>>>> Chuck0 <chuck at tao.ca> 02/08/00 11:37PM >>
>My theory is that they dropped their involvement during the quiet years
>when Mumia's appeals wound their way through the Pennsylvania court
>system. Other progressive groups dropped their involvement too, because
>the situation wasn't dire for Mumia. It was during this period that the
>sectarian Left groups moved in.
>
>&&&&&&&&&
>
>CB: I recall "sectarian" Left groups as the only ones raising the Mumia
>case in earlier years. I remember a small communist group bringing the
>Mumia case to a National Lawyers' Guild Convention in about 1986 or 87 to
>be part of a free all political prisoners campaign. I am not arguing for
>sectarianism, but they were there before the more "non-sectarian" groups.>>
The same went for the Scottsboro case. The Communists took up the case before others came around to it. Mark Naison writes in _Communists in Harlem during the Depression_ (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1983):
***** The campaign to free the Scottsboro boys, more than any single event, marked the Communist Party's emergence as a force in Harlem's life. The Party's role in this case, and its conflicts with the NAACP, were front-page news for years, and its protest rallies gave it entry to churches, fraternal organizations, and political clubs that were previously closed to it. From soapboxes, pulpits, and podiums, black and white Communists made the details of the Scottsboro case a part of the daily consciousness of the community until "Scottsboro became synonymous with southern racism repression and injustice."[1] In the process, the Party helped break the political and psychological isolation of Harlemites in a time of terrible adversity. The huge turnout of left-wing whites for Harlem Scottsboro protests showed Harlemites that they had new allies in their struggle against racial injustice and helped convince them that they could fight effectively for their interests in the streets as well as in the courts. Beginning as a struggle led primarily by white radicals, Scottsboro provided the catalyst for passionate protest activity by Harlem's population, both inside and outside the Party's ranks....
...From the moment the Scottsboro indictments were handed down, the Communist Party moved to make the Scottsboro case a focus of its anti-lynching crusade. It dispatched International Labor Defense attorneys to Scottsboro to make contact with the defendants and began organizing protest meetings in their behalf. When news of the death penalty arrived, the Party's Central Committee issued a front-page statement in the _Daily Worker_ calling for "mass meetings and militant mass demonstrations" to protest the convictions.[3]
While the Party mobilized for protests against the "Scottsboro legal lynching," ILD attorneys moved to obtain permission of the defendants to handle their appeal. Working through the Chattanooga Negro Ministers Alliance (which did not know they were Communists), they located some of the defendants' parents and persuaded them that the ILD would handle the defense more effectively than the boys' previous lawyer. On April 20, the defendants signed an agreement giving the ILD control of the case.
This action brought the Party into direct conflict with the national leadership of the NAACP. When the case first broke, NAACP executives refrained from commenting on it publicly or making a commitment to the defense. Traditionally circumspect, "the last thing they wanted," in Dan Carter's blunt words, "was to identify the Association with a gang of mass rapists unless they were reasonably certain the boys were innocent or their constitutional rights were abridged." But once the boys were convicted, the NAACP recoiled in horror at the thought of Communists handling their appeal. They sent the defendants' original lawyer to persuade them to break with the ILD and declared that Communists "had no sincere interest in helping these condemned Negroes." But the NAACP made the mistake of ignoring the boys' parents, with whom ILD lawyers had spent a great deal of time. When the defendants signed a statement repudiating their agreement with the ILD, their parents came to them the next day and persuaded them to reverse their decision....
...[T]he Association's style of functioning, especially in Harlem, made it vulnerable to certain aspects of the Party's critique. Accustomed to working through a network of "influentials" -- in city government and the liberal community -- and to seeking change through the courts, the Association had not developed an activist membership in Harlem.[7]...As a result, the association's national officers lacked a core group of committed supporters willing to match the Party in its chosen arena of propaganda -- the streets of Harlem. They would rely instead on the support of the Harlem press, and their ability to deny Communists access to the pulpit, to keep Communists safely on the margins of Harlem's life....
...Within the Harlem community, Party organizers, recognizing Scottsboro's appeal, tentatively began to seek support from black religious and fraternal organizations. Significantly, with a few important exceptions, they contacted organizations which were either not well established, or were outside the NAACP's sphere of influence....
...This effort to enlist non-Communist black organizations in Scottsboro protests -- a clear departure from Party tactics in the unemployed movement -- partly reflected the influence of William Patterson, who had recently returned from Russia to become a Party organizer in Harlem, and a national secretary of the ILD. Transformed by his Soviet experience into a committed Communist ideologue, Patterson still possessed the skills and the drive for success that once marked him as a "young man with a future." Placed in a position of great responsibility by the Party leadership, Patterson did not want his Communist convictions to make him a "marginal man." He had a politician's understanding of black organizations and their leaders, and was willing to work through them to advance the Party's objectives. Through his twin roles as an organizer and legal strategist, Patterson used the Scottsboro issue to project the Communist Party as a forceful presence in black life, something that mainstream black leaders could not afford to ignore.[11]
The next Scottsboro protest in Harlem, on May 16, demonstrated the Party's new elan and confidence. The march began with a parade of several hundred Communists, predominantly white, but drew over three thousand blacks into line as it wound along its route through the streets of HarlemŠ.
The NAACP met the Party's offensive, legal and political, with a conterattack of its own. Continuing their battle for control over the case, NAACP national officials united their ranks (persuading a repentant [William] Pickens that ILD tactics jeopardized the defendants' lives) and tried to use their influence with the press and the ministry to deny Communists legitimacy and access to the black public. Not only did association officials write personal letters to black editors who praised the ILD, urging them to reconsider their position, but they tried to prevent Communists from presenting their views from the platforms of important black institutions.[14]Š.
This organizational competition - both for control of the case and for the hearts and minds of the black public - generated an impassioned debate over the appropriate strategy to pursue in civil rights cases in the South. NAACP leaders, spearheaded by Walter White, argued that their aim was to guarantee the boys a "fair trial" in the Alabama courts, which could only be assured if the defense hired local attorneys and avoided actions which antagonized Alabama public opinion. They sharply criticized Communists for organizing demonstrations and sending telegrams to the governor of Alabama demanding the immediate release of the defendants, claiming that such tactics jeopardized the boys' chance of winning their freedom. "Communist involvement in the case," Walter White declared, would only "hamper the proper conduct of the defense."[16]
Communists, in response, argued that the NAACP's reliance on local counsel and nonprovocative tactics was misguided. "There can be no such thing as a 'fair trial' of a Negro boy accused of rape in an Alabama court," a _Liberator_ editorial declared. "Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to deceive." The ILD's strategy was "to give the boys the best available legal defense in the capitalist courts, but at the same time to emphasizeŠthat the boys can be saved only by the pressure of millions of workers, colored and white, behind the defense in the courts."[17]
[1] Dan T. Carter, _Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South_ (paperback ed.; New York: Oxford UP, 1971), p.50. [3] _Daily Worker_, Apr. 2, 1931, Apr. 10, 1931, Apr. 13, 1931; International Labor Defense to Governor R. Miller, Apr. 7, 1931, International Labor Defense Papers, Schomburg Collection, Reel 3, hereafter cited as ILD Papers. [7] Du Bois lived in the Dunbar Apartments, a Rockfeller-funded development that housed many black businessmen and professionals, and White lived at 409 Edgecombe Avenue, a luxury apartment building in Harlem's "Sugar Hill." For evidence of how association officials operated through personal networks, see Walter White to Ferdinand Q. Morton, June 18, 1931, NAACP papers, D 69, and "Ministers to Whom Tickets for Lecture are to be Sent," Jan. 1, 1932, NAACP Papers, C 332. [11] Interview with Henry Lee Moon, May 1, 1937; interview with John Hammond, Sept. 26, 1978; Patterson, _The Man Who Cried Genocide_ (New York: International Publishers, 1971), pp. 11718, 130-35. [16] _New York Amsterdam News_, June 2, 1931. [17] _Liberator_, May 30, 1931, June 20, 1931. (Naison 57-62) *****
Political competition over the Mumia case reminds me of a similar competition over the Scottsboro boys. In my opinion, most of those who are criticizing the Free Mumia movement are acting like the officials of the NAACP trying to wrest control of the case from the Communist Party. They did not take up the cause as quickly as communists, did not put in as much work as they did, are unhappy that the defendant may be, God forbid, guilty (for they want an easy job of defending only a person who the proverbial general public immediately agree is the unjustly accused innocent - no such thing in criminal justice, however), and complain of "sectarianism" while themselves engaging in a sectarian behavior (e.g., Cooper writing a rotten article in a liberal magazine, doing all he can to discourage those who may want to get involved in Mumia's defense or other important issues of criminal justice; Reed writing a - to put it mildly - poorly researched article, calling Mumia's politics into question without offering any evidence; an unnamed e-mail writer trying to discredit those who are working on Mumia's defense). It's fine with me if those who feel like Cooper don't want to get bothered by having to work with the RCP. From my experience, working with the RCP members is no fun. That, however, doesn't mean that they have the right to sabotage the work of people who are still involved in the Free Mumia movement (which is in no way limited to the RCP members). They love calling other political activists "sectarians," but what they are doing is more sectarian than the RCP.
Yoshie