Klux Klan in the mid-sixties. It
was during the Meredith March through Mississippi, which was
protected by the Deacons, that the slogan of Black Power first
gained national prominence in 1966.
As Chairman Mao wrote, the movement became "a new
clarion call to all the exploited and oppressed people of the United
States to fight against the barbarous rule of the monopoly
capitalist class." 3 Movements developed among students and
women, Chicano, Native American and Puerto Rican people, as
well as among activists against the Vietnam War.
Alarm bordering on panic struck the ruling circles. Time
magazine expressed the fear that the civil rights movement
"will crash beyond the framework of passive resistance into
new dangerous dimensions." 4 U .S. efforts to build a neo-colonial
empire in the third world were further impaired as the grotesque
contrast between its high-flown moral posture and the brutal
reality of an organized system of racist barbarism nurtured within
its own horders was further exposed. Racist police employing such
methods as electric prodding irons, police dogs, high pressure
hoses and the brutal beating of women, provoked angry outrage
throughout the world. lts impact was especially felt in Africa,
where concern about racism in the United States was expressed by
 EPILOGUE 633

t hc Addis Ababa Conference of African Ministers. 5

'l'he alarm of white ruling circles was also reflected among the
tor, leadership of the NAACP and other reformist organizations.
In order to maintain their role as "honest" brokers between the
Black masses and the white rulers, they had been forced to grant
Norne autonomy to the Southern dissident wing led by King and
SC'LC. Representing ministers and the Black bourgeoisie of the
South, King favored a policy of non-violent, mass action. But he in
turn was faced with a growing challenge from the more radical
rlcments of the movement, especially the youth ofSNCC, sections
ol' CORE and the N AACP youth-the shock troops of the Revolt.
li was among these front-line fighters that the inherent conflict
hel ween King's non-violent philosophy and direct mass action first
l'nme to a head. Under conditions prevailing in the Deep South,
d ircct mass action and civil disobedience campaigns could develop
und grow only if accompanied by organized armed self-defense. In
rcnouncing self-defense, the movement inevitably reached an
impasse there.
In situations like the heroic but unsuccessful battle of Albany,
< icorgia, the moral and political bankruptcy of making non­
violcnce a principle was revealed. In Jackson, Mississippi, even
11flcr the assassination of NAACP leader Medgar Evers, little or
1111 progress was made. Similarly in Greensboro, North Carolina,
1,000 demonstrators were jailed over the integration of two
rcNtaurants. And in Birmingham, the South's most important
hm1tion of white supremacy, it was fourteen years until a token
lndictment was brought against a few of the child-murdering
hnmbers. The upsurge of 1963 resulted in gains in other parts of
I hc country, but practically none in the Deep South.
l•:ven the victories that were won in desegregation and legal
l'cforms produced no improvement in the conditions of poor and
work ing Blacks. In the fifteen-year period between 1949 and 1964,
I hc median annua} income for non-white families increased from
$ I ,(150 to $3,800, while the median income for white families
lncrcased from $3,200 to more than $6,800 during the same period.
Thc disparity between white and non-white annual income in 1949
ltnd been less than $1,600. By 1964, the gap was more than $3,000.
634 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

During the economic crisis of 1958-64, the government admitted

that Black unemployment was above the 10% mark and the Black­
white ratio of unemployment rate was boosted from 1.6 in 1948 to
2 or 2.5 from the early fifties on. Black youth were hardest hit of
all. Between the two "good" years of 1957 and 1964, their
unemployment increased 51 %, at the same time that one out of
every six young Blacks was driven out of the official labor force.
These experiences cast doubt on the whole program of "peaceful
democratic integration." Riding the tiger of the Black Revolt, King
and fellow advocates of non-violence were rescued by President
Kennedy. Trying to walk a tightrope between the hardcore
dixiecrat defiance and surging Black militancy, the administration
sought to divert the mass movement back into legalistic channels
by proposing a civil rights bill. The bill's declared purpose was to
get the Black movement off the street and back into the courtroom
where the 100 years of litigation promised by the Southern
governors could proceed. Instead of the militant protest originally
planned, the 1963 March on Washington was converted into a
peaceful demonstration in support of the President's civil rights
bill. But even this much-vaunted march could not succeed in
diverting the rising tide of rebellion. It did, however, openly
expose to the masses the collusion between the Kennedy Admin­
istration and men like Whitney Young of the Urban League, Roy
Wilkins of the N AACP and A. Philip Randolph. At the same time,
the march leaders censored John Lewis's speech for SNCC be­
cause it attacked Kennedy's Civil Rights Bill. 6
Malcolm X showed how the government used bribery to bring
these reformist leaders to its aid in controlling the masses in
March on Washington.

When they [the administration-ed.] found out that this black

steamroller was going to come down on the capital, they
called in Wilkins, they called in Randolph, they called in these
national Negro leaders that you respect and told them, "Call it
off." Kennedy said, "Look, you all are letting this thing go too
far." And Old Tom said, "Boss, I can'tstop it, because I didn't
start it." I'm telling you what they said. They said, ''I'm not
even in it, much less at the head of it." They said, "These
 EPILOGUE 635

Negroes are doingthings on their own. They're running ahead

of us." And that old shrewd fox, he said, "Ifyou all aren't in it,
I'll put you in it. I'll put you at the head of it. I'll endorse it. I'll
welcome it. I'll help it. I'll join it." 7

BLACK POWER

Foliowing this event, mass rejeotion of peaceful democratic

integration became apparent in the growing wave of ghetto
rebellions. There were twenty-four in 1964, thirty-eight in 1966,
one hundred twenty-eight in 1967 and one hundred thirty-one in
the first half of 1968, the year of King's assassination.
These urban uprisings put into sharp focus the alienation of the
Black masses from the old-line leaders like Roy Wilkins, A. Philip
Randolph and Bayard Rustin. As the Kerner Report lamented,
"Those who come forward to discourage rioting may have no
influence with the rioters." The report also contained another ploy
of the bourgeoisie, designed to get itself off the hook. It charged:
"What white Americans have never understood-but what the
Negro can never forget-is that white society is deeply implicated
in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions
maintain it, and white society condones it." 8 By blaming everyone,
including the masses of white working people, the ruling class in
effect blamed no one and covered up their own crimes.
Black Power became the rallying cry of the uprisings because it
summed up the main lessons learned by the masses during the civil
rights phase of the movement; legal rights meant nothing without
the political power to enforce them. Black Power expressed the
growing consciousness of the Afro-American masses that they are
an oppressed nation whose road to freedom and equality lies
through taking political power into their own bands. Thus Blacks
should become the controlling force in the areas of their major
concentration-in the urban ghettos of the north as well as the
Black Belt area of the South.
The emergence of Black Power as a mass slogan signaled a
fundamental turning point in the modem Afro-American liber-
636 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

ation struggle, carrying it to the threshold of a new phase. It

marked a basic shift in content and direction of the movement,
from civil rights to national liberation, with a corresponding
realignment of social forces. It indicated that the Black Revolt had
crashed beyond the limited goals set by the old-guard reformist
assimilationist leadership of the NAACP and associates, beyond
the strictures of Reverend King's non-violent holding operation,
into channels leading to direct confrontation with the main
enemy-the "white power" oligarchy of the imperialists. Inevit­
ably, this struggle moved towards juncture with the anti- imperial­
ist revolutions in the third world and with the working class
movement for socialism.
The vehicle of the Revolt was an indigenous grassroots nation­
alism, upsurging from the poor and working masses of the urban
ghettos and the poor and dispossessed farmers and sharecroppers
of the Black Belt. The movement reflected their strivings to break
out of the bind of racist economic and cultural subjugation, to
establish for themselves the dignity of a free and equal people.
Here was the mass base of SNCC, the Black Panther Party (which
raised the question of armed self-defense for the urban ghettos and
popularized the writings of Mao Tsetung), Malcolm X (recently
split from the Black Muslims), and other revolutionary nation­
alists.
Afro-Americans were caught up in an assertive drive for a
viable, collective identity adapted to the peculiar conditions of
their development in the U .S. and their African background.
Further, it was a drive to recover a cultural heritage shaped by over
300 years of chattel slavery and a century of thwarted freedom.
This quest for identity as a people in its own right led ever greater
segments of the Afro-American community to a fundamental
reassessment of their actual status as an oppressed nation-virtual
captives in the metropolitan heartland of one of the world's most
powerful and predatory imperialist powers.
A growing body of young Black radical intellectuals assumed an
active role in fostering Black Power nationalism. Their efforts,
reflecting the spirit of the masses, produced a new cultural
renaissance surpassing that of the twenties. The vanguard was an
 EPILOGUE 637

angry, alienated Black youth-a proud and sensitive young

generation which refused to stagnate and die in a system which
sought to destroy it.
The above developments led to a mass defection from the
old guard leadership which became morally and politically isolated
from the masses. The trend of Black Power nationalism rose to
dominate the Black community in the second phase of the struggle.
The nationalism of the sixties differed from the Garvey movement
and its latter-day spiritual descendants, the Black Muslims,
neo-Garveyites and others. In the main, the Black Power move­
ment called not for escapist withdrawal, but for a fight here where
Blacks live. Among some narrow nationalist sects, however, the
old backward utopianism persisted.
The leadership of the Black Power movement, while having a
profound and positive effect on the struggles of the Black masses­
displayed its own major weakness-that of being primarily based
in the Black intelligentsia and petty-bourgeoisie. This was inevit­
able in the face of the CPUSA's defection. The movement was
hamstrung in attempting to fight U .S. imperialism without the
benefit of a program of class struggle. It also deeply under­
estimated the potential strength of unity with the overall workers'
movement in achieving the goals of the national struggle. These
weaknesses contributed to the ability of the U.S. corporate
establishment to temporarily cool out and buy off the Black
upsurge by employing both reformist and narrow nationalist
schemes.
At first Black Power activists submerged class conflicts in the
movement. But soon a right wing emerged, with its base in a sector
of the ghetto bourgeoisie: businessmen, ministers, professionals,
poverty project leaders, Black studies professors, newly-hired
lower management and token upper management. This right wing
found its spokesmen in elite intellectuals like Roy lnnis, Floyd
McKissick and Harold Cruse. They aspired to the role of
economic and political administrators of a Black "internat col­
ony," still owned and controlled by white monopoly capital­
ism.
638 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

COOPTING A RIGHT WING

This perspective of pursuing the Black bourgeoisie's class

interests within an imperialist framework was not fundamentally
different from the integrationism of the old guard Black leaders.
The more nimble members of this group hopped on the band­
wagon, while others, like Whitney Y oung, kept a foot in both
camps.
This emerging Black right wing was met half way by a white
establishment in search of new allies. Facing defeats abroad and
burning cities at home, the establishment was haunted by the
specter of a national rebellion in its urban nerve centers. As
McGeorge Bundy pointed out, if blacks bum the cities, "the white
man's companies will have to take the losses."9
This new kind of broker spoke the language of the Black Power
movement and might better lead it into safe channels, away from
the confrontations which threatened domestic tranquility and
international credibility. So the buffer zone between the estab­
lishment and the Black masses was extended to include the new
right-wing nationalists and their social base. A wide range of
corporate leaders united behind this strategy, bringing into play
their tremendous powers of cooptation and manipulation. This
does not mean that the bourgeoisie gave up on the old-line
leadership, but rather that they concentrated their efforts on the
right-wing nationalists in this particular period.
Bundy's Ford Foundation led the way, putting some of CO RE's
leadership on the payroll. The establishment and its new allies
moved to redefine Black Power in more acceptable terms.
Harvard's Kennedy Institute of Politics defined self-determi­
nation to mean community development corporations and tax
incentives for investors in the ghetto; Roy Innis endorsed this
formula.
Fifty corporations jointly sponsored two Black Power Con­
ferences under Nathan Wright's leadership. To Wright, Black
Power meant Black capitalism, or, as he expressed it, "The most
strategic opportunity which our American capitalistic system has
 EPILOGUE 639

to preserve or strengthen itself lies in the possibility of providing

the Negro community with both a substantial and immediate stake
in its operation at every level." 10
In faet, "Black capitalism" was the centerpiece of the power
elite's strategy. This included a stepped-up policy of piecemeal
concessions to contain and reverse the revolutionary trend by
buying up and corrupting potential and actual community leaders.
Richard Nixon articulated this strategy in 1968: "What most of the
militants are asking is not separation but to be included in-not as
supplicants, but as owners, as entrepreneurs-to have a share of
the wealth and a piece of the action." 11 Sections of the ghetto
entrepreneurs and professionals were ready to misuse the col­
lective strength of the Black community to get a "piece of the
action."
The crisis and ebbing of the Black Power nationalist movement
was precipitated by the rise of this thoroughly reformist trend,
which was backed directly by the imperialists. This new Black elite
moved systematically to take over the movement, sap its revo­
lutionary potential and restrict it to goals which U.S. capitalism
was willing to concede. In this, they were aided by a growing
apparatus of repression-police, FBI, CIA, National Guard and
Army Intelligence-which murdered, jailed and suppressed many
un-cooperative leaders. This came on the heels of Nixon's law and
order, white backlash campaign of 1968. The full story of intrigue,
murder, character assassination, splittism and provocative activ­
ities is only now beginning to come to light. The exposure of the
FBI's notorious COINTELPRO operations was but the tip of the
iceberg.
Where were the forces to give leadership to the movement in the
face of this both open and covert assault by the imperialists?
Certainly they were not to be found in the CPUSA which made
every effort to attack and downgrade the movement. James
Jackson summed up the basic attitude of the CPUSA toward
nationalism in a recent article. "The main function of nation­
alism," he wrote, "whatever its form (our emphasis), is to split and
divide and fragment the international working class and the
advanced contingents of the national liberation movements." 12
640 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Genuine communists, of course, must distinguish between the

nationalism of the oppressor nations and that of the oppressed, as
well as between nationalism's progressive and backward aspects.
Without the leadership of a genuine communist party, the
limitations of the nationalist outlook (as I have already shown)
became clear. lts leadership was unable to make a class analysis of
the Black community, thus overestimating the unity between the
Black masses and the Black bourgeoisie, while underestimating
the need for unity with the general workers' movement.
To be sure, the upsurge spurred the political development of the
Black proletariat, building on the foundations laid by the Black
caucus movement of the post World War II period. Beginning
in the early sixties, a new wave of Black caucuses sprung
up in basic industries across the country, reaching perhaps
their highest political development in the Detroit League of
Revolutionary Black Workers. But, in the final analysis, the
treachery of the Dennis-Hall clique prevented Black workers and
the working class as a whole from playing a consistently inde­
pendent and leading role as a class force during this period.
I believe that if we had had a revolutionary party in the sixties
that much of the spontaneity and reactionary nationalism of the
period could have been combatted. Undoubtedly, the ruling class
would still have tried to split the Black Power movement, but the
left wing would not have been nearly wiped out as an organized
force in the Black community. lf the CPUSA hadn't liquidated
communist work in the South and in the factories, the sixties
would have seen a consolidated proletarian force emerge in the
Black Belt and the ghettos. The communist forces could have come
out of the Revolt with developed cadres rooted in the factories and
communities, with credibility among the masses.

THE ROAD AHEAD

Despite such shortcomings, the sixties Revolt did force con­

cessions from the ruling class-breaking down a great deal of legal
and occupational Jim Crow, enlarging the Black middle class and
 EPILOGUE 641

extending the franchise to Blacks in the South.

But have these gains exhausted the revolutionary potential of
the Black movement? Have the mechanization of Southern
agriculture, massive outmigrations from the Black Belt and civil
rights laws wiped out the consequences of the old plantation
system? Most important, have these changes wiped out the
existence of an oppressed Black nation in the Deep South as so
many have claimed? Is the right of self-determination for the Black
Belt nation still a demand that communists should raise?
Let's take a look at current conditions. Despite the imperialist
offensive against the Black masses, which resulted in tremendous
outmigrations from the Black Belt homeland, there remains a
stable community of Black people in the rural South and a
growing Black population in the urban areas. The actual number
of Blacks has steadily increased. In 1940, there were over nine
million Black people in the South and by 1970 the number had
increased to nearly twelve million. Over 70% of all Black people in
the U.S. were bom in the South and still have roots there. Within
the Black Belt territory itself, despite fierce economic and political
coercion, there has remained since 1930 a stable community of
over five million. The "escape valve" into the northern cities is
being closed by the crisis, and outmigration from the South has
slowed considerably with reverse migration now becoming the
dominant trend.
It is no accident that the civil rights movement first arose in the
South where Blacks face the most terroristic oppression and are
often denied even the most basic democratic rights. In faet, the
mechanization of agriculture, which drove so many Blacks off the
land in the South, provided one of the main fueling sources of the
rebellion. SNCC did some of its best work in its Southern rural
projects, where it took up the struggles of sharecroppers and the
displaced peasantry.
Today the spiraling inflation and recession of the worst crisis in
forty years still hits Blacks hardest, the victims of continued last­
hired, first-fired policies and an unemployment rate twice that of
whites. Recent statistics show the highest rate of unemployment
among Black youth since World War II, while at the same time
642 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

there have been cutbacks in Black studies and other affirmative

action programs. The result is yet another "lost" generation of
Black youth condemned to the margins of the workforce. Once
again, the sensitive ghetto youth and students are becoming a flash
point for all the contradictions of the system.
In the midst of the biggest strike wave in twenty years, the ruling
class is desperately trying to exacerbate existing race differences.
This accounts for the new rise of anti-busing and segregationist
movements in northern cities, the rise in membership of the Ku
Klux Klan and the increasing attacks on social welfare and
affirmative action programs.
The crisis is also undermining the existence of the expanded
Black middle class which was created by the ruling class's strategy
of concessions during the "boom" years of the sixties. Business
failures and service cutbacks are weakening this group eco­
nomically, while fascist attacks and growing class divisions inside
the Black community are eroding the political credibility of Black
elected officials. In cities like Atlanta, Detroit and Newark, where
Black mayors have been elected, the living and working conditions
among Blacks have continued to deteriorate. Far from indicating
the attainment of real political power for Afro-Americans, these
politicians have been elected merely to serve as administrators for
the white power structure.
This domestic situation is combined with an international
situation more explosive than in the sixties, symbolized particu­
larly by the fierce liberation struggles in southern Africa and the
increasing threat of war between the two superpowers. It is only a
matter of time before the smouldering embers of Black Revolt burst
into flame again. As Lenin pointed out, "Capitalism is not so
harmoniously built that the various sources of rebellion can
immediately merge of their own accord, without reverses and
defeats." 13 Whenever the next Black upsurge comes-whether as
part of a general revolutionary upsurge or as signal of the
movement to come-we must be prepared to bring out mass
support for equality and self-determination as a special feature of
the struggle for socialism.
Most assuredly, the next wave of mass struggle will begin from a
 EPILOGUE 643

higher level of constjousness, based on what the last upsurge

taught the masses about the nature of the enemy and the path to
liberation. In faet, the Revolt sparked an irreversible growth of
Black national consciousness and brought forward a new gener­
ation of revolutionaries. A section of this movement has turned to
the best experiences of the socialist countries in fighting for
equality of nations and nationalities. These young fighters have
become part of the growing body of cadres of the anti-revisionist
communist movement.
In this regard, a great deal has been learned from the People's
Republic of China, its Communist Party and its great leader, Mao
Tsetung. The emphasis on testing ideas in practice, care and
flexibility in applying united front tactics, of relying upon and
serving the people, realism in dealing with power relationships,
respect for the integrity of national minorities and for the rights of
the third world nations against great nation chauvinism, the
concrete analysis and application of Marxist-Leninist principles to
one's own country, and the pursuing of the two-line political
struggle inside the Party are all part of China's great legacy. For
me, this has been a cause for great optimism for the ftiture,
csp�cially for the new generation of communists. .
This generation, left without guideposts after the betrayal of the
CP, was forced to start almost from scratch. It has carried out a
long march through the mass struggles of the sixties, to recapture
our revolutionary heritage. It is heartening that they, along with
some of us veteran fighters, are building a genuine communist
party-the first in this country in decades. To this new revo­
lutionary movement falls the task of giving leadership in the
coming upsurge.
The ever deepening crisis and the increased threat of war
hctween the two superpowers are affecting the living conditions of
the broad masses of American people. At the same time, the ability
of the imperialists and the labor aristocracy to grant concessions
and thus buy off dissent, has been somewhat hampered by the
crisis. Under such conditions and with the leadership of a new
party, there is a strong possibility of building a movement based on
I he alliance between Blacks and other nationalities and the
644 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

working class. As Chairman Mao wrote in 1968:

The struggle of the black people in the U nited States is bound
to merge with the American workers' movement, and this
will eventually end the criminal rule of the U .S. monopoly
capitalist class.14
I hope that this hook, which sums up some of my experiences
and that of many other comrades, will make some contribution to
this lofty goal.
Notes
 NOTES 647

CHAPTER ONE
I. (p. 5.) W. E. B. DuBois, Dusk of Dawn (New York: Harcourt, Brace
and Company, 1940), p. 96.
2. (p. 21.) On April 12, 1864, 6,000 Confederate soldiers commanded by
an ex-slave trader, Major General Nathan Forrest, overran the 600
defenders of Fort Pillow, Tennessee, including 262 Blacks. After the fort
was sµrrendered, Forrest's troops massacred every Black soldier who
failed to escape. Some were shot, others were burned or buried alive. This
was in line with the official Confederate policy that Black soldiers would
be treated as stolen property, not prisoners of war.
Reference to the incident can be found in the following works: Lerone
Bennett, Jr., Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America
(Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966), pp. 175-76; John Hope Franklin,
From Slavery to Freedom, 3rd ed. (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1967), p.
292; Carl Sandburg, Storm over the Land (New York: Harcourt, Brace
und Company, 1942), pp. 245-48; Bruce Catton, A Stillness at Appo­
mattox (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1953), p. 233.

CHAPTER TWO
I. (p. 36.) "An Essay Toward a History of the Black Man in the Great
War," reprinted in Julius Lester (ed.), The Seventh Son: The Thought
and Writings of W. E. B. DuBois (New York: Random House, 1971),
Vol. 2, pp. 130-31.
2. (p. 37 .) Branches of the Manasseh also existed in- Milwaukee and
Chicago, but they had dissolved by the late twenties. See St. Clair Drake
und Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis (New York: Harper and Row,
1962), vol. 2, pp. 145-46.
J. (p. 43.) Herbert Aptheker, "Negroes in Wartime," New Masses,
April 22, 1941, p. 14.
4. (p. 43.) John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, 4th ed. (New
York: Knopf, 1974), pp. 474-75.
�- (p. 44.) Martha Gruening, "Houston, an N.A.A.C.P. Investigation,"
The Crisis, November 1917, pp. 14-15.
6. (p. 45.) This was the story as we heard it from Company G. Slightly
different versions appear in the following: Jack D. Foner, Blacks and the
Military in American History (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974), pp.
113-16; Robert V. Haynes, "The Houston Mutiny and Riot of 1917,"
Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1973, pp. 418-39; and Charles
1-'lint Kellogg, NAACP(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967), vol. I,
pp. 261-62.
A campaign for the freedom of the men of the Twenty-fourth was
648 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

launched by the NAACP, which finally resulted in the release of the last
prisoner by Roosevelt in 1938.
7. (p. 55.) This document was first published in The Crisis, May 1919,
pp. 16-17, with this note:
"The following documents have come into the bands ofthe Editor. He
has absolute proof of their authenticity. The first document was sent out
last August at the request of the American Army by the French
Committee which is the official means of communications between the
American forces and the French. It represents American and not French
opinion and we have been informed that when the French Military
heard of the distribution of this document among the Prefects and
Sous-Prefects of France, they ordered such copies to be collected and
burned."
8. (p. 56.) This was how Roberts impressed many of us in the ranks at
the time. Black officers, however, later told DuBois that Roberts let them
run the regiment while taking credit for their exploits and conniving
behind their backs to replace them with whites. See Lester, pp. 140-41.
9. (p. 66.) Charles H. Williams, Sidelights on Negro Soldiers (Boston:
B.J. Bremmer and Co., 1923), pp. 74-75.
10. (p. 66.) Robert R. Moton, Finding a Way Out (Garden City, New
York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1920), p. 254.
11. (p. 67.) Quoted in Monroe N. Work (ed.), Negro Year Book
(Tuskegee lnstitute, Alabama: The Negro Year Book Publishing Co.,
1922), p. 192.
12. (p. 80.) For a detailed description of Black stevedore units, see
Lester, pp. l 17-19; and Williams, pp. 138-55.

CHAPTER THREE
1. (p. 83.) Arthur I. Waskow, From Race Riot to Sit-In (New York:
Doubleday and Company, 1966), pp. 12, 111-12.
2. (p. 84.) Claude McKay, Selected Poems (New York: Harcourt, Brace
and World, 1953), p. 36.
3. (p. 87.) Allan H. -Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro
Ghetto (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 36-41, and 151-
55. Also see William M. Tuttle, Jr., "Labor Conflict and Racial Violence:
The Black Worker in Chicago, 1894-1919," Labor History, Summer
1969, pp. 408-32.
4. (p. 87.) Spear, p. 141.
5. (p. 93.) In the wake of mass actions in Philadelphia and Boston, the
film was temporarily banned in many cities, including Chicago, where the
NAACP and the Chicago De/ender were active in the campaign.
 NOTES 649

6. (p. 93.) These states included parts of New England, New York,
Indiana, Michigan and Illinois. The Klan was first reorganized in 1915 by
William J. Simmons who advertised the reborn KKK in an Atlanta
paper, alongside an ad for the opening of Birth ofaNation. According to
David Chalmers, the KKK grew from several thousand members in 1919
to nearly 100,000 by summer 1921, and up to 3,000,000 by the
midtwenties. See David M. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism (Garden
City, New York: Doubleday, 1965), pp. 29-31, 291.
7. (p. 94.) See W. E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstructian inAmerica(New
York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935), pp. 711-28.
8. (p. 98.) Martin Madden, the white congressman from the first
district, was the grand patron of Black post office employees. From his
position on the House Postal Comrnittee, he built a reputation for getting
his Black constituents a good share of post office jobs. See Harold F.
Gosnell,Negro Politicians (Chicago: U niversity of Chicago Press, 1935),
pp. 307-08, 316-17.
9. (p. 99.) Ibid., pp. 302-18; and Henry McGee, ..The Negro in the
Chicago Post Office," unpublished master's thesis (University of Chi­
cago, 1961), pp. 31-36.
10. (p. 100.) DuBois, Black Reconstruction, pp. 718-19.
11. (p. 103.) Amy Jacques Garvey, Philosophy and Opinions ofMarcus
Garvey (New York: Atheneum, 1969), vol. 1, pp. 4, 8.
12. (p. 104.) There are many examples of pre-Garvey nationalism in the
U.S., but Martin Delany is one of the most modern-sounding. In the
conclusion to his hook, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and
Destiny af the Colared People af the United States, Palitically Cansid­
ered (New York: Arno Press, 1968) pp. 209-10, he writes:
"We are a nation within a nation; as the Poles in Russia, the
Hungarians in Austria; the Welsh, Irish and Scotch in the British
Dominions....The claims of no people, according to established policy
and usage, are respected by any nation, until they are presented in a
national capacity ."
13. (p. 105.) Edmund David Cronon, Black Moses (Madison: Univer­
sity of Wisconsin Press, 1955), p. 197.
14. (p. 106.) Spear, p. 135.
15. (p. 108.) Garvey, vol. 2, pp. 69-70.
16. (p. 111.) W. E. B. DuBois, "Back to Africa," The Century Magazine,
February 1923, p. 547. History repeated itself forty years later when the
Black Muslims' public contacts with ultra-racists caused thern to !ose
many of their more revolutionary followers. This was exposed in the
March 1966 issue of the radical monthly rnagazine, Now (p. 10):
"If Americans-and Negroes in particular-were astonished when a
650 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

member of the American Nazi Party was accorded a place of honor at a

Black Muslim conclave not long ago, Malcolm indicated that Muslim
ties with the oil-rich supporters of the Ku Klux Klan were deep and vast.
James Venable, a Klan lawyer, had defended the New Orleans mosque
following a raid by police and charges of insurrectionist activity.
Malcolm said he himself had accompanied Elijah Muhammad to an
incredible meeting in 1961 at Magnolia Hall in Atlanta, Georgia, at
which Elijah's dream of a Black nation within the U nited States was
solemnized in a treaty with officers of the Klan. Maps were drawn
'ceding' the Black Muslims parts of s·outh Carolina and Georgia, an aet
to be effectuated when the right wing forces came to power."

CHAPTER FOUR
I. (p. 123.) Frederick G. Detweiler, The Negro Press in the U.S.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1922), 'p. 77.
2. (p. 124.) Amsterdam News, September 5 and 19, 1917, quoted in
Theodore Draper, American Communism and Soviet Russia (New
York: The Viking Press, 1960), p. 323.
3. (p. 124.) "Liberty For All!" Amsterdam News, 1918, quoted without
full date in Draper, p. 323.
4. (p. 125.) The Crusader, November 1921, quoted in Draper, pp. 505-
06.
5. (p. 125.) In 1946, while researching material for Negro Liberation, l
had occasion to look over the file of The Crusader in the Schomburg
Collection of the New York Public Library. It seemed at the time to be
almost complete. I learned later from Briggs, who sought to consult these
files in 1967, that they had disappeared. Theodore Draper, in preparation
for his hatchet job on communism, American Communism and Soviet
Russia, was able to track down fourteen copies in the Howard University
Library. For the present, pending my own research, I am relying partially
on Draper's quotes, but not, of course, upon his interpretation.
6. (p. 125.) The Crusader, April 1921, p. 9, quoted in Draper, p. 324.
7. (p. 129.) The Bugs Club was a corner of Washington Park used for
open-air speaking in the twenties and thirties. The Dill Pickle Forum
gathered on the north side on Saturdays under the leadership of the
anarchist, Jack Jones. A wide variety of radicals attended the meetings
and spoke there, including Emma Goldman.
8. (p. 130.) See Spear, Black Chicago, pp. 198-99.
9. (p. 138.) Ray Ginger, The Rending Cross (New Brunswick, New
Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1949), p. 260.
10. (p. 138.) International Socialist Review, November 1903, pp. 258-
59.
 NOTES 651

11. (p. 138.) Ibid., January 1904, p. 396.

12. (p. 140.) In 1922, right-wing union leaders drove the Communist
Party (then called the Workers Party) out of the Conference for
Progressive Political Action. This was the organization which ran
LaFollette for president in 1924 when he got one sixth of the vote. In
1923, the Farmer-Labor Party, led by "center" union leaders like
Fitzpatrick of the Chicago Federation of Labor, split with the Workers
Party. This marked the defeat of the Party's early efforts to build a
farmer-labor party. For Foster's analysis, see William Z. Foster, History
o_f the Communist Party of the United States (New York: International
Publishers, 19S2), pp. 211-23. For Ruthenberg's version, see Charles E.
Ruthenberg, From the Third Through the Fourth Convention of the
Workers (Communist) Party of America (Chicago: Daily Worker
Publishing Co., 192S), pp. 10-14.
13. (p. 142.) Ruthenberg, p. 18.
14. (p. 143.) "Proceedings of the Fourth National Convention of the
Workers (Communist) Party of America (1925)," p. 119.
15. (p. 143.) Ibid.
16. (p. 143.) The Trade Union Educational League (TUEL) was found­
ed in 1920 to organize the "militant minority" in the trade unions.
William Z. Foster and other TUEL leaders joined the Workers Party in
1921. The foliowing year, the TUEL launched a successful campaign to
win unions representing millions of workers to support its main
demands: for a labor party; for amalgamation (industrial unionism); and
for recognition of Soviet Russia.
17. (p. 145.) Sterling D. Spero and Abram L. Harris, The Black Worker
(New York: Atheneum, 1968), p. 425.
18. (p. 146.) James W. Ford, The Negro and the Democratic Front
(New York: International Publishers, 1938), p. 82.

CHAPTER FIVE
1. (p. 148.) The January 17, 1926, edition of the Sunday _ _iyew York
Times carried an article titled "Communists Boring into Negro Labor." It
included such sensational subheads as:
•Taking Advantage of the New Moves Among Colored
Workers Here to Stir Unrest
•Not Much Progress Yet
•Ten Young Negroes are Sent to Moscow Under Soviet
"Scholarships" to Study Bolshevism
•Nuclei Sought in Unions
•Labor Federation and Older Leaders of the Race Seek
Antidotes in Real Labor Unions.
652 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

2. (p. 151.) John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World (New York:
Boni and Liverwright, 1919).
3. (p. 157.) Stalin saw the university having two lines of activity: "one
line having the aim of creating cadres capable of serving the needs of the
Soviet republics of the East, and the other line having the aim of creating
cadres capable of serving the revolutionary requirements of the toiling
masses in the colonial and dependent countries of the East." J.V. Stalin,
"The Political Tasks of the University of the Peoples of the East," Works
(Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953), vol. 6, p. 382.
4. (p. 157.) See J.V. Stalin, Foundations of Leninism (Peking: Foreign
Languages Press, 1975), pp. 72-83.
5. (p. 159.) Ibid., p. 77.
6. (p. 171.) Permit me briefly to define these terms which I will be using
quite often throughout the rest of the hook.
The Comintern (Communist International or Third International) was
founded in Moscow in March 1919 and dissolved in 1943. The Comintern
was founded in a period of revolutionary upsurge and in direct
opposition to the leaders of the Second International, who had endorsed
support for their own imperialist bourgeoisies in the First World War. A
voluntary association of communist parties, the Comintern gave revolu­
tionary leadership during a very important period in history, building
communist parties around the world and developing united fronts
against fascism in the thirties. Particularly significant among its theore­
tical contributions were the theses on the national and colonial questions.
The Crestintern, or Peasant International, was founded at the Interna­
tional Peasant Conference in Moscow in 1923, with the express purpose
of "coordinating peasant organizations and the efforts of the peasants to
achieve workers' and peasants' internationals." It was dissolved in 1939.
The Profintern, or Red International of Labor Unions (RILU), was
founded in 1921 and played an important role in the development of the
labor movement until its dissolution in the late thirties. The Profintern's
program called for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of
the dictatorship of the proletariat. To this end, it gave leadership to the
struggles of the working masses worldwide, adding, as Foster wrote, "a
new dimension" to the la bor movement by carrying trade unionism to the
colonial and semi-colonial countries.
See also William Z. Foster, History of the Three Internationals (New
York: International Publishers, 1955).
The District Organizer, also referred to as the "D.O.," is the head of the
leading body in the Party district and is in overall charge of the district's
 NOTES 653

work. The D.O.'s primary responsibility is to give political leadership in

carrying o ut the Party's line.

CHAPTER SIX
1. (p. 176.) During theFrenchRevolution, onJuly 27, l794(the ninth of
Thermidor, according to the revolutionary calendar), a gwup later calle d
the Thermidorians seized power, executing Robespierre, Saint-Just and
more than eighty other radical Jacobins. This began a counter-revo­
lutionary trend which led to Napoleon's coup in 1799 an(i the restoration
of several European monarchies in 1815.
2. (p. 176.) Stalin, Works, vol. 5, p. 394.
3. (p. 177.) History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(Bolsheviks)-Short Course(New York: International P'1blishers, 1939),
p. 257. In this work, the Central Committee of the CPSU(B) sums up
Lenin's views on the NEP:
A certain freedom of trade would give the peasant al\ economic
incentive, induce him to produce more and would lead to a rapid
improvement of agriculture... on this basis, the state-owned indus­
tries would be restored and private capital displaced... strength and
resources having been accumulated, a powerful industry could be
created as the economic foundation of Socialism, and then a
determined offensive could be undertaken to destroy the remnants
of capitalism in the country.
4. (p. 177.) Ibid., p. 257.
5. (p. 178.) Quoted in Stalin, Works, vol. 6, p. 393.
6. (p. 179.) Quoted in Stalin, Works, vol. 6, pp. 383-84.
7. (p. 179.) V. I. Lenin, Collected Works(Moscow: ProgressPublishers.
1964), vol. 21, pp. 418-19. It is here that Lenin shows, in opposition to
Trotsky, that imperialism and especially war "strengthened the economic
and political factors that are impelling the petty bourgtoisie, including
the peasantry, to the left.''
8. (p. 179.) Stalin, Works, vol. 6, p. 384. Stalin pointedout that "Lenin
speaks of the alliance between the proletariat and the labouring strata of
the peasantry as the basis of the dictatorship of the proktariat. Trotsky
sees a 'hostile collision' between the 'proletarian vanguar�• and 'the broad
masses of the peasantry.' "
9. (p. 180.) Stalin, Works, vol. 6, p. 382.
IO. (p. 180.) Ibid., p. 385.
11. (p. 180.) Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 21, p. 419.
12. (p. 181.) Lenin, "The Revolutionary Proletariat a,d the Right of
Nations to Self-Determination," ibid., p. 409.
654 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

13. (p. 181.) In the fifties and sixties, many communist parties dropped
their revolutionary principles and launched vicious attacks on Stalin,
opening the way for a temporary resurgence of Trotskyism. A new
generation then learned first-hand how Trotskyism uses revolutionary
phrases to cover its attacks on every progressive movement, taking every
opportunity to stander socialist China. They promoted slogans like "All
Indochina Must Go Communist" as an excuse for their opposition to the
popularly-supported National Liberation Front of Vietnam. In current
struggles in the Black liberation movement, they have liquidated the
necessity for a revolutionary program of struggle, promoting instead
reliance on the courts and other brands of reformism.
14. (p. 183.) International Press Correspondence, January 12, 1927, p,
63. (Hereinafter cited as lnprecorr.)

CHAPTER SEVEN
1. (p. 198.) See J.T. Murphy, "The First Years of the Lenin School, 11
Communist International, September 30, 1927, pp. 267-69.
2. (p. 201.) Bom in 1862 in Staten Island, New York, Ella Reeve Bloor
(Mother Bloor) joined the Socialist Labor Party during the 1890s. She
quickly became a leading activist and organizer, participating in many
important labor struggles of the time, including the 1914 miners' strike in
Ludlow, Colorado. In 1921, she became a founding member of the
Communist Party and continued her activity in the revolutionary
movement until her death in the fifties. See Mother Bloor'a
autobiography, We Are Many (New York: International Publishers,
1940).
3. (p. 202.) Lenin returned to Petrograd from exile on April 3, 1917. The
next day he delivered his theses, "The Tasks of the Proletariat in the
Present Revolution," Co/lected Works, Vol. 24, pp. 19-26. These"April
Theses" outlined a comprehensive program of transition from the
bourgeois-democratic to the proletarian-socialist revolution, includin1
nationalization of land and banks, workers' control of industry and a
Soviet republic. Lenin's line of "No support for the Provisional
Government" was resisted by many in the Party who had been calling for
a policy of pressuring the Provisional Government. But at the Petrograd
City Conference of Bolsheviks, two weeks later, Lenin's theses won the
day. The all-Russian Conference of Bolsheviks, over the opposition of
Kamenev and Rykov, also adopted the line of the April Theses and put
forward the slogan, "All Power to the Soviets."
4. (p. 203.) The foliowing are some of the most outstanding of Fox'ø
works: The C/ass Strugg/e in Britain in the Epoch of lmperialism
 NOTES 655

li .11111100: M. Lawrence, 1932); Genghis Khan (London: John Lane,

IIJ 1(1); /,enin: A Biography (London: V. Gollancz, 1933); Marx, Engels
1111d I.min on the Irish Revolution (New York: Workers Library
l'uhlishers, 1944); The Novel and the People(New York: International
l'11hlishers, 1937).
I\. ( p. 203.) See "The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of
Nntions to Self-Determination,"Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 21, pp.
,1117·14, and "The Irish Rebellion of 1916," vol. 22, pp. 353-58.
ft ( p. 204). The German government allowed Lenin and other Russian
fllill�s to pass through Germany on their way back to Russia in the spring
111 1917. They were required to travel in a "sealed coach," cut off from all
dln·ct contact with the outside.
1, (p. 204.) By the late thirties, the Moscow Trials had exposed the
, 11 INtcnce of the ''Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites." This bloc was actually a
IIIIIJt, which, from within the CPSU(B) and organized into illegal,
11'1 rnristic cells, sought to overthrow the dictatorship of the proletariat in
lhl' Soviet Union. lts membership included followers of Trotsky's
"ultrnlcft" theory of permanent revolution, as well as the followers of
1111k hnrin's right opportunist line. In the final analysis, it was proven that
I hlN hloc actually conspired with agents of German and Italian fascism, as
Wl"II ns with agents of other imperialist powers, to open the doors for a
fml'iJtn invasion of the Soviet Union. This plot was smashed by the
lfovicts and the bloc's members were either executed or sent to prison for
lllr. I >uring my stay in the Soviet Union (which ended a good five years
hrlorc this conspiracy was fully exposed), I was acquainted with a
1111111hcr of people who were later proven to be members of the bloc. Most
wrn· not major figures, but played a minor role in the conspiracy.
ltr1trctl"ully, my good friend, Nasanov, was among them. See Michael
N11vcrs and Albert E. Kahn, The Great Conspiracy (London: Red Star
l'rr-NN, 1975).
N. (p, 205.) James Connolly (1868-1916) was a great Irish labor leader,
111d11list and a revolutionary nationalist who was executed by the British
•llr, playing a leading part in the unsuccessful Easter uprising against
'111l11ni11l rule. He lived in the U.S. from 1903-10, and was a founding
llll'lllhcr of the IWW. Connolly was active in many mass labor and
Jllllitical struggles in this country, including the fight against the
Hl'lnrianism of the SLP and Daniel DeLeon's leadership of it.
U, (p. 205.) Murray later became general secretary of the Irish Party.
Ill. (p. 206.) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Correspondence 1846-
l�UJ (New York: International Publishers, 1936), p. 281.
11. (J'I. 206.) Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 21, pp. 104, 293.
Il, (p. 206.) Ibid., p. 357.
656 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

13. (p. 208.) A.M. Simons, Social Forces in American History (New
York: Macmillan, 1911), p. 274.
14. (p. 209.) Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Civil War in the
United States (New York: International Publishers, 1937).
15. (p. 210.) Ibid., vol. 25, pp. 274-82.
16. (p. 210.) Ibid., vol. 24, p. 169.
17. (p. 210.) Ibid., vol. 26, p. 258.
18. (p. 211.) Ibid., vol. 26; p. 258.
19. (p. 211.) Ibid., vol. 30, p. 165.
20. (p. 214.) The African National Congress (ANC) was formed in 1912
to oppose the color bar in South Africa.
21. (p. 217.) H. J. and R. E. Simons, Class and Colour in South Africa
(Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 402.

CHAPTER EIGHT
1. (p. 219.) Lenin, "Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and
Colonial Questions," Collected Works, vol. 31, pp. 144-51.
2. (p. 220.) "...a historically constituted, stable community of people,
formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and
psychological make-up manifested in a common culture." Stalin,
"Marxism and the National Question," Works, vol. 2, p. 307.
3. (p. 223.) Lenin, "Draft Theses," p. 148.
4. (p. 223.) Ibid., p. 144.
5. (p. 223.) Sen Katayama, the veteran Japanese communist, was a
special friend of the Black students in Moscow. He was born to a
Japanese peasant family, was educated in the U .S. and became one of the
founders of the Japanese Social Democratic Party in 1901. A member of
the ECCI, he had spent several years in exile in the U.S. and was
considered somewhat of an expert on the Afro-American question.
Katayama was most interested in our studies and our views on the
situation in the U.S., particularly as it concerned Blacks. "Old Man"
Katayama knew all about white folks, and we Black students regarded
him as one of us. We often came to him with our problems and he always
had a receptive ear. It was Katayama who told us of Lenin's earlier
writings about U.S. Blacks and Lenin's views on the Black Belt. He died
in Moscow in 1933 at the age of 74.
6. (p. 223.) Der Zweite Kongress der Kommunist. Internationale:
Protokol/ der Verhandlungen vom 19. Juli in Petrograd und vom 23. Juli
bis 7. August, 1920 in Moskau (Hamburg, 1921), p. 156.
7. (p. 223.) Ibid.
8. (p. 224.) Lenin, "New Data on the Laws Governing the development
 NOTES 657

of Capitalism in Agriculture. Part One: Capitalism and Agriculture in the

United States of America," Collected Works, vol. 22, p. 25.
9. (p. 224.) /bid. 1 p. 27.
10. (p. 224.) Lenin, "Statistics and Sociology," Collected Works, vol.
23� p. 271-77.
11. (p. 225.) Ibid.
12. (p. 225.) Ibid., p. 276.
13. (p. 225.) Speech of Huiswood (Billings), lnprecorr, July 25, 1924,
pp. 514-15.
14. (p. 226.) Speech ofThalheimer, lnprecorr, July 25, 1924, pp. 514-15.
15. (p. 226.) Protokol/: Fi.infter Kongress der Kommunistischen Inter­
nationale, Band II (Verlag Carl Hoym Nachf), p. 699.
16. (p. 227.) Stalin, "The Fifteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U. (B.).
December 2-19, 1927, Political Report of the Central Committee,
December 3," Works, vol. IO, p. 297.
17. (p. 228.) Speech of James Ford, lnprecorr, August 3, 1928, p. 772.
18. (p. 236.) Simons, Class and Colour, p. 390.
19. (p. 236.) "The South African Question (Resolution of the
E.C.C.I.)," The Communist International, December 15, 1928, p. 54.
20. (p. 238.) Ibid., p. 52.
21. (p. 238.) Ibid., pp. 54, 56.
22. (p. 239.) Simons, Class and Colour, p. 395.
23. (p. 239.) Edward Roux, Time Longer than Rope: A History of the
Black Man's Struggle for Freedom in South Africa, 2nd ed. (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), p. 13.
24. (p. 240.) Simons, Class and Colour, p. 398.
25. (p. 240.) Ibid., p '. 398.

CHAPTER NINE
I. (p. 246.) "Resolution of the Comintem on the American Question.
Endorsed by the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Commu­
nist International, July I, 1927," The Daily Worker, August 3, 1927.
2. (p. 247.) A. Lozovsky, "Results and Prospects ofthe United Front(in
connection with the coming Profintern, R.I.L.U., Congress)," The
Communist International, March 15, 1928, p. 146.
3. (p. 249.) Three of Foster's works which are of special interest to this
period are: Toward Soviet America (New York: Coward-McCann,
1932); From Bryan to Stalin(New York: International Publishers, 1937);
Pages from a Worker's Life(New York: International Publishers, 1939).
4. (p. 255.) A. Shiek, "The Comintern Programme and the Racial
Problem," The Communist International, August 15, 1928, pp. 407-11.
658 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

5. (p. 255.) The Daily Worker, September 22, 1927.

6. (p. 255.) The Daily Worker, February 17, 1928.
7. (p. 257.) La Correspondence Internationale, August 1, 1928, pp. 9-23.
Only the French translation of Bukharin's report was available to me.
8. (p. 258.) Stalin, "The Right Deviation in the C.P.S.U.(B.) in April,
1929 (Verbatim Report)," Works, vol. 12, p. 23.
9. (p. 258.) Ibid., p. 21.
10. (p. 258.) The Daily Worker, December Il, 1928. This issue of the
Daily Worker was not available to me; the reference is taken from
Draper, p. 50ln.13.
11. (p. 258.) John Pepper, "America and the Tactics of the Communist
International," The Communist, April 1928, pp. 219-27.
12. (p. 259.) William Z. Foster, History ofthe Communist Party ofthe
United States (New York: International Publishers, 1952), p. 266.
13. (p. 261.) Pepper wrote the resolution on the Negro question for the
Plenum of the Political Committee on May 30, I 928. This resolution was
the basis for the section on Negro work in the "Resolution on the Report
of the Political Committee (Adopted by the May 1928 Plenum of the
CEC of the Workers Party),"The Communist, July, 1928, pp. 418-19.
14. (p. 262.) See note 4.
15. (p. 262.) John Pepper, "American Negro Problems," The Commu­
nist, October 1928, p. 630.
16. (p. 263.) Speech of Ford, lnprecorr, October 25, 1928, pp. 1345-47.
17. (p. 263.) Ibid.
18. (p. 263.) Speech ofOtto Hall (Jones), Inprecorr, October 30, 1928,
pp. 1392-93.
19. (p. 266.) Speech of Lominadze, Inprecorr, November 8, 1928, p.
1462.
20. (p. 267.) Speech of Otto Hall (Jones), pp. 1392-93.
21. (p. 267.) John Pepper, "Amerikanische Negerprobleme," Die
Kommunistische Internationale (Berlin), September 5, 1928, pp. 2245-52.
22. (p. 267.) James Ford and William Wilson (Patterson), "Zur Frage
der Arbeit der amerikanischen Kommunistischen Partei unter den
Negern," Die Kommunistische Internationale (Berlin), August 29, 1928,
pp. 2132-46.
23. (p. 267.) Harry Haywood, "Das Negerproblem und die Aufgaben
der K.P. der Vereinigten Staaten," Die Kommunistische Internationale
(Berlin), September 5, I 928, pp. 2253-62.
24. (p. 268.) "Cl Resolution on Negro Question in USA," The Daily
Worker, February 12, 1929; "Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in
the Colonies and Semi-Colonies," Inprecorr, December 12, 1928, p. 1674.
25. (p. 269.) "Theses on the Revolutionary Movement," p. 1674.
 NOTES 659

26. (p. 270.) See Simons, Class and Colour, p. 406.

27. (p. 271.) Speech of Bunting, lnprecorr, August 3, 1928, p. 780; and
lnprecorr, September 19, 1928, p. 1156.
28. (p. 271.) Ibid.
29. (p. 272.) Speech of Bµnting lnprecorr, November 8, 1928, p. 1452.
30. (p. 272.) I know of no written record of either Rebecca Bunting's or
Manuilsky's remarks since they were made at the commission meetings,
and these were not recorded in /nprecorr.
31. (p. 272.) This position was stated in the section on South Africa in
the "Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies."
32. (p. 273.) "Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies,
p. 1661.
33. (p. 274.) Speech of Murphy, lnprecorr, October 30, 1928, p. 1410.
34. (p. 275.) SpeechofKuusinen,lnprecorr, November 21,1928,p. 1524.
35. (p. 275.) Ibid.
36. (p. 275.) This last extemporaneous remark does not appear in the
protocol of the congress. But I distinctly remember it, for we laughed
about the matter for years afterward. Perhaps for political reasons it was
later extracted.
37. (p. 276.) Speech of Lozovsky, lnprecorr, August 18, 1928, p. 914.
38. (p. 277.) Speech of Lominadze, lnprecorr, August 23, 1928, p. 932.
39. (p. 277.) Ibid.
40. (p. 277.) Declaration ofComradeJohnstone, lnprecorr, November
21, 1928, p. 1539.
41. (p. 278.) See Sayers and Kahn, The Great Conspiracy, pp. 324-25.
42. (p. 280.) In reference to this question, Stalin wrote:
The persons constituting a nation do not always live in one compact
mass; they are frequently divided into groups, and in that form are
interspersed among alien national organisms. It is capitalism which
drives them into various regions and cities in search of a livelihood.
But when they enter foreign national territories and there form
minorities, these groups are made to suffer by the local national
majorities in the way of restrictions on their language, schools, etc.
Hence national conflicts.
Stalin, "Marxism and the National Question," Works, vol. 2, pp. 334-35.

CHAPTER TEN
1. (p. 282.) The Daily Worker, October 3, 1928.
2. (p. 284.) The letter was published in The Daily Worker, December 26,
1928. This issue was not available to me, and the quotations were taken
from Draper, American Communism, p. 385.
660 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

3. (p. 288.) "Open Letter tothe Convention oftheWorkers(Communist)

Party of America from the E.C.C.I.," The Daily Worker, March 4, 1929.
4. (p. 292.) The speeches of Stalin were published in the pamphlet
Stalin's Speeches on the American Communist Party (New York:
International Publishers; 1929). The speeches of Molotov and Kuusinen
were published in the proceedings of the Dies Committee: U.S. House
Special Committee on Un-American Propaganda Activities in the U.S.,
lnvestigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United
States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1939-40), pp.
7124-33.
5. (p. 296.) Stalin's Speeches, p. 11.
6. (p. 296.) Ibid., p. 12.
7. (p. 297.) Ibid., p. 18.
8. (p. 297.) Ibid., p. 20.
9. (p. 297.) Un-American Propaganda Activities, p. 7133.
10. (p. 298.) "Should the final decision of your committee follow the
outline given in the last Plenary session of the American Commission
[this refers to the speeches of Comrade Stalin and Molotov-ed.] 'then
the membership of our Party would have to come to the conclusion that
the ECCI desires to destroy the CC ( of the CPUSA) and therefore follows
the policy of legalizing the past factionalism of the opposition bloc and
inviting its continuation in the future." The Daily Worker, June 12, 1929.
11. (p. 298.) "To All Members of the Communist Party of the United
States-An Address by the Executive Committee of the Communist
International," The Daily Worker, May 20, 1929 and lnprecorr, June 7,
1929, pp. 598-600.
12. (p. 299.) Un-American Propaganda Activities, p. 7129.
13. (p. 300.) The Daily Worker, June 7, 1929.
14. (p. 301.) The Daily Worker, May 20, 1929.
15. (p. 301.) "lmportant Passages from the Declaration of May 14,
Submitted to the Presidium," The Daily Worker, June 12, 1929.
16. (p. 302.) Stalin's Speeches, pp. 21-22.
17. (p. 302.) Ibid., p. 23.
18. (p. 302.) Ibid., p. 22.
19. (p. 302.) Ibid., pp. 27-29.
20. (p. 303.) Ibid.; p. 31.
21. (p. 304.) Ibid., p. 39.
22. (p. 307.) See Don Kurzman, "Lovestone's Cold War-The AFL­
CIO has its own CIA," The New Republic, June 25, 1966.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1. (p. 317.) Cyril Briggs, "The Negro Question in the Southern Textile
 NOTES 661

Strikes," The Communist, June 1929, pp. 324-28; "Further Notes on

Negro Question in Southern Textile Strikes," The Communist, July
1929, pp. 391-94; "OurNegro Work," The Communist, September 1929,
pp. 494-50 I.
2. (p. 317.) Briggs, "Our Negro Work," p. 494.
3. (p. 319.) Daily Worker, October 4, 1929.
4. (p. 320.) Briggs, "Our Negro Work," p. 498.
5. (p. 321.) Daily Worker, October 17, 1929.
6. (p. 322.) Otto E. Huiswood, "World Aspects of the Negro Question,"
The Communist, February 1930, p. 133.
7. (p. 322.) N. Nasanov, "Against Liberalism in the American Negro
Question," The Communist, April 1930, pp. 296-308.
8. (p. 322.) Harry Haywood, "Against Bourgeois-Liberal Distortions of
Leninism on the Negro Question in the United States," The Communist,
August 1930, p. 706.
9. (p. 322.) Stalin, "Marxism and the National Question," Works, vol.
2, p. 304.
10. (p. 323.) Haywood, p. 696.
11. (p. 323.) Ibid., p. 698.
12. (p. 324.) A. Sik, "To the Question of the Negro Problem in the
U.S.," in Revolutionary East, No. 7, 1929, quoted in Haywood, ibid., p.
708.
13. (p. 324.) Stalin, "The National Question Once Again," Works, vol.
7, p. 225.
14. (p. 325.) From Haywood, p. 707.
15. (p. 326.) William Z. Foster, History ofthe Communist Party, p. 282.
16. (p. 326.) S. Mingulin, "The Crisis in the United States and the
Problems ofthe Communist Party," The Communist, June 1930, p. 500.
17. (p. 326.) Earl Browder, "The Bolshevization of the Communist
Party," The Communist, August 1930, p. 688.
18. (p. 327.) The Daily Worker, June 23, 1930.
19. (p. 327.) Browder, p. 689.
20. (p. 327.) The Daily Worker, June 23, 1930.
21. (p. 327 .) Browder, p. 690.
22. (p. 328.) I first met George Padmore in December 1929, when Foster
had brought him to Moscow. I got to know him quite well and on a
number of occasions visited him in his room at the Lux Hotel. I
remember him as a slim, handsome, ebony-hued young man of medium
height, neatly dressed. A native of Trinidad, he had studiedjournalism at
Howard University. Hejoined the YCL and then the CP in Washington,
D.C. Later he was assigned to work with the TUUL as a national
organizer. He was a good speaker and a prolific writer.
662 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

At the time I sized him up as a pragmatist with only a superficial grasp

of Marxist theory. Politically, he appeared to be a staunch supporter of
the fight for independence in Africa and the West Indies, but was
adamantly opposed to the right of self-determination for U.S. B lacks,
whom he regarded not as a nation, but as an oppressed racial minority. I
was to clash with him publicly several years later. See also p. 429n. 14.
23. (p. 330.) A. Lozovsky, Inprecorr, August 21, 1930, p. 782.
24. (p. 330.) A. Lozovsky, "Ten Years ofthe Red International ofLabor
Unions," Inprecorr, July 31, 1930, pp. 675-76.
25. (p. 331.) A. Lozovsky, "The World Crisis, Economic Struggles and
the Tasks of the Revolutionary Trade Unions," Inprecorr, September 4,
1930, pp. 867-74; September 11, 1930, 891-96; September 18, 1930, pp.
919-24.
26. (p. 332.) Documents from this commission are not available.
Consequently, I have had to rely on my memory, as well as consultations
with comrades active at the time.
27. (p. 333.) "Resolution on the Negro Question in the United States,"
The Communist International, February 1, 1931, p. 66.
28. (p. 334.) Ibid., p. 65.
29. (p. 334.) Ibid., p. 66.
30. (p. 334.) Ibid., p. 67.
31. (p. 335.) Ibid., p. 68.
32. (p. 336.) Ibid., p. 70.
33. (p. 336.) Ibid., pp. 71-72.
34. (p. 337 .) Ibid., p. 73.
35. (p. 337.) Ibid., p. 73.
36. (p. 337.) Ibid., p. 72.
37. (p. 338.) Ibid., p .. 74.

CHAPTER TWELVE
1. (p. 342.) The Daily Worker, April 2, 1934.
2. (p. 351.) The Comintern had called on all communist parties to
bolshevize themselves by cleansing their organizations of the remnants of
the old socialist parties. O ne aspect of this was building a centralized
organization based on shop nuclei in place of a loosely federated
organization based on election districts and language federations.
3. (p. 357.) The New York Times, March 2, 1931.
4. (p. 357.) The day after the trial, Yokinen was arrested and soon
released on bail. The government continued its efforts to deport him and
was ultimately successful after the Supreme Court upheld the depor­
tation order on March il, 1932.
 NOTES 663

5. (p. 359.) See Dan T. Carter, Scottsboro: A Tragedy ofthe American

South (Oxford University Press, 1969), for a detailed account ofthe trial.
6. (p. 359.) As quoted in Harry Haywood and Milton Howard,
/,ynching (New York: Daily Worker, 1932), p. 13.
7. (p. 360.) "Is the N.A.A.C.P. Lying Down On lts Job?'' The Crisis,
October 1931, p. 354.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I. (p. 364.) Foster, History of the Communist Party, p. 285.
2. (p. 365.) /bid, p. 257.
3. (p. 368.) United Press International dispatch quoted in The Daily
Worker, June 9, 1931.
4. (p. 371.) Formerly a member of the Central Committee of the
German Communist Party, Ewart led an opposition to the Thaelmann
leadership. As a result, he was pulled out of Germany and assigned to
international work. Later, while representing the Comintern in Brazil, he
was captured and tortured to death by the regime ofthe dictator Vargas.
5. (p. 373.) "Lessons ofthe Strike Struggles in the U.S.A.: Resolution of
the E.C.C.I.," The Communist, May 1932, pp. 402-13.
6. (p. 375.) Tom Mooney and Warren K. Billings were arrested in July
1916 for their activities in opposition to World War I. Their frame-up
conviction attracted support from workers all over the world. Due to this
mass movement and, in particular, the efforts of the ILD, Mooney was
finally released in January 1939 and Billings in October of that year.
Mooney's health was ruined by twenty-two years in prison and he died in
1942.
7. (p. 376.) See "The NAACP Prepares New Betrayals of the Negro
Masses," Daily Worker, May 28, 1932, and Daily Worker, May 30, 1932;
"The Scottsboro Decision," The Communist, May 1932, pp. 1065-75;
Harry Haywood and Milton Howard, Lynching.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I. (p. 380.) William Z. Foster, History of the Communist Party, p. 289.
2. (p. 380.) Ibid., p. 291.
3. (p. 381.) Angelo Herndon, Let Me Live (New York: Arno Press, .
1969), p. 192.
4. (p. 381.) Ibid., p. 238.
5. (p. 381.) Ibid., p. 240.
6. (p. 382.) "The International Situation and the Tasks of the Sections
of the Communist International: Theses on the Report of Comrade
664 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Kuusinen," lnprecorr, October 6, 1932, pp. 939-43.

7. (p. 384.) Langston Hughes, / Wonder As I Wander (New York:
Bill and Wang, 1964), pp. 69-70, 73-80, 89-90, 94-99, See also The Crisis,
January 1933, p. 16. See Louise Thompson's response in the February
1933 issue, p. 37. Delegation members Poston and Moon issued a
statement in Berlin claiming that the "forces of American race prejudice
have triumphed" in canceling the film. This statement was published in
The New York Times and The Amsterdam News of October 10, 1933.
Similar statements were also issued by two other members of the twenty­
two member delegation. Hughes and fourteen others issued a statement
repudiating these slanders. See The Daily Worker, October 5, 1933, and
October 15, 1933.
8. (p. 385.) Hughes, pp. 76-77.
9. (p. 388.) Walter Duranty of The New York Times is the only
American newsman I know of who wrote favorable and accurate reports
about the Soviet Union in this period.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
1. (p. 391.) The New York Times, April 12, 1933, as quoted in Carter,
Scottsboro, p. 247.
2. (p. 392.) In 1932 my close friend, William L. Patterson, had been
elected national secretary of the ILD at its Cleveland convention. Earl
Browder and I attended as delegates from the Party' s Central Committee.
We pushed for Patterson's election, but Pat, a brilliant dynamic man,
needed no pushing! He was quite popular, having played a leading role in
publicizing the Scottsboro case.
Louis Engdahl, former national secretary of the ILD, was on tour ol
Europe and the Soviet Union with Scottsboro mother, Ada Wright, at
the time of the convention. He was elected chairman of the ILD at that
time, but died while on tour in Europe.
3. (p. 392.) See Carter, p. 248.
4. (p. 393.) At this time, the LSNR and the ILD were involved in a
number of local struggles against police brutality and lynching, which
raised similar slogans. Most notably, we helped to build a broad united
front on Maryland's Eastern Shore. A reign of terror had struck the area
after the legal lynching of Euel Lee and the lynching of George
Armwood. Both men were Black and both were innocent.
At the initiation of the LSNR, we built the Baltimore Anti-Lynch
Conference (November 18-19, 1933). Some 773 delegates, Black and
white, attended, including Monroe Trotter, who along with DuBois was
a co-founder of the Niagara movement, Dr. Harry F. Ward of the Union
 NOTES 665

Theological Seminary in New York and Mary Van Cleek ofthe Russell
Sage Foundation. Even some of the local NAACP types were forced to
attend.
I believe that the widely publicized movement around the conference
was successful in bringing a temporary halt to the open terror on the
Eastern Shore. Masses of people became aware that the deaths of
Armwood and Lee were not isolated incidents. The anti-lynching
movement won many new friends and supporters as a result of the
conference.
5. (p. 394.) Ruby Bates was one of the two women supposedly raped by
the nine youths. She recanted her testimony at the Decatur, Alabama,
trial of Haywood Patterson and became an active member of the defense
movement.
6. (p. 395.) "The Scottsboro Struggle and the Next Steps: Resolution of
the Political Bureau," The Communist, June 1933, pp. 575-76, 578-79.
7. (p. 396.) Rosea Hudson, Black Worker in the Deep South (New
York: International Publishers, 1972), p. 57.
8. (p. 397.) The following account of the sharecroppers' struggles is
based on what I learned at the time from personal observations and
reports of comrades. Much of it is confirmed by Stuart Jamieson, Labor
Unionism in American Agriculture, Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin
No. 836 (1945), pp. 290-98; and Dale Rosen, The Alabama Share­
croppers Union, Radcliffe Honors Thesis(l969),pp. 19-20, 30-41, 48,56,
130-35.
9. (p. 399.) The Dai/y Worker, December 28, 1932.
10. (p. 399.) Ibid., December 21-22, 1932, and April 17, 1933.
11. (p. 400.) Ibid., January 7 and 9, 1932.
12. (p. 400.) Ibid., April 27, 1933.
13. (p. 404.) Benjamin J. Davis, Communist Councilmanfrom Harlem
(New York: International Publishers, 1969) p. 44. See also pp. 27,34,40,
43, 46-48, 51.
14. (p. 407.) Kenneth E. Barnbart, "A Study of Homicide in the United
States," Birmingham-Southern College Bulletin (May 1932), p. 9.
Figures for 1930.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I. (p. 417.) "The Eighth Convention of Our Party," The Communist,
May 1934, p. 428.
2. (p. 418.) The Daily Worker, April 7, 1934.
3. (p. 419.) Ibid., April 4, 1934.
4. (p. 419.) The full text of Browder's report appeared in The Daily
666 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Worker, April 14, 1934.

5. (p. 420.) This report was published as a pamphlet, The Road to Negro
Liberation (New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1934).
6. (p. 422.) DuBois, Dusk of Dawn, p. 290.
7. (p. 423.) As cited in Harry Haywood, Negro Liberation (Chicago:
Liberator Press, 1976), p. 180.
8. (p. 423.) In looking at the top NAACP leadership, we can see that this
analysis still holds true today. Despite the crises within the organization
brought about by periodic depressions and mass upsurges such as the
revolt of the sixties, its Ieadership still reflects the strivings and ambitions
of the top layer of the educated Black middle class. Their strategy is to
enlarge the Black middle class in order to strengthen reformist illusions
and extend their class as a buffer against the masses.
9. (p. 423.) Haywood, Road to Negro Liberation, p. 6.
10. (p. 424.) Haywood, Negro Liberation, p. 194.
11. (p. 426.) "Program of the Nationalist Movement for the Estab­
Iishmnt of a Forty-Ninth State," as quoted in Haywood, Road to Negro
Liberation, p. 28.
12. (p. 427.) Press release of the Peace Movement to Liberia,.as quoted
in Haywood, Road to Negro Liberation, p. 28.
13. (p. 429.) William N. Jones in the Baltimore Afro-American, August
4, 1934, as quoted in Haywood, Road to Negro Liberation, p. 35.
14. (p. 429.) Padmore had worked with the International Trade Union
Committee of Negro Workers after it was founded at the Hamburg
Conference in 1930. (See Chapter Eleven.) Other members of the
committee .removed him in 1933, however, after he put forward his fascist
version of pan-Africanism, which proposed that Africans look to the
Japanese Emperor for protection.
Padmore's brand of "pan-Africanism" set him in opposition to the
national aspirations of the emerging black majority states in Africa. As
late as 1956, in referring to a Black Republic in Azania(South Africa), he
wrote:
Africans had never demanded any such nonsense.... They, like the
Negroes in America, while opposed to all forms of racial disability
have never demanded separatism, either in the form of Apartheid or
"Native Republic." Rather, the Africans have always demanded full
citizenship rights within a multi-racial society. They therefore
looked with deep suspicion upon the new Communist slogan of a
Native Republic, which they interpreted as an attempt to segregate
them into some sort of Bantu state ....
See Richard Gibson, African Liberation Movements (London:
 NOTES 667

Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 37. See also "Earl Browder Replies,"
The Crisis, December 1935, p. 372.
15. (p. 430.) "Report to the Seventeenth Party Congress," Works, vol.
13, p. 369.
16. (p. 431.) Ibid.
17. (p. 43 I.) William Odell Nowell persisted in his activities after the
convention and was finally expelled from the Party. He later testified
before the Dies Un-American Activities Committee and revealed that he
had been a government agent while a member of the CPUSA.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I. (p. 443.) The Daily Worker, August 5-8, 10, 11 and 13, 1931.
2. (p. 444.) Ibid., September 29, 1932.
3. (p. 448.) Dimitrov, The United Front (New York: International
Publishers, 1938), p. 10.
4. (p. 454.) The Daily Worker, September 2, 1935.
5. (p. 455.) The Chicago De/ender, September 7, 1935.
6. (p. 456.) Ibid.
7. (p. 456.) The Daily Worker, September 2, 1935.
8. (p.459.) As quoted in James W. Ford, "The National Negro Con­
gress," The Communist, April 1936, pp. 323-24.
I plan to speak ofRandolph a number of times duringthe course of this
hook and, therefore, I feel it necessary at this point to briefly give my
estimation of the man.Randolph is a social democrat. At the height of his
career, he was probably the most influential Black union executive in the
U.S. His role in the AFL-CIO, however, has always been the loyal
opposition. At every annual convention, he would make the same
criticisms of discrimination in the unions, but always in a manner
acceptable to the bureaucrats.
Randolph was a board member of the NAACP and had broad
influence, not just ainong Black workers, but in the Black community as
well. As one of the very few Black labor bureaucrats in the U.S., he was
widely acclaimed to represent Black labor. In reality, he shared the basic
ideology of the labor aristocracy: support for U.S. imperialism, belief in
the common interests of labor and management, negotiation by bureau­
crats as a substitute for militant rank-and-file action, and consistent
anticommunism. Randolph helped to legitimize the labor aristocracy's
claim to speak for Black working people. Despite his anti-communism,
our leadership of the mass struggles of Blacks often forced him to unite
with us. Such was the case with the NNC.
9. (p. 459.) The Daily Worker, February 17, 1936.
668 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

10. (p. 464.) Ibid., June 24 and 25, 1936.

11. (p. 465.) Ibid., June 27, 1936.
12. (p. 466.) Ibid., November 8, 1936.
13. (p. 466.) Foster, History of the Communist Party, p. 333.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
1. (p. 467.) Lines from Pablo Neruda's "Landscape after a Battle,''
Espafia en el corazon, translated by Paul Elitzik.
2. (p. 468.) Hugh Thomas, 1he Spanish Civil War (New York: Harper
and Row, 1961), pp. 419-21.
3. (p. 468.) Certain nationalists asked why the International Brigades
had not intervened in Ethiopia. This question struck home at the genuine
sentiments of the masses in support of the Ethiopian people's cause and
was used to confuse matters in the Black community. Indeed there was
worldwide support among the international communist and anti-fascist
forces for the Ethiopian people, but Haile Selassie had neither called for
nor desired the assistance of the International Brigades.
4. (p. 470.) I have relied on these works to refresh my memory and found
them to be some of the hest: Arthur Landis, The Abraham Linco/n
Brigade (New York: The Citadel Press, 1967); Robert Colodny, The
Struggle for Madrid (New York: Paine-Whitman, 1958); and Hugh
Thomas, The Spanish Civil War.
5. (p. 473.) The POUM-the Workers Party of Marxist Unification­
was a Trotskyist group; their line denied the bourgeois-democratic
nature of the struggle in S pain and called for immediate direct revolution
for socialism. The POUM's followers charged that the united people's
front government was betraying that revolution and put forward the
slogan, "You may win the war and lose the revolution." They sti,tged an
uprising in Barcelona on May 3, 1937, and virtually opened up the
Aragon front to the fascists.
6. (p. 478.) With the defeat of Republican Spain in 1939, Dolores
Ibarruri (La Pasionaria) fled to Moscow. She remained there until May
1977. I was sorry to see that lbarruri supported the revisionist takeover in
the Soviet Union and, by the late fifties, had become a leading
spokesperson for revisionism worldwide. Since her return to Spain, she
has become a supporter of the Euro-Communist brand of revisionism.
7. (p. 486.) According to Landis (pp. 207,325), Usera was laterfound to
be working for U .S. Army Intelligence.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
1. (p. 491.) Copic was dismissed from command on July 4, 1938
 NOTES 669

( I ,andis, p. 505). He then went to the Soviet Union, where he was purged
in the course of Soviet preparations for war with Germany. See Vincent
Urome, The International Brigades (New York: William Morrow and
Co., 1966), pp. 276-77.
2. (p. 492.) Briggs was readmitted in the early forties, following mass
protests from the rank and file. Moore, however, refused the Party's offer
to reinstate his membership, though he remained a Party sympathizer.
l (p. 492.) The Communist, January 1938, pp. 62-74.
4. (p. 492.) T.R. Bassett, "The 'White' South and the People's Front,"
The Communist, April 1938, pp. 369-80.
5. (p. 494.) Is Japan the Champion of the Colored Races? (New York:
Workers Library, 1938).
6. (p. 501.) For the history of the NMU, see William L. Standard,
Merchant Seamen: A Short History of Their Struggles (New York:
International Publishers, 1947), pp. 54-128, 170, 190-94. See also Joseph
P. Goldberg, The Maritime Story: A Study in Labor-Management
Relations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 130-97.
7. (p. 516.) The New York Times, June 24, 1941.
8. (p. 527.) The Daily Worker, May 27, 1945.
9. (p. 527.) Peter Calvocoressi and Guy Wint, Total War: The Story of
World War Il (New York: Pantheon, 1972), pp. 861-62.
10. (p. 528.) Political Affairs, July 1945, pp. 640-54.

CHAPTER TWENTY
I. (p. 530.) Earl Browder, "Teheran-History's Greatest Turning
Point," The Communist, January 1944, pp. 3-8.
2. (p. 530.)· Teheran, Dur Path in War and Peace (New York: Inter-
national Publishers, 1944).
3. (p. 531.) Browder, "Teheran,--History's Greatest Turning Point,"p. 8.
4. (p. 531.) Browder, Teheran, p. 67.
5. (p. 531.) Ibid., pp. 79-80.
6. (p. 532.) Earl Browder, "On the Negroes and the Right of Self-De­
termination," The Communist, January 1944, p. 84.
7. (p. 533.) Stuart Jamieson, Labor Unionism in Southern Agriculture,
p. 298.
8. (p. 533,) The Farmers Union of Alabama agitated for populist-style
cooperatives and federal regulation of markets and prices. Traditional
reformist demands rather than the right of the tiller to the land he tilled
characterized its work. Although the SCU was always overwhelmingly
Black, it was an integrated union and stood in principle for unity.
Particularly after the reputation of the SCU was established, many white
670 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

croppers and tenants joined up. In contrast, a Farmers Union organizer

explained that "the Farmers Union is proud of its large colored
membership. But just as America had more white farmers than colored,
so has the union. In Opelousas, Louisiana, we had an instance of colored
farmers crowding out the white at an open meeting. They later realized
that their enthusiasm had worked against them. Both white and colored
generally prefer to have their own locals and meet separately." (Dale
Rosen, The Alabama Sharecroppers Union, p. 116.
9. (p. 533.) Rosen, pp. 112-16. Reverend Charles Coughlin, a fascist
demagogue, violently criticized everything progressive and aimed at
establishing a fascist United States. He had an estimated ten million
listeners to his weekly radio broadcast and launched the National Union
for Social Justice in 1934, along with the notorious Christian Front with
its organized groups of hoodlums and storm troopers.
10. (p. 534.) James Ford, "Negro People Unite for Victory," The
Communist, July 1943, p. 643.
11. (p. 535.) The Daily Worker, April 4, 1945.
12. (p. 535.) James Ford, "Teheran and the Negro People," The
Communist, March 1944, p. 264. Later Ford, who was not so nimble in
recanting Browder's line as most of the Party leadership, fell from his
leading position in Afro-American work.
13. (p. 535.) See Earl Browder, "Production for Victory," The Com­
munist, January 1943, pp. 10-29. See also Browder, "The Economics of
All-Out War," The Communist, October 1942, pp. 791-808.
14. (p. 536.) Foster addresses the effects ofBrowderism on mass work in
History of the Communist Party, pp. 432-33.
15. (p. 536.) The Daily Worker, July 28, 1945. See also Earl Browder,
Why America is lnterested in the Chinese Communists, as cited in Foster,
pp. 419-20.
16. (p. 537.) Prior to the arrival of the Duclos letter, there had been what
could be described as a passive revolt of the rank and file. Some18% of
the membership failed to enroll in the CPA when the Party was
liquidated. Referring to a report made by John Williamson in June 1945,
Harrison George stated that "the true indicator of membership, dues
payment, had fallen to a national average of 58%; in industrial districts as
low as 32%." Harrison George, The Crisis in the C.P. U.S.A. (mim­
eographed pamphlet, 1947), p. 120.
The Party never recovered its membership and Foster states that in
January 1947, membership was 59,172-down from its peak of at least
80,000 and perhaps as high as 100,000 during the war. Foster, p. 437.
17. (p. 537 .) Browder refused to recognize his errors and was removed
from leadership. He declined the offer of a minor Party position and soon
 NOTES 671

rcsorted to factionalism. This led to his expulsion in February 1946.

18. (p. 538.) Dennis, Williamson, Thompson and Foster made up the
National Secretariat chosen after the Emergency Convention-all had
hcen members of the smalt (nine-man) National Board of the CPA. Only
a year later, in July 1946, was a new member-Henry Winston-added to
t his ioner circle in the secretariat.
19. (p. 539.) Harrison George, p. 121.
20. (p. 540.) Foster's letter was not published until July 1945.
21. (p. 540.) See Harrison George, p. 23.
22. (p. 541.) William Z. Foster, "Concluding Remarks at the Conven­
tion," Political Affairs, September 1948, pp. 824-25.
23. (p. 542.) "Note by W. Z. Foster," Politica/ Affairs, July I 945, p. 655.
24. (p. 542.) "Foster's Letter to the National Committee," Politica/
A_ffairs, July 1945, pp. 648-49.
25. (p. 543.)"Discussion Article by Claudia Jones," Political Affairs,
August 1945, pp. 717-20.
26. (p. 544.) James Allen, The Negro Question in the United States
(New York: International Publishers, 1936).
27. (p. 547.) Later the Cuban Party, under Roca's leadership, came to
support Batista. They followed the Soviet Party into the revisionist
swamp and Roca became famous for denouncing the Cuban guerrillas as
adventurists only a few months before Castro came to power. As the
Cuban govemment moved doser to the USSR, Blas Roca's and the
Cuban Party's differences with Castro seemingly evaporated.
28. (p. 548.) Much of Browder's line and the Party's opportunism were
concealed from the masses of Party members and supporters. I myself
didn't know about the dissolution of the SCU until 1948.
29. (p. 550.) Civil Rights Congress, We Charge Genocide (New York:
1951).
JO. (p. 551.) Claudia Jones, p. 718. Emphasis in the original.
JI. (p. 551.) Ibid., p. 719. Emphasis in the original.
n. (p. 552.) Max Weiss, "Toward Clarity on the Negro Question,"
Political Affairs, May 1946, p. 461.
33. (p. 552.) Francis Franklin, "The Status of the Negro People in the
Black Belt and How to Fight for the Right of Self-Determination,"
Political Affairs, May 1946, p. 443.
34. (p. 553.) · Doxey A. Wilkerson, "The Negro and the American
Nation," Political Affairs, July 1946, p. 657. Quote italicized in original.
35. (p. 553.) Stalin, "Conceming the National Question in Yugoslavia,"
Works, vol. 7, p. 73.
36. (p. 553.) James S. Allen, "The Negro Question," Politica/ Affairs,
November 1946, pp. 1046-56, and December 1946, pp. 1132-50.
672 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

37. (p. 554.) Ibid., p. 1147.

38. (p. 554.) Harry Haywood, "Toward a Program of Agrarian Re­
forms for the Black Belt," Political Affairs, September 1946, pp. 855-64,
and October 1946, pp. 922-39.
39. (p. 555.) See Nat Ross, "Two Years of the Reconstituted Commu­
nist Party in the South," Political Affairs, October 1947, pp. 923-35, for a
description of the liquidationist effects of Browderism in the South and
developments since the Party was reconstituted.
40. (p. 556.) Lem Harris, "Toward a Democratic Land Program for the
South," Political Affairs, March 1949, pp. 87-96.
41. (p. 557.) Eugene Dennis, "Concluding Remarks on the Plenum
Discussion," Political Affairs, January 1947, pp. 9-10.
42. (p. 557.) Ibid.
43. (p. 558.) Benjamin J. Davis, "The Negro People's Liberation
Movement," Political Affairs, September 1948, p. 889.
44. (p. 558.) Robeson had recently become quite unpopular with the
government, particularly the State Department, when in Paris he
declared that in the case of a U.S. attack on the Soviet Union, Afro­
Americans would refuse to fight.
45. (p. 559.) "The Present Situation and the Next Tasks: Resolution of
the National Convention of the Communist Party, U.S.A., adopted July
28, 1945," Political Affairs, September 1945, p. 820.
46. (p. 559.) James W. F.ord Section of the Communist Party, Puerto
Rican Concentration Section, Section Committee, Sweep Revisionism
Out of Our Party! (1958), p. 8. This pamphlet was written by James
Keller and will be cited hereafter under his name.
47. (p. 559.) The Smith Aet, passed in June 1940, provided long
sentences for the crime of "teaching and advocating the overthrow of the
United States government by force and violence," and for conspiring to
do this. It also forced the Hitler-like finger-printing and registration of
3,600,000 non-citizen foreign bom.
48. (p. 560.) The Daily Worker, November 18, 1946.
49. (p. 561.) Author interview with Jessie Gray, May 1973.
50. (p. 561.) Author interview with Jessie Gray, April 6, 1975.
51. (p. 564.) Goldberg, The Maritime Story, p. 259.
52. (p. 565.) Harry Haywood, Negro Liberation. The revisionist clique
quickly let the book go out of print and it remained largely unavailable
until it was reprinted (Chicago: Liberator Press, 1976).
53. (p. 567.) Foster was severed from the case on account of liealth.
Those who did go to trial were Eugene Dennis, general secretary; Henry
Winston, organizational secretary; John Williamson, labor secretary;
Jack Stachel, education secretary; Robert Thompson, chairman of the
 NOTES 673

New York district; Benjamin Davis, New York City councilman; John
Gates, editor of the Daily Worker; Irving Potash of the Fur W orkers
Union; Gil Green, chairman of the Illinois District; Carl Winter,
chairman of the Michigan district; and Gus Hall, chairman of the Ohio
district.
54. (p. 567.) Eugene Dennis, "The Fascist Danger and How to Combat
It," Political Affairs, September 1948, p. 806.
55. (p. 567.) William Z. Foster, "Concluding Remarks at the Conven­
tion," Political Affairs, September 1948, p. 830.
56. (p. 567.) Dennis, "The Fascist Danger," p. 817.
57. (p. 567.) "Draft Resolution for the National Convention," Political
Affairs, June 1948, p. 500.
58. (p. 567.) Dennis, "The Fascist Danger," p. 800.
59. (p. 568.) Davis, "The Negro People's Liberation Movement," p. 889.
60. (p. 568.) Foster, "Concluding Remarks," p. 829.
61. (p. 569.) Ibid., p. 824.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I. (p. 570.) See R. Palme Dutt, Britain's Crisis of Empire (New York:
International Publishers, 1950), p. 34.
2. (p. 571.) See Cedric Belfrage, The American Inquisition, 1945-1960
(lndianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973) for more on the repressive Iaws and
activities of this period.
3. (p. 571.) The Attorney-General's list numbered some 160 groups. The
House Un-American Activities Committee list ran to 608 relief, defense,
fraternal, trade union, educational, veterans', Negro, women's and youth
organizations. See Foster, His tory of the Communist Party, p. 508.
4. (p. 573.) Ibid., p. 509.
5. (p. 574.) Earlier expressions of this revisionist theory had appeared in
Party publications, for example, James Allen's "Peaceful Transition," in
People's World, December 13, 1946. But it was during the trials that this
first became the Partv's official line.
6. (p. 575.) Foster, pp. 555-56.
7. (p. 575.) William Z. Foster, "The Party Crisis and the Way Out: Part
I," Political Affairs, December 1957, p. 49.
8. (p. 575.) Foster, History of the Communist Party, pp. 518-19.
9. (p. 586.) James Keller, Sweep Revisionism Out of Our Party, p. 13.
10. (p. 586.) William Z. Foster, "On the Party Situation," Political
Affairs, October 1956, p. 32.
11. (p. 587.) Pettis Perry, "Destroy the Virus of White Chauvinism,"
Political Affairs, June 1949, pp. 1-13.
674 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

12. (p. 589.) Harry Haywood, "Phony War Against White Chauv­
inism-1949-51," unpublished paper.
13. (p. 589.) This was before the rise of Black Power, when "Black"
became a term ofpride rather than a racial slur. Lloyd Brown exposed the
absurdity of this semantic game in "Words and White Chauvinism,"
Masses and Mainstream, February 1950, pp. 3-11.
14. (p. 590.) Earl Conrad was the author of Harriet Tubman (New
York: Paul S. Eriksson, 1943), and together with Haywood Patterson of
Scottsboro Boy (New York: Collier, 1969).
15. (p. 590.) Earl Conrad, Rock Bottom (Garden City, New York:
Doubleday, 1952).
16. (p. 593.) Political Affairs, July 1953, pp. 17-32.
17. (p. 594.) Doxey Wilkerson, "Race, Nation and the Concept
'Negro,"' Political Affairs, August 1952, p. 15.
18. (p. 595.) /bid, pp. 14-15.
19. (p. 595.) Harry Haywood, "Further on Race, Nation and the
Concept 'Negro,'" Political Affairs, October 1952, p. 49.
20. (p. 597.) Doxey Wilkerson, "The 46th Annua! Convention of the
NAACP,'' Political Affairs, August 1955, p. 1.
21. (p. 597.) See U.S. Bureau of the Census, The Statistical History of
the United States from the Colonial Times to the Present (Stamford,
Connecticut: Fairfield Publishers, 1965), Series G169-70, p. 168.
Since this post-war rise, the ratio has fluctuated between 50% and 60%
as shown by the same source. Part ofthe dramatic increase during World
War II reflected the migration of Blacks from rural and other Southern
jobs to unionized industries in the north. It has been pointed out(Harold
M. Baron, "The Demand for Black Labor: Historical Notes on the
Political Economy of Racism,'' Radical America, March-April 1971, p.
29) that Blacks made gains both north and South, reflecting the wartime
labor shortage. When this shortage disappeared and Black-fabor unity
disintegrated, intensified oppression counteracted the effects of con­
tinued migrations and there was no further improvement in Black-white
income ratios. See Harold M. Baron and Bennett Hymer, "The Negro
Worker in the ChicagoJob Market, "inJuliusJacobson(ed.), The Negro
and the American Labor Movement (Garden City, New York: Double­
day & Co., Anchor Books, 1968), pp. 240-43.
22. (p. 599.) Benjamin J. Davis, The Negro People on the March(New
York: New Century Publishers, 1956), p. 5.
23. (p. 600.) As quoted in the Daily Worker, January 11, 1955.
24. (p. 600.) Charles P. Mann, Stalin's Thought Illuminates Problems
of the Negro Freedom Struggle (New York: National Education
Department of the CPUSA, 1953), p. 10.
 NOTES 675

25. (p. 600.) Frederick G. Hastings and Charles P. Mann, "For a Mass
Policy in Negro Freedom's Cause," Politica/Affairs, March 1955, pp. I 1-
12.
26. (p. 601.) The 1955 Asian-African conference, held in Bandung,
Indonesia, was the first such conference of third world countries to be
held without participation by the imperialist powers.
27. (p. 601.) Pettis Perry, "The Third Annua} Convention of the
National Negro Labor Council," Politica/ Affairs, February 1954, p. 2.
28. (p. 602.) Davis, p. 31.
29. (p. 602.) In 1962, I found out just how sincere Randolph was about
building the Black caucus movement. A group of us in Local 17 of the
Waiters Union in Los Angeles had brought charges of discrimination
against our union secretary and built a caucus. Later we expanded the
thing on a citywide basis and brought in some young Blacks from the
auto and ship-building industries. After some discussion, we decided that
it would strengthen our position to become affiliated with a national
organization like the NALC. Randolph, however, staunchly refused our
repeated requests for a charter.
30. (p. 602.) Politica/ Affairs, December 1952, p. IO.
31. (p. 603.) National Committee, CPUSA, "The American Way to
Jobs, Peace, Democracy (Draft Program of the Communist Party),"
Political Affairs, April 1954, p. 15.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
l . (p. 606.) John Gates, "Time for a Change," Political Affairs,
November 1956, p. 50. The kinship of ideas between Browder and Gates
is reflected in Browder's introduction to Gates's autobiography, The
Story of an American Communist (New York: Thomas Nelson's, 1958).
Browder writes that when "Gates left the communist movement, this
reflected not some merely personal revulsion... but was rather a break
with the very foundation of communism." (p. viii.) He credits Gates with
having the courage to denounce "their [Marxist-Leninists'-ed.] most
sacred dogmas in the columns of The Daily Worker." (p. ix.) And he
concludes that Gates's hook will be welcomed by the young, who, "whilc
they have learned to avoid the mistakes that ruined the communist
movement, have by no means lost that eternal questing spirit of youth
that in an earlier generation led them to communism, but which today
will surely find a more reliable channel." (p. ix.) Browder clearly sees
Gates in his own image, a redeeming force for "American communism.
2. (p. 606.) Though quite unaware of it at the time, I was given some
indication of the shape of things to come at a reception I attended at the
676 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Soviet Embassy in 1954. The reception was given by Andrei Vyshinsky,

an outstanding Bolshevik and then Soviet Ambassador to the United
Nations, in honor of the Thirty-seventh Anniversary of the Bolshevik
Revolution.
Gwen and I were talking with one of the ambassador's young
assistants. "Do you know what's going on in our Party-all the rightwing
developments?" I asked.
"Oh, don't worry Comrade Haywood, the Soviets will overtake the
U.S. in production and all the world's problems will be solved!" was his
ready reply.
It was all so quick that I really didn't catch its full significance. Gwen
and I were walking out of the embassy when she asked ifl had heard what
the young man had said, and she repeated his words for me. As I realized
much later, this was an early enunciation of the revisionist "three P's" -
peaceful competition, peaceful coexistence and peaceful transition to
socialism.
3. (p. 607.) Benjamin Davis, The Negro People on the March, p. 32.
4. (p. 608.) William Z. Foster, "On the Party Situation," Political
Affairs, October 1956, pp. 15-45.
5. (p. 608.) Ibid.
6. (p. 609.) Harry Haywood, For a Revolutionary Position on the
Negro Question (Chicago: Liberator Press, 1975), p. 23.
7. (p. 610.) See Proceedings (abridged)of the 16th National Convention
of the Communist Party, U.S.A. (New York: New Century Publishers,
1957), p. 47. Hereinafter cited as Proceedings.
8. (p. 613.) James E. Jackson, Jr., "Communist Relations to the Negro
People's Movement," Sixteenth National Convention Discussion Bulle­
0

tin No. 2, November 27, 1956, p. 9.

9. (p. 614.) Al Lannon, Proceedings, p. 121.
10. (p. 615.) Proceedings, p. 108.
11. (p. 615.) Ibid., p. 50.
12. (p. 616.) Ibid., p. 235.
13. (p. 616.) Ibid., p. 236.
14. (p. 616.) The New York Times, May 11, 1957.
15. (p. 616.) Political Affairs, December 1957, pp. 47-61, and January
1958, pp. 49-65.
16. (p. 616.) Ibid., April 1959, pp. 33-43.
17. (p. 616.) Ibid., March 1959, pp. 22-31.
18. (p. 616.) Ibid., p. 31.
19. (p. 617.) New York Times, February 1, 1959, and February 7, 1959.
20. (p. 618.) Benjamin Davis, "Let's Get Going," New York State
Communist Party, Party Voice, April 1958, p. 8. (The Party Voicewas an
 NOTES 677

inner-Party discussion bulletin.)

21. (p. 618.) John Gates, The Story ofan American Commun ist, pp.
188, 193.
22. (p. 619.) Paul Robeson, Here I Stan d(Boston: Beacon Press, 1971).
23. (p. 619.) Harry Haywood, Fora Revolutionary Position, p. 17.
24. (p. 620.) James Allen, "Some New Data Toward Understanding the
Position of Negroes in the U.S. Today," Discussion Bulletin No. 2, p. 12.
25. (p. 620.) Harry Haywood, Fora Revolutionary Position, p. 21.
26. (p. 620.) "Declaration of Communist and Workers Parties of
Socialist Countries," Political Affairs, December 1957, p. 87.
27. (p. 621.) Vanguard, September 1958, p. 4. (Vanguard was the organ
of the POC.)
28. (p. 623.) Briggs was able to build a circle around himself in the
somewhat liberal atmosphere of the Southern California Party. Social
Democrats like Dorothy Healey and others in the Party, who held a
position somewhat to the right of the national committee, actively
fostered a climate of "letting all flowers bloom." In reality, they hoped to
provide a cover for their own attacks on Marxism-Leninism and their
struggles with the Dennis clique.
29. (p. 624.) Because o_f the many distortions of ultra-leftism, I feel it
necessary to give the reader a definition of this phenomenon. The"leftist"
form of opportunism, ultra-leftism, covers itself with super-revo­
lutionary rhetoric and phrase mongering, but inevitably leads to isolation
from and disdain for the working class and its ability to make revolution.
While being left in its form, ultra-leftism is right in its essence,
manifesting itself as a tendency to overestimate the degree of class
consciousness of the masses, belittling the necessity to prepare the masses
for revolution through the daily struggle for immediate demands. Ultra­
lcftism sees the proletariat as capable of making revolution without any
nllies, through "pure" class struggle.
The class base of this deviation, as Stalin described it, is "newcomers"
to the proletariat from the peasantry, petty-bourgeoisie or intelligentsia.
Those who "have brought with them into the working class their customs,
their habits, their waverings and their vacillations. This stratum consti­
tutes the most favourable soil for all sorts of anarchist, semianarchist and
'ultra-Left' groups." (Stalin, "Once More on the Social-Democratic
Deviation in Our Party," Works, vol. 9, p. 11.)

EPILOGUE
I. (p. 628.) Mao Tsetung, "Statement Calling on the People of the
World to Unite to Oppose Racial Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism
678 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

and Support the American Negroes in their Struggle against Racial

Discrimination" (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1964), p. 6.
2. (p. 629.) George Breitman, ed., Malcolm X Speaks (New York: Grove
Press, 1965), p. 218.
3. (p. 632.) "Statement by Comrade Mao Tsetung, Chairman of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, in Support of the
Afro-American Struggle against Violent Repression" (Peking: Foreign
Languages Press, 1968), p. 2.
4. (p. 632.) Time, June 6, 1963.
5. (p. 633.) Held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in May 1963, this was the
founding conference of the Organization of African Unity (OAU).
6. (p. 634.) James Foreman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries
(New York: Macmillan, 1972), pp. 331-37.
7. (p. 635.) Breitman, pp. 14-15.
8. (p. 635.) Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil
Disorders (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1968), p. vii.
9. (p. 638.) Robert L. Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America
(Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., 1970), p. 72.
IO. (p. 639.) Allen, p. 161.
11. (p. 639.) Allen, p. 229.
12. (p. 639.) James Jackson, "On Certain Aspects ofBourgeois Nation­
alism," Political Ajfairs, September 1977, p. 39.
13. (p. 642.) Lenin, "The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed
Up," Collected Works, vol. 22, p. 358.
14. (p. 644.) Mao Tsetung, "Statement in Support of the Afro-Ameri­
can Struggle," p. 4.
Index
 INDEX 681

Abbott, Robert S., 106 Allman, Police Chief(Chicago), 451,

Abdul Krim, 116,165 454
Abern, Martin,133,183 All-Southern Scottsboro Defense
Abkhaz Autonomous Republic(Ab­ Committee,362
khazia},194�95 American Civil Liberties Union
Abraham Lincoln Brigade, See (ACLU), 389
International Brigades American Consolidated Trades Coun­
Addams,Jane,· 133 cil (ACTC), 129-30,439
Addis Ababa conference, 633, 633n.5 American exceptionalism,Love­
African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), stone's theory of,278; and the
122-26,128-31 Comintern,288-89, 298,606; Stalin
African Democratic Rally,579,581 on, 296; and Browder,419,531;
AfricanNational Congress (ANC), Foster on new Browderism,608
214n,235-36 American Federation of Labor
Afro-American people,550,554,640- (APL),379,420,496
42; and sharecropping,104, 395-403, American Federation of Labor­
533-34; ghetto bourgeoisie of,104, Congress of Industrial Organiza­
424-29,637; and the petty bour­ tions (AFL-CIO),306-07,459n.8
geoisie, 105,421; and the race factor, American Labor Party, 602
323-24, 594-97; bourgeoisie of,324, American Nazi Party, 111n
421,424,552,637-39; economic American Negro Labor Congress
conditions among,597,629,633-34, (ANLC), 143, 145-46, 164,188,261,
641-42. See also Black; Chicago; 343
Garvey movement; .Communist Par­ American Peace Mobilization, 496-97
ty; Communist International American Railway Union, 86
Afro-American self-determination, American Youth Congress, 510
332-35; Briggs's early views on,124- Arnis,Ben,343,347-48,352-53, 361-
25, 128; and revolution,264,565-66, 63, 374
641-42; and secession,332,334-36; Amsterdam News, The, 123-24,393
and autonomy, 334,552, 554; in Amter, Israel,326, 349
post-World War II era,550,556. See Amtorg, 386
a/so Communist Party USA,and Appeasement,468,488, 495-96,515
Afro-American work; Communist Aragon,Spain,478-79
International, and Afro-American Armstrong, Frank, 443
question; Haywood, Harry Armstrong, Louis, 90
Agricultural Adjustment Aet,446 Armwood,George, 393n
Agricultural Workers Union, 533 Association for the Study ofNegro
Aitken,George,475,488,491 History,95
Albacete,473-75,477,486 Atlanta Six, 345-46
Alexander,Hursel(Harry), 50 l, 505, Austin,J.O., 449
512-13 Australian immigration bar,508
Alexandrov, 207
Allen,James,553-54,574n,619-20 Baker, Rudy,149,200, 286,346
Allen,Norval, 129 Bandung Conference, 60 l
Allen, Ted (Canadian),485 Bankhead Bill, 433
Allen,Ted (West Virginian),611, 622 Bankole,154,157,165,168,191,281
682 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Barbusse, Henri, 214 Black liberation movement,and armed

Barcelona,Spain,473 self-defense, I,81-82,632,636;
Bass, Charlotta,577,580 Black-white unity in,7,84,249,318-
Bassett,Theodore,492,494, 596 19,334,338,350-51,381,416,434,
Bates,Ruby,393,394n 465,632; Birth of a Nation
Beard, Charles, 208 campaign,93,93n; and Africa,329-
Beard,Mary,208 30,632; and the Black united front,
Bedacht,Max,187,252,291,302-03, 421, 431-33, 640; and the inter­
305,418 national situation,494,549,629-31,
Bell,Tom, 201,292,294 642; in post-war period,549-50;
Bender,Ed, 470-71,474-75,477,486, integrationism in,598; and youth,
488 629,633,636-37, 641-42; and the
Benedict,Ruth, 95 working class,630,640,643; need
Bennett,See Petrovsky for communist leadership of,631;
Bennett,Rose, l 72 and ghetto rebellions,635
Bentley, Milo, 399-400 Black Muslims,See Nation of Islam
Berger, Victor, 117 Black nationalism,280,420,424-30,
Berry,Abner, 494 434-36; dual character of,109-11; as
Bethancourt,Lucille, 622 trend in Black movement,112,229,
Bibb,Joseph, 130 553; and revolution,263-66; and
Bierobidzhan, 220 separatism, 332, 336-37; Black
Billings, Warren K., 375,375n Power,636-40
Billups,Joe, 438 Black Panther Party,636
Birmingham,Alabama,396,632 Black Power Conference,631
Birth of a Nation, The, 93, 93n.5 Black reformism,role in Scottsboro,
Bittelman,Alexander,and minority 375-76,391-95; and assimilationism,
faction,187,247-48,252,258,275, 421; in Ethiopia defense,449; and
277; supports Black self-deter­ corruption of Black leadership in
mination,249,262; and the 1950s,597-98; in the Black Revolt,
Comintern,260,291-92,297,299; 629-31. See also National Associa­
apex theory of, 289 .ion for the Advancement of
Black Belt nation,and Soviet Colored People,Communist Party
communists,218-19,223, 278-80, USA and the National Urban
332-38; historical development of, League
231-34,325; population of,280,609, Black Revolt,628-31,639-40
641; not a colony,322-23,332,335; Black soldiers in World War I,41-42,
after World War Il,551-54,566; and 50-51,79; mutiny of the 24th
land question,554-55,629,641 Infantry,43-45,49-50,251; 370th
3lack codes, 6 lnfantry and the French Army, 54,
nack history,9-lO,550; and 56-57,61,63-64,66-67; relations
Reconstruction,5-6,231,400,492, with the French, 54-55, 60-62,64-65;
629,631; World War I era,42-43; and racism of U.S. Army, 54-55, 65-
racist campaigns in,83-84,92-95; 66, 79; veterans and Garveyism, 104
and northern migrations,84,87,95; Black Star Steamship Line, 104,111-
distortions of,94-95,100,208-09 12
llack Legion, 437 Black workers,99,131; and industrial
 INDEX 683

work force,86-87,549;as strike­ Brown,George,202,204, 480

breakers, 87,108-09,366; in 1931 Brown, Lloyd, 589n.13
miners' strike,366-68. See also Brunete,480-82,485,488
American Consolidated Trades Buck, Tim,149
Council,American Negro Labor Bugs Club Forum, 101,115,129,129n
Council Bukharin,Nikolai, 185,245,259,278,
Blackman, 579-80 496;and Lovestone,190-9 I,291;
Bloor,Ella Reeve (Mother),201, and right opposition, 200-0 I; on
20ln,292,305 South Africa,236;and right line,
Boas, Franz,95,101 257-58,285-87
Bohemians, 15-17 Bunche, Ralph, 423
Bollens,John, 438 Bundy,McGeorge, 638
Bombay,India,509-10 Bunting, Rebecca, 271-72,272n.30
Bosse,A.G.,316 Bunting,Sidney,237,239-40,260,
Boutee,Oliver, 505 270-71,511
Boyce,William, 364 Burgess,John, 100
Briggs,Cyril,125n,345; in African Burlack,Ann, 345
Blood Brotherhood,123-28;early Burnham, Louis, 584
views on self-determination,124-25;
and Lovestone,252,291;on Afro­ Campbell,Grace, 123
American work,317-20;against Camp Hill massacre,398-400,418,
white chauvinism in CP,353; 533
expulsion from CP,492;and Canada, Communist Party of,149
readmission,492n.2;against pro­ Canadian Tribune, The, 485
Japanese movement,494;against Cannon,James,251,258,275,277,283
revisionism in CP,623-24,623n Capetown, 510-12
Brodsky,George, 474 Careathers, Ben, 346,447
Brodsky,Joseph, 361 Carlock,Levon, 409-15
Brome,Vincent, 491n Carr,Joe, 345
Browder, Earl,250-51,277,331,343, Carver,George Washington, 386
346-47,353,361;at Seventh Central Intelligence Agency,307,639
Convention,326-27;and Haywood, Chalmers, David,93n.6
382,470,487,490-91,493,498;at Chamberlain, Houston, 94
Eighth Convention,419; and Blacks, Chamlee,George W.,361-63
461,550; at Ninth Convention,463- Chang Tso-Iin, 156
64;liquidates position on self­ Charney,George Blake,603,612,617
determination,491,498,532-35,543; Chicago,1919 race riot,1-4,81;
and Ford,491-92,547;Teheran economy of,84-88;Blacks in,84,86-
thesis of,514,527-28,530;liquida­ 88,442;and labor history,86;
tion of CP,514-15,532; and radical forums in,115,117,130;
imperialism,530-31,536-37; ex­ Black radicals in,129-3 I;and
pelled,537n;and Foster,540-42, unemployed movement,442-44;
568-69; and Dennis,557;and Gates, police repression in,443-46;and
606n. I. See a/so Communist Party Red Squad,445-46,452,458,461,
USA, Browderism 476; Ethiopia defense movement,
Brown,Earl, 5.98 448-57
684 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Chicago De/ender, The, 93n,.106,345, Negro question,228-34,260-61,281,

455-56 316,327,331,343;1928 resolution,
Chicago Federation of Labor,140n, 268-69,279-80,318,321,327;1930
199,250,450 resolution, 327, 331-38
Childs, Morris,200,445,451,456 Communist Party USA,founded,86;
China,463,495,502,508,6�3· Fourth Convention of, 140-43,250;
Chou En-lai, 459 farmer-labor party,140n,464;
Christian Front,533n.9,560 Sixth Convention of,288-91,317;
Church, Bob, 414 and Southern work,319,376-77,
ChuTeh, 459 380-82, 396-97; and the depression,
Churchill,Winston, 530 325-26,361,380; Seventh Con­
Cl, See Communist International vention of,326-27;and electoral
Civil Rights Congress,550,572,600 politics,379-80,462-66; Eighth
Clark,Joseph, 612 Convention of,416-34,436;orienta­
Coad, Mack, 398 tion toward Southern work,432-33;
COINTELPRO, 639 Ninth Convention of,462-65;and
Cold war, 570,583-86 World War II,496,498-99,534-35;
Committee for the Defense of and united front against fascism,
Political Prisoners,383,389 532,646
Communist, The, 316,492 -Afro-American work,early social­
Communist International (Comintern democratic line on,121, 132,188,
or Cl),118,125-26,171n,267,351n, 221-22,226-28,253-54,259,26ln,
371n,433; Executive Committee of 317;and Soviet communists on
(ECCI),183,246,295,330,382,419; national question,134-35,219; 223-
Second Congress of,223; Fourth 25,223n.5; and Comintern resolu­
Congress of,225; Fifth Congress of, tions,268-69,278-80,331-38;and
225-26;and South Africa,234-39, National Negro Department,317,
245,259-66, 272-75,277-80,317, 374,491,558,587,609; and white
323,325,357;Sixth Congress of, chauvinism in the 1930s,317,320,
245,256-80,284-86;and inter­ 350-58,420,429-30,435,439;and
national right,284;International the labor movement,318-19,372-74,
Control Commission of,295,307, 549-50;and the struggle for the new
313; Presidium of,300-06;and "third line,320-21,326,332;and Black
period," 330-31;on fascism and war, membership,326,332,350,548;and
382,447;Seventh Congress of,447- land question,335,403,433,551,
48,532 554-56;and united front,J.37,376,
-Communist Party USA,141-42, 431-33, 608;and Scottsboro,358-63,
370,373,382,606;and factionalism, 368, 391-95;reformism in,375-76,
246,282-84,288-90,298-99,305, 421-29,431,433,435-36,499,534,
317;and American exceptionalism, 598-604; concentrates on South,395;
278,288-89,296-98;and American and Eighth Convention, 420-36;
Commission,292-98,304; and petty bourgeois nationalism in,420,
miners' strike (1931),373 588-89,592-94;in Ethiopia defense;
-Afro-American question,222;at 448-57;and National Negro Con­
Sixth Congress,227-28, 259-69,278- gress,457-62; Browderism in,465,
80,317,565; subcommittee on 491-92,498,532-36;fight to restore
 INDEX 685

revolutionary line in,543,548-59, ship,537-39,538n,541,543,567-69,

565-61 I,613-14,618-19;and modem 585-86;at Fourteenth Convention,
revisionist attack on self-deter­ 539,541,566-69;and rightism as the
mination,551,556-69,607,609,611; main deviation,541,557,624-25;
assimilationism in,551-54,595,598- effect on mass work,556-59,567-69,
604,628-29; and NAACP,558,568, 571,587,591,598;and elections,
597,599-602, 608;and liquidation of 556-57,567;and reformism,557-59,
Southem work,585,613;and phony 567-68,598-608,626; liquidationism
war on white chauvinism,586-94; of,557-58,568-69,585-86,605;and
Jiquidation 6f revolutionary position Jabor aristocracy,560,627;and
on,598-604,608-09,611-16,618-20, Wallace campaign,567,570;and
624;and liquidation of"left centers," Smith Aet Trials,567n.53,568,570-
600-02;and attacks on Black cadres, 71,573-75,583-86,626;and "peace­
618,628; andBlack Revolt,637, ful transition " and anti-monopoly
639-40 coalition,569,574-75,608, 611-12,
-Early factional struggle, at Fourth 625; and South,585,613; and FBI,
Convention,140-43,187,190,246, 586-87,589,591;and Marxist-·
296,302;andB!acks,188,248,252- Leninists,598-99,610-11,613-14,
56,266-68,303;and Sixth Congress, 618,621-26;and Democratic Party,
245-52,258-59,275-77; Lovestone 602,608-09;and 1954 Draft
group claims CI support in,246, Program, 602-03;and Gates faction,
282-84;and independent unions, 605-07,610-15,617-18,620-21;at
246-48,258-59;andB!acks,248,259; Sixteenth Convention,607-18,620-
and the Foster faction,249-52;and 21;and Foster-Gates unity deal,610;
American exceptionalism, 258-59, and Foster faction,610,612,618,
278,288-89,296,298;andBukharin, 620;and tuming point in Party,612;
259,277-78,285-88;intensifies after and Dennis faction,612,617-18,
Sixth Congress,281-307;and 620;and Twelve Party Declaration,
Lovestone attack on CI,298n.10; 620;and Seventeenth Convention,
and mass campaign against Love­ 623-24;and detente,627
stone,305-06 Communist Party Opposition Group,
-Organization, and membership, 306
326,463,535-37;and factory units, Communist Political Association
499,535-36;democratic centralism (CPA), 526, 537n.13, 540, 573, 606
in,537,539,621;and criticism and Conference for Progressive Political
self-criticism,587,592,626. Action,140n
-Browderism,464-65,498-99, Congress for Industrial Organizations
530-37,548n,554;and labor work, (CIO),and the unemployed councils,
499,535-38;and liquidationism,511, 375; and World War II, 496; and the
513-15,526-27,530,532;and NMU, 501;and the Communist Par­
reconstitution,526-30,537,539-41; ty,540,548,559,566-60
struggle against,530,537-41,568, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE),
626;and rank and file,537-39, 630-33
537n. 16,541,568;and liquidation of Connolly,James,205,205n.7
Natic:,nal Negro Congress,558-59 Connolly, Roderick, 205
-Modem revi:sionism,in leader- Conrad, Earl, 572,590
686 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Copeman, Fred, 483 member ofFosterfaction,608,612,

Copic,Lt.-Col. Vladimir,474-78,482, 617
486-88,491,491n Davis,Benjamin, Sr., 403-04
Costigan-Wagner Anti-Lynch Bill, Davis,John P., 458-59,495
436,460 Davis, Lena (Sherer),200,302
Costini movement, 427 Davis, William H. "Kid," 393
Coughlin, Father Charles,437,462, Deacons for Defense and Justice,632
533,533n.9,560 Debs,Eugene V.,86,138
Council on African Affairs,577,581, Delany, Martin,104n
601-02 DeLeon,Daniel, 205n. 7
Cowl, Margaret, 199,302 Democratic Party, 602
Cowley, Malcolm,389 Dengel, Philip, 288,290
Crestintern, 17 In,292 Denmark, 496
Crimea,Autonomous Republic of, Dennis, Eugene,537-38;and Brow­
191-92,195-96, 307-IO der,537-38, 388n; and Black self­
Crisis, The, See NAACP determination,556-58,598;and
Croatian national question, 553 Progressive Party,567,567n.53;and
Crockett, George, 574 "mass party," 605;attacks Party left,
Crow, Neil, 505-06 605,607, 624;liquidationism of,613,
Crump,"Boss," 4IO,412-13 617;and Blacks, 618,640
Crusader, The, 122-26,125n,345 Deportations, 572
Crusader News Service,253 DePriest, Oscar,130,394,465-66
Cruse, Harold, 637 Dessalines,See Harold Williams
Cuba,547n. See also Popular Detroit, 437-38
Socialist Party Detroit Times, The, 437
Cunningham,Jock,477,482,484-88, Dewey,Thomas E., 570
491 Dickson,Thomas, 93
Curran,Joseph,561-64,573 Dill Pickle Club,115,129,129n
Czechoslovakia, 495 Dimitrov,Georgi,419, 447-48, 574
Domingo,W.A., 123
Daily Worker, The, 86,316,345,618; Doran, Dave, 377
and Scottsboro,360-62;and Ethio­ Dorsey, Herman, 129
pia,444,453;and Harry Haywood, Doty,Edward,117,122,129,131,
465,576-77; and the Gates faction, 140,143
605,612,620-21 Dougher,Joe,611,622
Dalton, Mary, 345-47 Draper, Theodore, 125n
D'Arboussier, Gabriel Marie,579-81 Dreiser, Theodore, 214
Darcy,Sam,133,262,515,540 Dual unionism, 364,539
Darrow,Clarence, 117 Dubinsky, David, 306
Darwin,Charles, 96 Dubois, W.E.B.,56n,421,423,584,
Davis,Benjamin, Jr.,436,567n.53, 601;early writings of,5,19,36; and
584; background of,381,403-06; Black history,95;and Garvey
and Smith Aet trial,535,573-74; movement, 111; and LSNR,393n;
reformism of, 568,599-602,614,618; and NAACP,422,425
attacks right of self-determina- Duclos,Jacques,526-28,537-38,540,
tion,585,607-08,616,618; as 579,606,612
 INDEX 687

Dum Ping, 135,214 cans,468-69

Dunkirk, 496 Federal Bureau of Investigation
Dunlap, Alexander, 129 (FBI),148,571,586,591-92,639
Dunne,William,and Comintern, 228, Federal Relief Crop Reduction
251,258,271,275,277,331; Program,397
supports right of self-determination, Finland, 496
261-62; and 1931 miners' strike,365- Finot,Jean, 101
66;expelled from CP,539,577 Firestone,Henry, 423,429
Dunning,William Archibald,94 Fletcher, Ben, 146
Duranty, Walter, 388n Flynn,Elizabeth Gurley, 585
Dutt,R. Palme, 570 Fokin, 260
Ford,James,188,418,547; on
Early,Jim, 117 ANLC,146;at Sixth Congress,228,
ECCI,See Communist International 253,260,317;on self-determin­
Eight-hour day movement, 86 ation,262-65,267,498,535;at Fifth
Eisler, Gerhart,285,571 RILU Congress,328,329,331; as
Ellington, Duke, 511 vice-presidential candidate,380,464;
Emancipator, The, 123 and Scottsboro,393; and Haywood,
Encina,Dioniso, 315 442,491-94,544,577;and the
Engdahl,J. Louis,185,287, 392n.2 National Negro Congress,460;falls
Engels,Friedrich, 117,119,209 from leadership,535n.12
Ercoli, See Togliatti,Palmiro Ford Foundation,631,638
Eritrea, 448 Forshay, 407-15
Ethiopia,416,448-49,459-60,463, Fort Pillow massacre, 21n
495 Fort-Whiteman,Lovett,126, 139,
Ethiopia defense movement,448-57, 143-48,164,226,253,261
468n.3,476,501 Foster,A. L., 457
Ethiopia,Joint Committee for the Foster, William Z.,418, 466,542,547-
Defense of,448,450 48,585; and Iabor work, 131,
Evers, Medgar, 633 143n.16,247-50,249n,365,371;
Ewart,285,371-72,371n and Afro-American question,248-
49,262,592-93,596,616;and
Fair Employment Practices Commit- struggle with Lovestone, 258,275,
tee (FEPC),499,501 277,290,292,295,305;jajled, 326,
Falls,Arthur G.,450,457 349;as Party presidential candidate,
Farmer,Jim, See Mahoney 380,397;at Ninth Convention,463;
Farmers' National Committee of in struggle against Browder,513-15,
Action,379 528-30,539-43;against modem
Farmers' National Relief Conference, revisionism,537n.16,538n,567n.53,
401 585-86,568-69,608,610,616;and
Farmers Union of Alabama, 533, pragmatism,540;and liberals,542;
533n.8 and role of Party,542;on peaceful
Fascism,447;and threat of war,382, transition,542,575,608; and the
419,456,462; danger of in U.S. "left danger," 568-69,616;on CP in
(1935),446-47, 533n.9; and Spanish cold war,586; and Hungary,607;
Civil War,468; and Afro-Ameri- and Sixteenth Convention,608,610,
688 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

613-14,616; and Chairman Mao Germany, Communist Party of, 150,

Tsetung,616-17 284-85,371n
Fox,Ralph,203,203n.4 Getto, Adam, 367-70
France, 468,495-96, Ghadr Party, 162-63
- 515 Gibson, Lydia,117,131,139,140
France,Communist Party of,284, Gitlow, Benjamin, 187,252-53,291,
470,473,526-28,570-81 293, 301-05
Franco, Francisco,181,479,483 Gladstein, Richard, 574
Franklin, Francis,492, 551-52 Gobineau,Count Arthur D.,94
Free Thought Society,130 Gold Coast (Ghana), 281
Freedom, 584,60 I Golden, 154, 164, 186,190,251,386
Freiheit, Die, 410 Golden,Jane,153-55,217
French syndicalism, 250 Goldstein, Rabbi Benjamin, 389
Friends of the Soviet Union, 214-16, Goldway, David, 596
510 Gomez, Manny,133,258,277
Granger,Lester, 460
Gal,General,474-75,477,487,488, Grant,Cutt, 365-70
491,491n Grant,Madison, 94
Ganley,Nat, 438 Gray, Abe, 443
Gannett,Betty,558, 585-86,595-96, Gray, Eula, 417
603 Gray,Jesse,559-60,563
Garland,Walter, 480-81 Gray,John, 444
Garner,John Nance, 394 Gray, Ralph,398-99,417
Garvey, Marcus,101-02, 105, Gray,Tom,398,418, 401-02
I Il Great Britain,foreign policy of,468,
Garvey Movement,223, 233,425, 429; 495-96,515-16
beginnings of,102;and self-deter­ Great Britain, Communist Party of,
mination,103;social base of,103-05; 272-75, 284
attacked by The Chicago De/ender, Green, See Gusev
106; contradictory class character of, Green,Gil,133, 567n.53,575,605
110-12;left opposition to,127-28;a Green,William, 379
utopian trend,269,336; a source of Griffith,D. W., 93
recruits to CP, 326,442;Harlem, Gross, Diana, 443
roots of,350;and Sixties' national­ Guernica, 468
ism,637 Guillen,Nicolas, 478
Gastonia Strike,317-19,376-77 Gumede,Joshua, 214-16,236
Gates,John,at Fourteenth Conven­ Gusev, S. I.,(Green),141,292,294,
tion,567n.13,576-77; faction of 298
605-07,610-15,617-18,620-21;and
Browder,606n. I; resignation of,
620-21 Ralff, Max, 164
Gates,Lil, 596,603 Hall, Becky, 623
Gebert, Bill,578,580,582 Hall, David (nephew of Harry
George, Harrison, 537n.16, 538-39, Haywood), 344
543 Hall, Ekaterina (wife of Harry
Germany, 463,515-16 Haywood), 172-73,310-11,338-40,
 INDEX 689

382,387-90,524 Hawkins, Ike,328-29,365

l lall, Eppa (sister of Harry Haywood), Hayes-Tilden agreement,5,231
140,173,344,389 Haymarket riot, 86
Hall, Gus,567n.53,575,583,605,640 Haywood, Big Bill,155,170-72
llall, Gwendolyn Midlo, 604, 606n, Haywood, Harry,birth of,5; family
61 I,618,622-23 of,6-14,20-21,24-27; firstjobs of,
Hall, Harriet (mother of Harry 37-38,88, 91;joins Army,41;joins
Haywood),5, 173 Black postal worker discussion
Hall, Haywood (father of Harry Hay­ group, 99-117; joins YCL,132;joins
wood),5,6,8,21,348-49 CPUSA, 138; chosen for Lenin
Hall,Haywood (grandfather of Harry School,189; develops view of Black
Haywood), 7 nation,218-22,229-34,259-69; head
Hall, Haywood (son of Harry of National Negro Dept.,374; report
Haywood), 623 to Eighth Convention,420-34; placed
Hall,Col. Haywood (plantation on Politburo,434; becomes LSNR
owner), 6-7 secretary,436; on Chicago's South­
Hall,Otto,in youth,5,25-29,79; side,446; speaks at Ninth Con­
early years in movement,98,117, vention,465; serves in Spain,467-89,
121-2�,140; in Soviet Union, 143, 543-45; slander campaign against,
153,165,168, 173,185,189-90, 490-91; 1938 article pirated,492;
194-95,216; at Sixth Congress, removed from Politburo and Cen­
228-29,260, 262-66; leaves SU, tral Committee,493;joins merchant
281; elected to Central Committee, marine and NMU,500-526; writes
291; and mass work,319,380,406; Negro Liberation, 544-45,554, 565-
as delegate LSNR convention, 345, 66,565n; and sabotage of Negro
347-49 Liberation sequel,576, 580-84; and
Halley's Comet, 31-33 phony war on white chauvinism,592;
Hamilton,Chico, 578 critiques Wilkerson,595-96; writes
Hammersmark,Sam, 117 For a Revolutionary Position on
Hammett, Dashiell, 576 the Negro Question, 609, 619-20;
Harlem, 350,549 joins left forces in CP,611; at
Harlem Liberator, The, 436 Sixteenth Convention,614-15;joins
Harper,Lucius, 345 POC,622-23; and Seventeenth
Harper,Sol, 360-61 Convention,624; expelled from CP,
Harris,Abraham, 139 624
Harris,Charles, 402 Healey,Dorothy, 623n
Harris,Emma, 165-67 Hearst Press,boycott of, 460
Harris, Lem, 40 I Henry,John, 291
Harrison, Hazel, 149 Henry,Sgt. Vida, 44
Hart,Ozzie, 459 Henry, William, 474
Harvey, John, 132-33 Herbert,Phil, 133
Hathaway, Clarence,at Lenin School, Herndon, Angelo, at LSNR con­
201,228,252,261; in Detroit,344- vention,363; framed up,380-82,
�6; editor Daily World, 353-55, 397; 403-06; and defense movement,420,
at Eighth Convention,418 432,459-60
Havana, 545-48 Herndon,Milton, 469
690 BLACK BOLSHEVIK.

Herodotus, 101 Industrial Workers of the World

Herrick,Red,505,507,512-13 (IWW),86, 146,172-73,205n.8,539
Hershovitz,Melville, 95 Ingersoli,Robert G.,96
Herve, 579 lngram,Rosalee,550
Hirohito, 462 Innis,Roy,637
Hitler, Adolph,416,462-63,468,482, International Brigades,Abraham
495-96,498 Lincoln Battalion,468,473,483,486,
Holiday,Billie, 525 488; Washington Battalion,468,474,
Hollywood Ten, The, 571 480-84,488; and Ethiopia,
Holmes,Tim, 459 468n.3; Garibaldi Brigade, 473;
Hong Kong Massacre of 1926, 163 Thåelmann Brigade,473,491; struc­
Hoover, Herbert,344,379 ture and leadership of,473-74,477,
Horne,Lena, 578 479; and propaganda work,479-80;
Houphouet-Boigny,Felix,579-81 British Battalion,480-83,485,488;
Hourihan,Martin,476,481 Dimitrov Battalion,483,488;
Houston,Marie,281,300,312-14 Franco-Belgian Battalion,483,488;
Houston,Texas, 49 Spanish Battalion,483, 488; and the
Howard,Joe, 395 NMU,501
Howard, Milton, 453 International Labor Defense (ILD),
Howe,Louis, 394 316,377,389,534,548;andRichard
Hudson, Hosea, 395 B. Moore, 189,253; and the Yokinen
Hudson, Reverend, 381 trial, 357; and Scottsboro,360-62,
Hudson,Roy, 50 l 391-94,392n.2; and the Herndon
Hughes, Langston,342,418; in case,381-82,405-07; and the Victory
Moscow,384n,383-85; and LSNR, case,437; Chicago branch,445,448;
436; in Spain,478 liquidated,550
Huiswood, Hermie (Dymont), 470, International Trade Union Commit­
583 tee of Negro Workers, 328-30,
Huiswood,Otto,253,291-92,305, 429n.14,470
345; and ANLC,145; in the Soviet International Workers Order (IWO),
Union,147,225;joins Central 407,409-10
Committee,189; and Afro-Ameri­ Ireland,205-06
can question, 321-25; in Paris, 470;lreland,Communist Party of,205,
in Amsterdam,583 205n.9
Huk guerrillas, 526 Irish revolutionaries in Moscow,205-
Humbert-Droz,Jules,260,285 06
Hunger marches, 379 Irish Workers League,205
Hunter,Oscar, 469 Isabel,Alonzo,129,140,320
Hunton, Dr. Alpheus, 601 Israel, Boris, 407-1 l, 415
Isserman,Abraham, 574
Ibarruri, Dolores (La Pasionaria), Italian anti-fascist groups,448
469,478-79,478n Italian imperialism, 448
ILD, See International Labor Defense ltaly,Communist Party of,473-74
Independent Non-Partisan League, Ivory Coast Republic,579
130 IWW, See Industrial Workers of the
India,Communist Party of,509-10 World
 INDEX 691

Kerner Report,635
.lnckson, James, and the right of self­
Khrushchev, Nikita, 491n,606
dctermination,598-600,613,618-19;
on national liberation movements,
Kilpatrick, Admiral,622
599, 639; at Sixteenth Convention,
King, Martin Luther,Jr.,631,633-34,
t, 12-13; attacks militant Blacks in
636
C 'P, 618,624; and reformist Kingston,Steve,349
program, 623-24 Kitarov, 292
.lncobins,176n.l Klaus,Col. Hans,475,488,491
.lumes, Cliff,399-400 Klineburg, Otto,95
.lumes,Jesse,11 Knox,Col. Frank, 462
,lupanese imperialism,416,428,502; Kohn, Felix, 313-14
und U.S. Blacks,429n.14,494; andKolarov, 292,294-95
China,508; and Burma,509 Korean War,579-80,584
,lurama,Battle of,474-77,491 Kouyate,329
Jcfferson School,565,577,590-91, Kroll,June,164
594,596 Krumbein,Charles,199,286,543-44
Jcffries, Herbert,506,511-12 Kruse, William, 201,320
.lcffries, Howard,511 Ku Klux Klan,359,405,437,632; first
Jerome,V.J.,492,537 organized,7; in twenties,93,93n.6;
.I im Crow laws,54-57,73,75,555 and Nation oflslam,li In; supports
Jobs for Negroes movement,427,430 Garveyism,111; and Gastonia,318
Johnson, Maj. Allan,475,477,487-88 Kun,Bela,185,198,207,292,294
Johnson, Hank,458 Kursanova,202,286,31 I,314
Johnson,Jack,19 KUTVA,154-57,311; Stalinon, 157n.3
Johnson, Dr. Mordecai, 600 students at,162-64,281,300,312,
Johnson,Tom,362,463 328,332,386,509; struggle against
Johnstone,Sir Harry, 101 Trotskyism,182,184
Johnstone,Jack,131,187,250,258, Kuusinen,Ottomar,260,268,275n.
275,277,365 36,327; and national question,331-
Jones,Claudia, 543,550-51,585 33,272-75; at American Commis­
Jones,Jack, 129n sion ofCI,292,298-99; at 12th
.lournal of Negro History, 95 Plenum of ECCI, 382-83

Kadalie,Clements,235 Labor aristocracy,88, 459n.8, 625-27,

Kamenev, 184; 202n 630
Kaplan, Nat,133 Labor De/ender, The, 316,415
Katayama, Sen,185,219,223 Labor Unity, 316
Kutz,Arthur,583 LaFollette, Robert,Jr.,574
Kaye,Sam, 484 LaFollette,Robert,Sr.,140n
Kazakhstan, 191 La Guma,James,235-37,239-40,270-
Keller, James, 611,622 71
Kellogg Peace Pact,448 Lampkin, Daisy,414
Kelly, Mayor 449-51,454,460,465-66 Landis,Arthur, 491n
Kemal Pasha, 165 Landon,Alfred M.,462,464,466
Kennedy Institute of Politics,638. Lannon, Al,and NMU,501,518; and
Kennedy,John F.,632-34 Smith Aet indictment, 585; and left
692 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

caucus, 611,618; at Sixteenth Liberator, The, 343,347,356,406,436

Convention,614; and POC,622 Liberia,428-29
Largo Caballero,476-78 Liberian-American Plan, 428
Law,Oliver, 445,451-53,469,476, Lightfoot, Claude, 444-45, 447, 452,
483,486 458,583
Lawrence, Bill,470-71,474-75,477, Linton,William C., 130
486,488,492 Lominadze,266, 276-77
Lawrence,Josh,501,603 Long, Huey,437
Larkin,James, (Big Jim) Sr.,204 Longo,Luigi,473-74
Larkin,James, Jr.,205 Lovestone,Jay,187,260,262, 302,
League Against lmperialism,236,329 309, 316, 541; and Afro-American
League Against War and Fascism,448 question, 188-90, 231,255-56, 261,
League of Revolutionary Black 264,268, 291-92, 321; an inveterate
Workers,640 factionalist, 190, 200,252,283-84,
League of Struggle for Negro Rights 286,306; and the Cl, 200-01,283-84,
(LSNR),Bill of Rights of, 342, 393; 289-306; and the Sixth World
founding of,343,346-47; New York Congress, 275-77; and Bukharin,
branch,350,356; and white 278, 291; defeat of, 306-09. See also
chauvinism,352; and Scottsboro, American exceptionalism; CPUSA,
362; anti-lynching campaign of, Early factional struggle
393n; in Memphis,412,414; Lovett,Robert Morse, 457
campaign to rebuild, 434,436; and Lozovsky,A.,274, 276,29f, 293-95,
Victory case,436-39; summed up,439 330-31
Lee,Euel,393n Lumpkin,Pat, 603,622
Lee, Robert E.,414 Lutz, Fred, 478
Leibowitz, Samuel, 392 Luxemburg, Rosa,203
Leighton, Kenny, 578 Lynching,343,359-60,362,393n,420,
Lenin, V.I., State and Revolution, 432,435-36,460,550,554
119; and NEP, 177-78; and struggle
againstTrotsky, 179, l79n.7-8; Mabley,Joe, IOQ
April Theses of, 202n; on agrarian MacArthur; Gen. Douglas,526
question,209-12; on national McCabe, Louis, 574
question,211-12,219,223,266,322; McCarran Aet, 584
on Afro-American question,219, MacCaulay, Frank, 329
223-25,223n.5,224-25 McClain, Helen,328-29
Lenin School,189,310-11,315,327, McClaran,Hazel,389-90
344; students,198, 332,475,482,611; MacCloud, 155,168
and struggle against Lovestone, 201, McCormick,Mrs. Cyrus,423
292,300,302,307; and struggle in MacDonald,Jim,149
CPSU,286; cleansings at,312-14 MacDonald,Ramsay, 329
Leningrad,Battle of,516,519 Maceo,Antonio,546
Lenke,William, 462 McGohey, Francis, 574
Lewis,Belle,497,525-28,545,571, McGrotty, Eamon,4�4
576,579,586,590-94 McKay,Claude,84, 145,225
Lewis,John,634 McKissick,Floyd,637
Lewis,John L.,364 MacNeal,A.C., 130
 INDEX 693

M11dden, Martin,98n Minor, Robert,in SouthsideChicago,

Mllllrid, Spain, 475,483,487-88 117,131,138-40; in the Soviet
M11honey (Jim Farmer),165,168,253, Union,185,228,382; as Love-
260,281 stone caretaker, 305; arrested in
M 11lcolm X,111n,629,633-34 unemployed demonstration,326; as
Munasseh,37,37n leader ofCPUSA,343, 361-62, 543-
Mnnn,Charles T., See James Jackson 44; at Eighth Convention, 418; and
Mnnuilsky,and national question, Spanish Civil War,469,478,487-88
212, 266,272; at SixthCongress, Mintz,I., 209-12
260,272n.30,274,292,304 Mirkovicz, Mirko,486
Mno Tsetung,459,616-17,628,632, Mitchell,Thomas,356
636,644 Molotov,V.M.,286,292,297-98
Murine Workers Industrial Union, Montgomery, Olen, 358
500 Montgomery Bus Boycott, 630-31
Murshall Plan,566 Montgomery Ward,90
Martinsville Seven, 550 Moon, Henry,383,384n
Murty,Andre,473,477 Mooney,Tom,375, 375n
Marx, Karl, 117,209 Moore, Richard B., 253, 345,355-56,
Muson,Lee,444 436; and Briggs,123; andCP,126,
Mutes, Dave,470-71, 474,486 492,492n.2; as mass leader,127,145,
Muurer, George,392 189,368
Muy Day, 86,326 Moreau, Alberto,349,597
Muzut, Bob, 134,219,226 Morgan, Henry Lewis,98, 116
Mr.:ad, Margaret, 95 Morris,Leslie,202
Mcany, George, 307 Moscow, Battle of,516
Medina,Judge Harold,574 Mueller, Max,101
Melanesians,503 Muhammad, Elijah, I I In, 598
Mella,Antonio,214 Muhammad Speaks (Bilalian News),
Meltz, Valeria,133 102
Memorial Day Massacre, 494 Mulzac, Hugh,505
Memphis World, The, 413-15 Murphy,274
Mencken, H.L., 96-97 Murphy,Al,395,401,418,447
Merriman,Capt., 474;480,488 Murphy, Arthur,328
Messenger, The, 123-25 Murray,Sean,205, 205n.9,208,418
Mexico,Communist Party of,314-15 Murmansk run,519-25
M,•zhrabpom, 383-85 Murray,Philip,559
Midlo,Gwendolyn,See Hall, Mussolini, Benito,416,449-50,452,
Gwendolyn (Midlo) 454,462,468,482
Mikhailov, (Williams),260,292,305, Myers, Blackie,564
331-32 Myerscough,Tom, 293-95, 365
Miller,Loren,383
Miller,William,293 Nada, 165, 509-10
M ills, Mike,452-53, 458 Nasanov,204n.7; and Haywood,234-
Miners' strikes,364-74,379,497 35; at Sixth Congress,260,264-65,
Mingulin,I., 331 270; in Negro Subcommission ofCl
Mink,George, 501 Colonial Commission,281, 310-11,
694 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

316-17,321-22,327,332 533n.9
Nathan,George,482,486,488,491 Nationalist Movement for a Forty­
Nation of Islam,102,111n, 599,636- ninth State,426
37 Needle Trades Workers lndustrial
National Association for the Union,319-20,351
Advancement of Colored People Negrin,Juan, 181
(NAACP),and the mutiny of the Negro Alliance,427
24th lnfantry,43, 45n; and Negro American Labor Council
campaign against Birth OfA (NALC),602
Nation, 93n; and Garvey,105; a Negro Champion, The, 145
reformist and assimilationist trend, Negro Factories Corporation,111
113, 422-23,423n.8, 425-26, 436, Negro Worker, The, 329,384
439; in Scottsboro defense,359-61, Nelson, Steve, 478,486,488,491,544,
375-76,391-94,424; and the ILD, 585,612
391-95,414; and Ethiopia, 460; and Neruda, Pablo,467
CPUSA,499,558�59, 597-602; and New Deal, 416,419,446-47,462
the Black Revolt,630-34. See also New Masses, The, 407
Black reformism New Negro movement,123-26,130
National Bonus March,380 New Orleans Youth Conference,555
National lndustrial Recovery Aet, Newton, Herbert,281,300,345,444
416,446 Niagara movement,423
National Maritime Union (NMU), Nixon, Richard, 639
origins of,500� 1; Blacks in,50 I, Noral,Alex,292,305
505,560-61; communists in,501, Nordau, Max, 96
505,561; and racketeering, 505, 507- N orris, Clarence, 358
08,512-13,518-19; and anti­ North, Joseph, 580
communist campaign, 559-64,572- Norwegian Sea,520,524
73 Nowell,William 0., 431, 43ln.17
National Miners Union (NMU),320, Nzula,Albert, 198,329, 383
364-74, 379
National NegroCongress (NNC), Odd Fellows,403
founding and program of,457-62; Oliver, King, 90
against imperialism and fascism, Omaha, Nebraska, 15
468,496; third convention of,494- O'Neil,John, 443
95; liquidated,557-58 Ovington, Mary White, 423
National Negro Labor Councils Owen,Chandler, 123
(NNLC),549-50, 601 Owens, Gordon, 129
National q uestion, See Lenin,V. I.;
Stalin,J. V.; Haywood, Harry; Afro­ Pacific Movement for the Eastern
American self-determination; Soviet World, 428,430
Union,Communist Party of,and Padmore, George,328n; and
nationalities policy of International Trade Union Commit­
National ReliefConference,379 tee of Negro Workers,328-29, 331;
National Textile Workers Union anti-communism of, 384, 429; and
(TUEL),317-18,377 Pan-Africanism, 429n.14
National Union for Social Justice, Page, Delia, 445
 INDEX 695

l'uige, Thomas, 443 Poland,495, 497,516

Pun-Africanism,428, 429n.14 Politica/ Affairs, 556, 595-96,617
Puris Commune of 1871,veterans of, Pollitt, Harry, 288,290
.l30 Pollitt, Margaret, 202
Purker,George Wells, 100-01 Polynesians, 503
Putterson, Haywood,358,391-92, Popular Socialist Party (of Cuba),
394n,572 546-48
Putterson, Jane, 393 Populist movement, 6
Putterson,Leonard,198 Poston,Ted, 383,384n
Putterson, Lloyd, 385, 524 Potash, Irving, 567n.53
Putterson,Louise Thompson,383, P-owell,Ozie, 358
31!4n Powers, M.H., 345
Putterson, William, at K UTVA,253, Profintern, See Red International of
J 13; and the international Labor Unions (RILU)
communist movement, 267,281, Progressive Party, 555, 567, 570
300,329,331; and ILD,389,392n.2, Provisional Organizing Committee
413; and Scottsboro, 392-94, 571-72; fora Communist Party (POC), 619,
und Civil Rights Congress,550,571- 622
72, 586; and Paul Robeson,564; and Puerto Rico, 612
Nnbotage of sequel to Negro Pullman Strike of 1894,86
l.iheration, 581-83 Puro, Henry, 382
Pcuce Movement toLiberia,426-27
l'curl Harbor, 502 Quill,Mike, 563
/',•op/e's World, The, 538
Pepper, John,187,290,299,307; on Rabinowitz,Jake, 517
the Afro-American question, 226, Radek,Karl, 203-04
261n,262, 266-68, 557; and the Railroad Strike of 1877, 86
Comintern,261,275-77, 283-84; fac­ Rakovsky, 212
tional activities of,295 Randolph, A. Philip,423,459n.8, 533;
Perry, Pettis,in Los Angeles,498, and New Negro movement,123; and
500; liquidationism of,558,586; in National Negro Congress,458-60;
Afro-American work,576,587-88, and Communist Party,499; and
592, 603; and sabotage of sequel to l 960s Revolt, 602, 634-35
Negro Liberation, 583; as caretaker Rationalization,capitalist,316, 318
lcadership in 1950s,585-86 Ray,Tom, 501
Peters,J ., 349 Raymond, Harry, 326
Pctrovsky, M. (Bennett), 172,234, Reconstruction Finance Corpora-
260-61,273-75 tion, 416
Phalanx Forum, 98-100 Red International ofLabor Unions
Philippines, 525-26 (RILU or Profintern),171n,252,
Phillips,H.V.,253,261,307; in YCL, 328,330; Fourth Congress of,246,
129, 132; organizing ANLC con­ 283,330; Fifth Congress of,328,
gress,143, 145; at theLenin School, 330-31, 365
198 Redpath, Robert, 98
Pluntation system, 554 Reed,John, 151,223,225
Poindexter,David,445,451 Reeves, Carl, I 64,20 I
696 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Reichman, Ben, 117 Salzman, Max, 201

Reichstag Fire Trial,419,448,575 Sampson, Edith,457,597
Reid, G., 329 San Martin,Grau, 546-47
Reiss, Mania, 300 Sandburg, Carl, 85
Remmele,259-60,274 Save the Union Committee,364
Renner, Otto, 275 Schechter, Amy, 377
Republic Steel massacre,44,445 Schneider, Isadore, 493
Reuther, Walter, 559 Schuyler,George, 97
Roberson,Willie, 358 Schwab,Irving,361,405
Roberts, Co!. T.A., 56, 56n Scottsboro Boys,356,358-63,420,
Robeson,Paul,and Wallace cam- 458-59
paign,558; and Black united front, Scottsboro Defense Campaign, at
558, 558n.44,601; and Harry Pricedale mine,368; and CP,374-77,
Haywood, 564-65,576,581,584; and 420-21,432,434,548,630; and other
Here I Stand, 619 defense work,380-81, 397,413-14,
Robespierre, l 76n. l 435; and Soviet Union,385; and
Robinson, Robert, 339-40 reformism, 391-94, 394n; and march
Roca, Blas,547-48,547n on Washington,391, 393-94; and
Roddy, Stephen, 359 Scottsboro Action Committee,393;
Rogan,Johnny, 501 in Chicago,443. See a/so ILD
Rogers,J.A., 95 Seacord, Douglas, 474
Romån, Armando, 611, 621-22 Seamen's International Union (SIU),
Roosevelt, Franklin D.,45n, 394,416, 500,523,561
419,446-47,462-66,499,526,530 Second International, 125
Rosenberg, Ethel, 584 Selassie, Haile, 468n.3
Rosenberg, Julius, 584 Self-determination,right of,and
Ross,Nat,395,406-07 Garvey movement,103; and Afro­
Roux, Edward,271,511 American question,124-25,128,
Roy, M.N., 163 565-66; theoretical discussion of,
Rubin, Harry, 518-19 552-54; CP's liquidation of,603; and
Rudas, Ladislaus,207-08 Black capitalism,638
Rudd, Wayland, 385 Selsam, Howard, 596
Russian Revolution, 118-19,161,210; Semich, 553
impact on U.S. Blacks,119-20, 125- Serg, Giuseppe, 101
26; and British workers and sailors, Sevastopol, 308-10
202 Shachtman, Max, 133,283
Rust,William, 204 Sharecroppers Union,375,459;
Rustin, Bayard, 635 history of,397-403; and the CP,418;
Ruthenberg, Charles,184-87 liquidated,500,532-33,548n,554,
Ruthenberg faction,141,303 556; and Farmers Union of
Ryan,Frank,480,563 Alabama,553n.8
Rykov, 202n,245,285-86 Sharecropping, 395-403, 433,458,
533-34,551,553-56,641
Sacher, Harry, 573-74 Shields, Bea, 445
Saint-Just, l 76n. l Sik, Endre,162,216, 254-55,262-64,
Sakorov, 162-63,509 267, 322-25
 INDEX 697

Sikhs, 162-63,510 Soviet social-imperialism,627

Simmons, John, 438 Soviet Union,194-95,515;Americans
Simmons,LeBron, 438 in,169-70,339-40;and New
Simmons, William J.,93n.6 Economic Policy (NEP),175-76;
Simons, A.M., 208 and agrarian question,209-12,266,
Simons, H. J., 240 285; Red Army of, 308-09; in fight
Simons, R. E., 240 against fascism and World War II,
Sinclair,Upton, 85 495-96,498,502,515-16,519,527;
Si1111eiros, David,314-15 and relations with Britain,515-16;
Siskind,George,258,277 and relations with U.S.,515-16,537
Sklar, Gus, 200,307 -Communist Party of,and Trot­
Sklar, Jim, 133 skyism,174,204; and congresses of,
S krypnik,N., 260 175,177;and worker-peasant
Small, G., 329 alliance,178-80;and col­
Smith Aet, 559n.47, 566-67,567n.53, lectivization,211;and Bukharin
570, 573-75,584,611,626 right,245-46,256,278,285;Control
Smith,Ferdinand,501,564 Commission of,313;and modem
Smith, Rev. Gerald L. K.,437,462 revisionism, 606n.2
Smith, Homer, 385 -Nationalities policy,157-60,209-
Smith, Miranda,555 12,241-42,339-40,433; and U.S.
Smith,Stewart, 202 Blacks,134,167-69,212-13,218-19,
Smith,Vern, 540 242,339-40,383-86,522-23;and
Social Darwinism,94,97 Crimea,196,310;and Ukraine,211-
Social democracy,125,382,560 12;and national culture,214-15;and
Social-fascism, 382 Jewish Question, 220
Social Security Aet, 447 Spain,Communist Party of,479
Socialist Labor Party, 205n.7 Spanish Civil War, 463, 467-89, 495.
Socialist Party,123,138,421,448,450, See also International Brigades
459n.8,460,539,541,625 Spencer,Herbert, 94
Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), 210 Spencer, Kenneth, 578
Socialist Workers Party,251,562 Spingarn,Joel, 391,423
Solidarity (IWW), 86 Springhall, 202-03,208,31 l ,474
Soong Ch'ing-ling,.214 Squire,Brown, 445
South Africa, 235-36,239,269-72, Stachel, Jack, 305, 343, 349,365,494,
271 567n.53,583,612
South Africa, Communist Party of, Stalin,Josef,158-59,213,216,227,287,
198,281, 235-40,270-72 309, 419,529; at KUTVA, 157; and
South African Worker, The, 270 ECCI,183;and Trotsky,l79n.8, 180,
South Omaha,Nebraska,5-6,15,20-21 181n.13;and the Afro-American
Southern Christain Leadership Con- question, 219, 223;on national ques­
forence (SCLC),630,633 tion, 220, 220n, 280n, 430, 553; and
Southern Congress for Human Wel­ Bukharin, 257-58, 286; on CPUSA,
fare, 496 292, 295-97,302-04;revisionist cam­
Southern Negro Y outh Congress,468, paign against, 606; on left-oppor­
555,600,604,610 tunism,624n
Southern Worker, · The, 360, 395, 398 Stalingrad,Battle of,498,516,519
698 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Steel Workers Organizing Committee and miners strikes, 364-65, 379; and
(CIO), 396 Gastonia, 376; and merchant marine,
Steffens,Lincoln, 85 500
Sterling, Ross, 359 Trent, Tom,445,452,469,474
Stoddard,Lathrop, 94 Trotsky,Leon,174,178; opposes NEP,
Story,Henry, 345 176; political line of, 178-83, l79n.7;
Strong,Ed,607,609-10 defeated in Cl, 183; and conspira­
Student Non-Violent Coordinating torial activity ofTrotskyite bloc,183-
Committee (SNCC),630-34,636, 84; in exile, 184. See also Soviet
641 Union, Communist Party of
Sufi Movement, 427 Trotskyism,in the Spanish Civil War,
Sugar, Maurice, 438 181; in the U.S.,181,283,560;
Sun Vat-sen, 214 and the anti-Stalin campaign,
Sun Vat-sen University, 156 18ln.l3; and the NMU,560,
562-63
Taft-Hartley Aet, 571 Truesdale,Tom, 349
Tanz, Al, 478 Trotter, Monroe,393n,423
Tapsell,Walter, 204 Truman, Harry,516,570,597
Tartars, 192,196,310 Truman Doctrine, 566
Taub,Allen,361 Tsereteli, Kolya, 241-43
Tbilisi, 241-43 Tsotho, 270
Teamsters Union, 87 Tutrament,Jerzy,578-79,582
Teheran Agreement,530,535
Thalheimer,August,226,285 Ukrainian national question, 211-12,
Thaelmann, Ernst, 150,285,371n,419 266
Thermidorians, l76n. l Ultra-leftism, See left opportunism
Thomas, Norman, 460 Unemployed councils,442; in Harlem,
Thompson, Louise, See Louise 350; and Scottsboro, 375; and the
Thompson Patterson South, 377, 380-81; and the CP,432,
Thompson, Mayor William Hale, 85 435, 548; and Blacks, 442-43, 448
Thompson,Robert,538n,567n.53, United Communist Party,606
573-75. 605. 612,621 Union Party, 462
Thorez, Maurice, 579 United front,447; from below,330-31,
Tobacco workers strikes, North Caro- 394,420,433; and Scottsboro defense,
lina, 555 391-95; against fascism, 447-48,456,
Togliatti,Palmiro, 183,474 501, 530-32; communists in, 448-49,
Tomsky,M.,245,285-86 532
Toohey,Pat, 364 United Mine Workers of America
Torres,Angel, 611,622 (UMWA), 364
Tractorstroi, 339-40 United States,imperialism,388,429,
Trade Union Educational League 468,495,498,515-16,526
(TUEL), 131, 143n, 199, 317, 540 United States Congress,House Un­
Trade Union Unity League (TUUL), American Activities Committee,
349; founding of,317; Negro Depart­ 571-72
ment of, 319, 328; and unemployed United States State Department,307
work, 325; and Scottsboro, 362-63; United States Steel Corporation, 396
 INDEX 699

11 nit cd States Supreme Court,6,599- Wilkerson, Doxey,551-53,590,594-

<,00, 602, 631 97,600,613
llniversal Negro Improvement Asso­ Wilkins, Roy,460,634-35
ciation, See Garveyism Williams,Eugene, 358
11 rhan League,National,350,422,426, Williams, G. Mennen (Soapy),572
460,630,634 Williams, Harold,153,165,260,281,
I !sera, Vincent,486,486n 328. 444-45
Williams, Robert, 632
Vnn Cleek,Mary, 393n Williamson,John,133,538,538n,
Vurtanyan, 388 567n.53
Vcnable,James, I I In Wilson,Woodrow,42,124
Victory,James, 437-38 Winston, Henry,538n,567n.53,575-
Villa,Pancho, 41 77,582-83,605
Vyshinsky, Andrei, 606n.2 Winter,Carl,498,567n.53,613
Withers,Ann, 377
Wagenknecht, Alfred,349,354,365, Wobblies, See Industrial Workers of
.171 the World
Wagner Aet, 447 Wolfe, Bertram,252,287-88,293,305,
Wallace, Henry,558,567,570 473
Ward, Dr. Harry F., 393n Woll, Matthew, 306
Ware, Hal, 401 Wood, Robert, 459
Warfield,Colonel, 461 Woodson,Carter, 95
Washburn,Nannie, 406 Workers (Communist) Party, See
Washington, Booker T.,27,349,422 Communist Party USA
Washington Park (Chicago),117 Workers Party of Marxist Unification
Watt,John, 364 (POUM),473,473n, 478-79
Wattis,Lt. George, 475 Works Progress Administration
Wcbb,Sydney, 329 (WPA),447
Wcber,Joe, 445 World Federation ofTrade Unions
Wcems,Charles, 358 (WFTU),578,580,582
Wcinstone, William W.,187; and the World Peace Appeal,584
Comintern,252,292,313,331; as World Peace Conference,580
lcader of U.S. Party,300,305,438; World War II,and appeasement, 488;
in Foster faction (1956),612 beginnings of,495-96; movement
Weiss, Max, 552 against, 496-97; and invasion of
Wclsh, Edward,291-92,294,304-05, Soviet Union,498; in Pacific,501-
.107 02,504; and second front,515-16;
Wcltfish,Jane, 95 weakens imperialism,570
Whelan,Pat,494,501 Wortis, Rose, 353
Whip, The, 130 Wright,Ada,385,392n.2
White, Katy, 444 Wright,Andy, 358
White, Maude (Katz),217,281,300, Wright,Nathan, 638:-39
.113,351,353,406,436,583 Wright, Roy, 358-59
White, Walter, 391
White,William J.,293 Xhosa, 270,511
Wiggins, Ella May, 318
700 BLACK BOLSHEVIK

Yalta, 192-93 Young Liberators, The,450

Yaroslavsky, E., 202 Young Worker, The, 133
Yates,Oleta O'Connor,585 Young Workers (Communist)
Yokinen, August,352-58,357n.4,587- League. See Young Communist
88 League
Yokinen trial,353-58 Yugoslavia, 496,553
Young, Co!. Charles, 386 Yuspeh, Leo, 623
Young, Whitney,634,638
Young Communist International Zack, Joseph, 199, 302
(YCI),134,281,388 Zam, Herbert, 133
Young Communist League (YCL), Zaphiro,Lij Tasfaye, 459
132,138; in South,380,418,534; in Zinoviev, Gregory, 134-35, 184,219,
Chicago,445,450; membership of, 226
463; and Spanish Civil War,474,476 Zulu, 270