_The Cry Was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917-1936_ by Mark Solomon (Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1998) 403 pages, $17 paperback. _Old Negro, New Left: African-American Writing and Communism Between the Wars_ by William J. Maxwell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999) 254 pages, $17.50 paperback. _Popular Fronts: Chicago and African-American Cultural Politics, 1935-46_ by Bill V. Mullen (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999) 242 pages, $16.95 paperback. _The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946_ by James Edward Smethurst (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) 288 pages, $45 hardcover.
FROM THE EARLY 1920s until the late 1950s, the U.S. Communist movement was a significant pole of attraction in African-American political and cultural life. Only a few prominent African-American poets, fiction writers, playwrights and critics -- such as novelist Richard Wright -- publicly boasted of party membership. Yet it seems likely that Margaret Walker, Lance Jeffers, Claude McKay, John Oliver Killens, Julian Mayfield, Alice Childress, Shirley Graham, Lloyd Brown, John Henrik Clarke, William Attaway, Frank Marshall Davis, Lorraine Hansberry, Douglas Turner Ward, Audre Lorde, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Harold Cruse were among those organizationally affiliated in individualized ways.
A list of other African-American cultural workers who were, to varying degrees and at different points, fellow travelers, would probably include Ralph Ellison, Chester Himes, Sterling Brown, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, Theodore Ward, Countee Cullen, James Baldwin (as a teenager), Richard Durham, Alain Locke, Willard Motley, Rosa Guy, Sarah Wright, Jessie Fausett, Owen Dodson, Ossie Davis, Dorothy West, Marion Minus, Robert Hayden, Waring Cuney, and Lonne Elder III.
For five decades, students of the left have had access to the reasons why some Black cultural and intellectual figures were eventually dismayed by Communism, through novels such as Chester Himes' _The Lonely Crusade_ (1947), Ralph Ellison's _Invisible Man_ (1952) and Richard Wright's _The Outsider_ (1953), reinforced by Harold Cruse's brutal polemic _The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual_ (1967). (See note 1)
Less available were richly documented, independently critical, yet compelling explanations of just how and why the Communist movement wielded the attractive power that it did, despite all the obvious disadvantages of being regarded as a "communist" for Blacks as well as whites. Then, during the 1980s, two scholarly works began to promote a rethinking of the relationship of Blacks to Reds: Mark Naison's _Communists and Harlem During the Depression_ (1983), and Robin D. G. Kelley's _Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression_ (1990).
Now we have four new books in 1998-99 that constitute a quantum leap forward in our ability to understand what was achieved by this symbiotic relationship, and what has been lost in one-sided assaults upon the legacy of Communist-led anti-racist struggles by McCarthyites, Cold War Liberals and some of the Communist movement's left critics, as well as by that movement's incapacity to understand and fairly represent its own remarkable history in the 1930s and 1940s.
The focus of three of the books is on culture, but together they provide a wealth of new detail and conceptual propositions that need to be critically assimilated by those committed to building an interracial movement for social transformation.
The indispensable foundation for appreciating this body of new scholarship is Mark Solomon's stunning narrative of the absorption of revolutionary Black Nationalists and other Black radicals into the post-World War I Communist movement. His highly nuanced and finely researched _The Cry Was Unity_ treats the consequences of this co-mingling for the development of Communist ideology and activity from the early 1920s through the first year of the Popular Front.
Solomon, a retired history professor from Simmons College, is in a unique situation to assess the experience. He has been a participant in the anti-racist and radical movement since he was a teenager in the early Cold War years, and is the author of an earlier published doctoral dissertation from Harvard University called _Red and Black: Communism and Afro-Americans, 1929-1935_ (1988).
Solomon's approach is deftly elaborated in a short Introduction explaining his motivations for recreating the story of how the Communist movement "broke free from isolation and ideological abstractions to achieve a significant place in the battle for racial justice."...Solomon is pledged to review the early history of the anti-racist left because
The pivotal issues then were neither tactical nor sentimental; they involved the basic character of American society. Capitalism's cornerstone was seen to have been laid by slavery and fortified by racism. Therefore, the achievement of equality implied the ultimate transformation of the nation's economic and social foundation. (xviii)
On the one hand, Solomon's book seeks to elaborate the "theory" of national oppression and the road to liberation worked out by U.S. Communists, Black and white, in their first decade and a half. On the other, his aim is equally to explore the practical activities against which the evolving theory was tested as this heroic, interracial organization rose up against white supremacism "with unprecedented passion as an indispensable requirement for achieving social progress." (xviii)
Most impressive is the way that Solomon triangulates the development of Communist theory and practice by examining Black Marxist activists and theorists, the national Communist party institutions, and the influence of Comintern (Communist International) policy. In contrast to those who favor the "top down" or "bottom up" approaches to Communist historiography, Solomon presents us with what might be called a "force field" approach in which different elements gain hegemony at various points and under certain circumstances.
The fact that Comintern hegemony might be shown to be paramount over a period of decades and at moments of crisis does not negate how important it was for a group of Black party women in Harlem to raise an issue (unknown to the Soviet party) for debate and discussion. Without that latter -- the local vitality -- the attractiveness of the party would be inexplicable (which certainly seems to be the case in many extant narratives of party history).
In rich detail, Solomon's book covers the period of nearly two decades from the founding of Cyril Briggs' magazine _The Crusader_ after World War I to the launching of the party-led National Negro Congress in 1936. Thus he follows Communist policy through three phases: from the view of a "colorblind" class outlook, to the theory of nationality, to the broadly based "Negro-labor alliance."
The overall structure of the book is divided into three components, recalling the traditional Hegelian triad. The initial five chapters review the efforts of the first Black Communists to formulate a policy, their interaction with a vision of the Communist International, and the development of a theory (the view of African Americans as "a nation within a nation") and an organization (the American Negro Labor Congress) to realize this project.
Part II presents another six chapters, this time focused on the 1929-33 era of the ultra-revolutionary "Third Period." Solomon convincingly demonstrates his rather disconcerting view that unrealistic visions, aspirations and demands frequently motivated the most heroic projects. From this perspective he discusses the astonishing courage of party practice in the Deep South, and struggles against eviction, hunger and lynching.
The book marches to a climax at the beginning of the Popular Front when, at last, in Solomon's judgment, the foundation of Black/Labor unity is established. This is achieved through the success of Peoples Front policy in Harlem and the creation of the National Negro Congress, a multiracial organization under Black leadership. Within this daunting framework, Solomon presents many discrete episodes worthy of at least a brief survey....
A Legacy of Struggle
Among the most inspiring aspects of Solomon's research is his chronicle of the efforts of party members to fight racism on every front, starting with campaigns against hunger and eviction. He provides portraits of many female and male activists, vignettes of martyrdom, and describes heroism by Blacks and whites. The result of such selfless work was that thousands of Blacks joined unemployment councils, and hundreds applied for party membership and signed up for the party's legal defense auxiliary, International Labor Defense.
Simultaneously, an interracial culture emerged. In the late 1920s "Negro Weeks" were launched by Briggs to celebrate revolutionary heroes such as Toussaint L'Ouverture and Denmark Vesey. Whites did go into Black communities and serve on Black publications, but usually in subordinate positions under the supervision of Black communists. What was expected of these whites was a record of fighting racism and respecting the abilities of Blacks.
In the early 1930s, the American Negro Labor Congress (ANLC), which regarded anticapitalism as a basis of the anti-lynching movement, collapsed and was followed by the League of Struggle for Negro Rights (LSNR). The new party-led organization saw the campaign against lynching as the major manifestation of national oppression within its larger agenda of demands for justice.
Nevertheless, as an organization that was openly pro-Communist, the LSNR was somewhat in competition for space with the Party itself, and the Unemployed Councils occupied available space, too. Even when the LSNR developed its own leadership with Langston Hughes as honorary president, and an official membership of ten thousand, it did not reach much beyond the party's influence.
In contrast, the party's response to the Scottsboro Case (when nine Black youths were framed on rape charges in Alabama) was a breakthrough vindicating Communists' claims to sincerity about anti-racism. Throughout the country activists, white and Black, gave their all to the slogan "they shall not die!" Such activity was possible because they were imbued with the belief that the fate of the defendants was linked inextricably to their own lives.
Nevertheless, Solomon is harshly critical of the CP's sectarian policy toward middle-class allies -- he even endorses criticisms of the "united front from below" policy made by the expelled Lovestone group. However, he refutes the claims that the Communists wanted the nine youths to die as martyrs, and believes that charges about the Communists' inflammatory conduct toward the courts "were overstated and deflected attention from a racist judicial system." (203)
There was constant party-led anti-racist activity throughout the early 1930s. The candidacy of African American James Ford on the CP ticket, the running of dozens of other Black Communist candidates, and the defense of Angelo Herndon, charged with insurrection for leading a demonstration in Atlanta, were important developments. There were also numerous strikes in which the party played a role where race issues were important -- St. Louis, Chicago, San Joaquin Valley, San Francisco, Birmingham, Louisiana and so forth.
Moreover, Harlem became a centerpiece for anti-racist activity, especially when U.S.-born Black party leader James Ford took control and Briggs and Moore were eased out. The latter tended to emphasize race issues more emphatically, and were sometimes accused of blaming white workers more than the bosses; but they defended themselves by insisting that forging unity should be more of a white responsibility than a Black one.
Solomon's biggest criticism of the party in this era is its conviction that it deserved sole leadership of the Black movement due to its possession of the correct revolutionary program. As long as the party spoke of establishing "hegemony over the Negro liberation struggle itself," it would often antagonize those who questioned or opposed it and would negate its own claims to be fighting for self-determination. (205)
Thus Solomon ends the book with a chapter and a half devoted to the development of the Popular Front, which he regards as a positive advance away from this posture. In his view, the dropping of Third Period sectarianism primarily meant the opportunity to work with liberals and Socialists cooperatively, as well as taking a friendlier attitude toward churches, professional organizations, and so on. Some of the tactical flexibility was shown in holding together an alliance against the invasion of Ethiopia, and in the CP's intervention into the 1935 "Harlem Riot." (272)
The culminating event for Solomon is the founding of the National Negro Congress, launched in Chicago in 1936. It was preceded by broad discussions and impressive organizational groundwork under the leadership of John P. Davis, a non-public Communist. The perspective was for "a multiracial organization under Black leadership, working to build a Negro-labor alliance and advance civil rights on a wide front." At the same time, Solomon cites internal CP material to show that Davis had the view that the CP should control the NCC to "guarantee its breadth and democratic character." (303)
This raises a question, which Solomon never clearly answers, about the exact nature of the party's understanding of "self-determination" when it came to trusting an independent Black leadership. In any event, the organization was launched with over 800 delegates from 551 organizations that claimed to represent as many as three million people. In a striking effort to demonstrate sincerity about the new unity, the party's old Socialist rival, A. Philip Randolph, was elected president.
[The second half of this essay, reviewing the titles by William Maxwell, Bill Mullen and James Smethurst, as well as some concluding observations, will appear in ATC 86, May-June 2000.]...
[The full article is available at <http://solidarity.igc.org/atc/84Wald.html>.] -- Yoshie
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