COMMUNISM"?
By Evelyn Sell
The civil-rights movement has often been accused of being a fertile recruiting ground for the Communist party and the communist ideology. Witch-hunt sentiments and warnings have been a familiar accompaniment to demonstrations and other protest activities. However, there has been an ebb and flow of "anti-Communist" battle cries, Lately the antiradical campaign has been hitting high»tide marks,
Reactionary groups and politicians are, of course, the most vociferous in these attempts to discredit the civil-rights fighters by labeling them "Communists" and, therefore, un-American traitors who deserve to be crushed speedily. Robert Welch, founder of the right-wing John Birch Society, recently told reporters that the entire civil-rights movement is part of a Communist blueprint to establish a "Negro Soviet republic in the southeastern United States." Welch explained that this blueprint was laid out in 1929. (After thirty-six years of failing to establish a "Negro Soviet republic" one can wonder about the supposed influence of the Communist party! )
The Ku Klux Klan, notorious racist organization currently under fire becausé of its involvément in so many murders of civilrights workers, has always warned of dangerous “Communist elements leading the Negro struggle. James R, Venable, imperial wizard of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc., said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] should use its agents "in the Communist field rather than trying to catch KKKs." Mississippi's Senator . James BKastland says that every civil-rights freedom school in his state is a "Communist indoctrination center,"
Southern political boss Leander Perez, who boasted over national television that nothing happened in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, without his approval, appeared before the Senate judici~ ary committee at the end of March in order to speak against the new voting-rights bill now being considered by Congress, Perez told =. the committee: "The purported Voting Rights Act of 1965 is designed to implement the Communist party plan and would provide its greatest impetus. This bill is undoubtedly a hand-in-glove deal with the very 'mass action demonstrations which form part of the Communist revolutionary conspiracy.'"
When Perez warned the senators that anyone voting for this bill would be accommodating the "Communist conspiracy" he aroused the ire of the politicians who support civil-rights legislation, Michigan's Senator Philip Hart exploded, "That's absolutely nuts," Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen demanded ~- and received -a retraction from Perez. The pro-Communist charge hit too close to
home this time!
There have been a number of hints and rumors lately that more liberal elements in America's political structure are becoming alarmed about "Communists" within the civilerights struggle. There are vague reports that responsible Negro leaders are weeding “Communists" out of their organizations. For example, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., has supposedly embarked on such a house-cleaning campaign within the Southern Christian Leadership Conference [scLc]. The Congress of Racial Equality [CORE] has gotten rid of its more radical local leaders, another report states,
In his March 20, 1965, column Eric Sevareid notes: "A new chemistry is working in this [civil rights] movement; otherwise so steady and wise a man as Martin Luther King would never have defied a Federal court order as he did in Selma. He did so because he would have lost his leadership if he had not,
“That speaks volumes for the strength of new elements in the general movement -- the totally irresponsible, the neurotically egocentric who seek to purge their own sense of guilt-by-inaction, the coldly calculating political ideologues, including it must be said, the disguised young Communists who want to perpetuate disorder for disorder's sake. .Kven the best friends of the Negro movement in the higher ranks of the federal government are becoming alarmed about the left-wing infiltration. - coe :
“Tf historic patterns continue to be repeated, then we will see a violent internal struggle in the Negro movement, a dramatic attempt to purge it of the politically-minded miners and -sappers. The more provocations that stupid or cruel white supremacists pro= vides the longer that day will be postponed." (My emphasis throughout.
Such internal struggles and purges are being reported and evidence is building up that underneath the smoke screen of charges and denials of "Communist influence," a major battle is shaping up between the more conservative and the more radical elements within the Negro movement. At the end of 1964, newspapers reported that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP] and King's SCLC had pulled out of the Council of Federal Organizations [cOFO] which had been directing civil-rights programs in Mississippi. The New Orleans pomscescayune, for example, said that COFO had lost a good deal of its nancial support and had attracted "a group of radical, Marxist-leaning kids whom local Negro leaders will no longer tolerate," .
David Dennis, assistant program director for COFO's Missis-~ sippi Project, rebutted that he was "not aware of any people in COFO now who have a Communist background." He denied that anyone had been thrown out of COFO because of questionable loyalty to the
United States. “I think if anyone comes down to help people to vote, and risk their life for this cause, they are loyal Americans," he explained.
Besides the NAACP and the SCLC, the major civil-rights organizations involved in COFO are the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SncC] and the Congress of Racial Equality [CORE]. A great deal of the "anti-Communist," antimilitants heat is being focused on these two latter organizations. SNCC bears the brunt of the complaints. A Detroit Free Press article of April 6, 1965, quotes an anonymous long-time civil=rights activist as saying, "To me there are plenty of straws in the wind that indicate the Commies -e.are lending whatever vestige of strength they've got now to helping SNCC" but “on the whole, I don't feel the movement is dominated by Communists or steered by them." .
A similar comment was made by no less a person than Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, Katzenbach told an interviewer during April that the Communist party has no control over civil-rights organizations or their leaders. Although the party had attempted to. gain: such influence it had been “remarkably unsuccessful in actually influencing any decisions.and certainly has not captured any of the leadership," Katzenbach stated.
- Alabama's Attorney-General Richmond Flowers recently asserted that there was "no evidence of Communism. We are canstantly on the alert for signs of it, but we haven't found it." : an
The hottest, most venerable Communist-hunter of all is J. Edgar Hoover, chief of the nation's secret police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI]. Last year he told a House committee, "The [Communist] Party is continually searching for new avenues in order to expand its influence among the Negroes, In particular, it has sought ways and means to exploit the militant forces of the © Negro civil-rights movement."
What conclusion had J. Edgar Hoover come to about Communist influence within the civil-rights movement? In a speech made in December of last year he declared that the civil-rights movement "is not, and has never been" dominated by Communists. He explained ‘that this fact was because both white and Negro leaders “have recog~ . nized and rejected Communism as a menace to the freedom of all," .
There is something to what Hoover says. Despite their denials to the contrary, it is true that civil-rights leaders and organizations have been screening persons and eliminating or discouraging people with known political affiliations in the left-wing movement in this country. I personally know of a very recent incident in Detroit where a member of the Socialist Workers party was refused membership in the local chapter of CORE because of his political affiliation.
Jim Monsonis, head of the Washington chapter of SNCCG, denied that his organization screened out radicals as the other older civil-rights groups did. (Please, note: he says the other groups do screen.) Monsonis explained, We have no political test for membership and we never will have. If a person is willing to come down and risk his neck under the clear discipline and organization of: SNCC, then hets welcome. If he isn't going to do that and he's a troublemaker of some kind, we'd ask him to leave because hets not an effective staff worker,"
“Yet I have heard private Yeports from persons who were engaged in SNCC's summer projects and they say that a very efficient but fairly subtle screening process does take place. The issue of radi-~ cals joining SNCC or working in SNCC. projects has been a hotly debated one in that organization.
This screening or weeding out of radicals and Communist party members is only a partial answer, however, to the question: Why have radical groupings, in general, and the Communist party, in particular, failed so far to recruit more members from the civil-rights movement and failed so far to exert a more decisive influence within the Negro struggle?
The answer is not a simple one, yet it is a crucial one to those concerned with the future of American radicalism and the civilrights movement, There are a number of important aspects to be con= Sidered: the effects of the-.cold war on the internal struggles: of the American people, the long and bitter history of Negro and white relations in this country, and the particular relationship of the Communist party with the Negro community.
The details of the "anti-Communist" witch-hunt which has raged within the United States since World War II does not need a listing here. The whole world is quite familiar with at least the general outlines of that campaign. What effect has this witch-hunt had on Negroes? There are a number of contradictory currents within’ the Negro community on this question. A-large number of Negroes have expressed their feelings in the succinct sentence, "It's bad enough being black without being red, too," The daily clashes with Jim.‘ Crow are enough to cope with; * why add further reprisals by adopting an ideology and an organization which has been persecuted by the federal government, business establishments and police groups?
Other Negroes have swallowed the government's "anti-Communist" program -- just as large portions of the white population have. They have accepted the stereotyped image which has been thrown at them again and again through all mass communication channels: "Communism" is .a foreign ideology based on everything which is completely contra-=dictory:to every American ideal; “Communists" are foreign agents intent on destroying civilization and particularly the highest form of civilization, the United States of America... For many Negroes
being an American is to be as “white” as possible and this, in turn, means being "anti-Communist."
However, there are those Negroes who are unwilling to accept the stereotyped images of Communists <- partly because they know that they, too, have been stereotyped and they are suspicious of . such tactics. There is a certain amount of sympathy for the underdog (a trait enshrined in the American ethos), There is a certain amount of admiration for and agreement with socialist ideas and the socialist support of civil-rights for all. And there is a certain amount of vindictive joy in the knowledge that the dominant-white- American=master=race has had to suffer frustrations and defeats on — occasion from the proclaimed enemy. When Negroes watch a Hollywood western they cheer sympathetically whenever an Indian topples a white man into the dust. The Communist world's triumphs have pro=duced similar cheers -- and for similar reasons, Whoever is against The Man (the white man, the master) can't be all bad,
This latter attitude is an inevitable outcome of almost four hundred years of slavery and semislavery. Antiwhite feelings run — deep in the Negro community. Hate has begotten hate. Since the power structure in this country has traditionally been in the hands of whites, every antiwhite struggle is automatically converted into a clash with the rulers of American society. Leaps in class con« sciousness, leaps in political understanding and leaps in methods of struggle within the Negro movement are derived from the tense and dynamic nature of this Negro-white relationship. This is a tremendously revolutionary force and it impels some Negroes tcward the socialist movement -- but there are other quite different roads which are taken as well.
Many times antiwhite sentiments have taken the form of hate all white men, be suspicious of all whites, avoid all whites, turn your back on all aspects of white society. Many Negroes, therefore, take no clear stand on anti-Communism or pro-Communism, It's only another white "ism" to them and as such has nothing to offer them as black people. Since they are not truly accepted.as Americans, since they have been cast out of the white man's society, since they have become alienated from the dominant white culture, then they have no concern either with adopting or rejecting the white man's ideologies and organizations, Their search is for something unconnected to white Western civilization. So, there are Negroes who refuse to participate in any part of the American struggle because they intend to exist within’ their own isolated subculture or because they plan to leave this country and make a new life elsewhere. -
There are those Negroes who are intent on building their future within the United States -- but apart from the white world, Whatever must be done to solve their problems must be done completely by their. own forces with their own ideas. They reject any notion of joining with their natural allies within the white community, the
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exploited workers. They base their rejection on powerful facts in American history, past and ‘present. Although black exploitation has been most profitable to slaveholders and wage-slave bosses, white farmers and workers have often provided the battle troops for capitalist generals determined to stifle Negro unrest. Attempts to unite with whites in organs of struggle against the common enemy and for common goals have produced their share of failures and betrayals, And why, these Negroes ask, should we unite with an obviously passive white working class riddled with prejudice when the black freedom struggle has proven to be so powerful. and vital on its own? Why should we dilute our strength’with whites who have not yet reached our level of militancy and dedication and courage? Why should we set ourselves up for more betrayals from weak-kneed, hypocritical whites?
-To appreciate the strength of these feelings,.they must be considered against the background of the Communist party's real record in this field. We will return to this in another article,
THE UNITY MOVEMENT OF