Tracing the roots of black Liberalism in the US (part III)

18 Aug
2005

The Communist party had one goal in mind, and that was to topple the stability of the United States. As mentioned in the last piece, Lenin saw some similarities between the American Negro and the underclass of Russia. Both groups were oppressed by the ruling class, and both groups were very eager to do something about it. While Communists wanted to topple the US government all together, black Americans just wanted to be treated as equals.

The biggest problem the Communist movement had when trying to win over black into their ideology was that although most blacks did not like the way they were being treated in this county, there wasn’t enough groundswell during that time for succession movement in the community. By pushing this agenda, many within the black community saw right through this “ulterior motive” by the Communists and denounced it.

Ph.D. and Assistant Professor of History at Spelman College William Jelani Cobb give further expounds on this dilemma:

By most indications in the immediate post-Great War years, African Americans were among the brightest revolutionary prospects for the newly established Communist Party, USA. Communists became, relatively quickly, critics of the low priority placed upon black struggles by the major political parties and discrimination by labor unions. In a move unprecedented among American political parties they investigated lynchings and urged that the perpetrators be brought to justice. Nevertheless, there were numerous and outspoken black critics of Communism almost from the CPUSA’s inception. Indeed, anticommunism has as long a history within the ranks of African American intellectuals, artists and political actors as it does (Cobb talks more about the Anticommunism movement in the black community here)

So as you can see here, Communists had no interest in black people themselves, just our plight–something that can be used to create revolution (similar to what took place in Russia).

There was another movement afoot in the black community not directly related to the Communist party:

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More from Alan Stang –

Some time in the summer of 1930, when the comrades in Moscow were busy clarifying the policy of “self-determination for the Negroes in the Black Belt,” a peddler appeared in the Negro community of Detroit. “He was welcomed into the homes of the culture-hungry Negroes, who were eager to purchase his silks and artifacts,” writes Professor C. Eric Lincoln, “which he claimed were like those the Negro people wore in their homeland across the sea.”

“He came first to our houses selling raincoats, and then afterwards, silks. In this way he could get into the people’s houses, for every woman was eager to see the nice things the peddlers had for sale. He told us that the silks he carried were the same kind that our people used in their home country, and that he was from there. So we asked him to tell us about our own country.”

So he did. He began holding meetings from house to house throughout the community.

At first, the “prophet,” as he came to be known, confined his teachings to a recitation of his experiences in foreign lands, admonitions against certain foods and suggestions for improving his listeners’ physical health. He was kind, friendly, unassuming and patient.

But after a while, his teachings changed.

Eventually the stranger’s teachings took the form of increasingly bitter denunciations against the white race; and as his prestige grew he “began to attack the teachings of the Bible in such a way as to shock his hearers and bring them to an emotional crisis.” People experienced sudden conversions and became his followers.

Thus was born the movement whose followers are called Black Muslims.

…[Fard explained] that his followers were not Americans and that they owed no allegiance to the American flag. It was stupid, he argued, to pledge allegiance to a flag that offered no protection against “the depravities of the white devils [who] by their tricknology. . . keep our peoples illiterate to use as tools and slaves.”

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Finally, something that the Communist party could use.

What I personally find very interesting is that here you had a white man telling black folks that all whites are “devils”–YET BLACK FOLKS STILL FOLLOWED HIM. This is very similar to Adolf Hitler who convinced a whole nation that whites with blond hair and blue eyes were the only members of the “pure race”, yet he himself had dark hair.

Stang goes into how the Nation of Islam began to adopt some of the teachings of W. E. B. DuBois (who by this time had embraced much of the teachings of Communism) and to cite Cuba (a Communist nation) as an example of how the “underclass” were able to overcome their “oppressors” to make that country into a better place (This may have been the beginnings of our love-affair with Cuba– read “The miseducation of American Negroes on Cuba“)

Later I will talk about how some of the aspects of the Communist ideology blended with the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s/60’s.

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