"the freedom struggle of the Negro people reinforces the struggle against the exploiting class of the white capitalists * * "the presence of so large a proportion of Negroes, so especially motivated to militancy, in the American working-class can be likened to the addition of manganese to iron ore; when the two elements are united and fused * * the metal * acquires a new quality, *** the quality of pure steel. "veterans of the Civil Rights Revolution, will be fighting partisans of social progress all down the line. * * * "From its earliest days the Communist Party of the U.S. has given major attention to the struggle for the economic, political and social equality of the Negro people. *** "At its Sixteenth Convention in 1957, the Communist Party clearly pointed out that the main line of march of the Negro people's movement was that of opposition to all forms of separatist "solutions" to the question of their oppression and toward full and complete integration in the life of the nation. "Events have fully confirmed the major theoretical and programmatic resolution on the Negro question which our Party adopted at its Seventeenth Convention in December, 1959. In this resolution we stated: ""*** The bonds of Negro oppression can and must be shattered. *** Victory on this sector would open the way to rapid developments along the whole front for radical social advancement of the entire nation.' "our Party exposes the diversionists, adventurists, provocateurs, and opponents of Negro-white unity who seek to poach upon and disrupt the Negro people's freedom movement. ""The struggles (of the Negro people) in the South to rid our land of the shackles on freedom are giving an injection of new strength to all our democratic institutions. ***'" GUS HALL, THE WORKER, JANUARY 5, 1964, P. 9: "The civil right revolution has become the central arena in the struggle for a democratic America." The "watchword is: 'Be satisfied with what you have gained-slow down.' It is designed to destroy the militancy of the movement * * *.” GUS HALL, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, JANUARY 12, 1964, P. 4: "Communist party leaders in the United States 'consult with and advise' top Negro leaders in their civil rights campaigns. "We are not the active leaders, but members of the Communist party are very active in all the Negro organizations' engaged in the civil rights struggle ** JAMES E. JACKSON, The worker, APRIL 21, 1964, P. 2: "The Negro freedom struggle has come now to the point where there can be no vision of peace in the land until its *** demands are fully attained. * * * The struggle will rise to embrace ever higher revolutionary actions * THE WORKER, MAY 10, 1964, P. 8: "The civil rights revolution has put the torch to the combustible material gathering for decades in our cities' slums and segregated schools. "The flames of rebellion have lit up the running sores of our cities. ** THE WORKER, JULY 21, 1964, P. 1: "There is no doubt that enraged and frustrated youngsters resorted to throwing bottles and bricks in resistance to the police assaults. There may have been even some smashing of store windows and some looting in a misguided attempt to avenge the racial brutality of the police." JAMES E. JACKSON, THE WORKER, JULY 21, 1964, PP. 1, 7: "VIOLENCE ROCKED Harlem over last weekend. And as usual, it was the residents of Harlem who were on the receiving end of the murderous assault upon the community, and as usual it was the erstwhile 'defenders of law and order,' the police, who shed the Negro people's blood and took the lives of those who died in the encounter. "The week-end of violence in Harlem was the latest in an unrelieved campaign of 30 years of violence against Harlem.✶✶ *n GUS HALL, The worker, AUGUST 4, 1964, P. 8: "It [the Communist Party] constantly strives for greater unity of Negro and whites [sic] Americans as the prime prerequisite to victory in thisfight THE WORKER, AUGUST 9, 1964, P. 3: In the wake of the Harlem riots of 1964: "The Communist Party affirmed its confidence that 'a united people, Negro and white, can peacefully and democratically compel elimination of the evils of the ghettos' *** JOHN PITTMAN, NEW Times, octoBER 7, 1964, PP. 11, 12: "The Negro population, constituting about 10 per cent of the U.S. total, has now risen resolutely to fight for its rights *** Gus Hall, U.S. Communist Party spokesman, addressing a rally in New York, warned that the struggle in Mississippi was 'a critical battle to save U.S. democracy. **** The shadow of Mississippi hangs ominously over the United States. *** The entire apparatus of coercion-police, courts, jails and even armed forcesis being used against demonstrators. "Entire generations of the police and judges and jurors in this country have been reared and indoctrinated with racist mythology concerning the ‘innate inferiority' and 'criminality' of Negroes. This is the real ideological background of the recent clashes in New York, Philadelphia and other cities. *** in every so-called 'riot' *** the combatants are not the Negro community versus the white community, but the ghetto versus the police; *** every one is triggered by police action. "A great people's coalition against racism, war and fascism is called for to clear the Freedom Road, the American Communist Party has said. Such a coalition is not only possible but a national necessity * RESOLUTIONS OF THE 18TH NATIONAL CONVENTION, CPUSA, JUNE 1966, PP. 38, 41: "with the passage of time, experience will show that the full power of the Negro people can be guaranteed only in a socialist society. * * "We do not identify ourselves with the nationalism which breeds separatism *** this could only end in the defeat of the hopes and aspirations of the Negro people." JAMES E. JACKSON, POLitical affaIRS, SEPTEMBER 1966, P. 9: "The flaming struggle for Negro freedom which rages these days in the streets of the great cities * * * is a part of the revolutionary processes which are rending the old social system beyond repair. This ongoing struggle *** will open the way to bringing into being a new order-socialism." HENRY WINSTON, “NEGRO-WHITE UNITY: KEY TO-FULL EQUALITY, NEGRO repRESENTATION, ECONOMIC ADVANCE OF LABOR, BLACK AND WHITE," A PAMPHLET, FEBRUARY 1967, PP. 14, 23: "The two concepts-labor solidarity and the alliance of labor and the Negro people-constitute the cornerstone of the struggle *** This is how our Party places the question. It is this approach which gives substance to the struggle "In our view *** the concept of 'black power' means that * people must win their full equality. * ** * the Negro "This does not mean that black will go it alone and white will go it alone. * * *" 88-083-68-pt. 1- -12 THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE CPUSA, HENRY WINSTON AND GUS HALL, THE WORKER, JUNE 18, 1967, PP. 6, 7: An Open Letter to President Johnson: "What may well be the longest, hottest and bloodiest summer has already begun. "WE CHARGE conspiracy is afoot in our land to provoke and slaughter militant Negroes "THE FORCES OF GOVERNMENT ARE MAKING 1967 THE YEAR OF THE CLUB. your "WE CHARGE the stage was set for this mailed fist policy by major stress on the need for beefing up our police forces everywhere primarily to suppress our exploding Negro ghettos. "The evidence revealing the conspiracy to unleash the forces of racism and reaction *** against the Negro people is as overwhelming as it is menacing." THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF ILLINOIS, CLAUDE LIGHTFOOT, CHAIRMAN, AND JACK KLING, SECRETARY, ISSUED THE Following DEMANDS ON JULY 25, 1967: "Immediate withdrawal of all armed racist police and troops from all Negro communities, and the establishment of local self-police forces in the communities. "Immediate freedom for all those arrested in the racist terror, including Rap Brown, chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. "Immediate arrest and trial of any police officer accused of racist activity or the use of racist language; purging of all members of the John Birch Society and all other racist organizations from the ranks of the police and the Army. "Immediate launching of a $10 billion crash program, to be controlled and administered by residents of the ghetto, for the rehabilitation of the slums and the employment of every man or woman who desires a job. "Immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the soil of Vietnam, an end to the draft and the release of all drafted Americans for the building of our country as a place decent for everybody to live." PAUL ROBESON, "THE POWER OF NEGRO ACTION" POLITICAL affairs, aUGUST 1967, PP. 43, 46: "To live in freedom one must be prepared to die to achieve it * * *. He who is not prepared to face the trials of battle will never lead to a triumph. * "Mass action-in political life and elsewhere-is Negro power in motion; and it is the way to win. . . . GUS HALL, the workER, OCTOBER 22, 1967, P. 3: "Can we win the struggle by saying it (racism) is wrong, a sin, or against the principles of brotherhood? Such arguments are helpful but not enough to be effective developments. ""The role of mutual and parallel self-interest is the most effective way. Through it we can become vanguards-if we apply leverage. "Militant struggle by a united Negro people is not a contradiction to finding areas of parallel struggle.' JAMES JACKSON, U.S. negroes IN BATTLE: from little roCK TO WATTS (A DIARY OF EVENTS-1957-1965), PROGRESS PUBLISHERS, MOSCOW, 1967, PP. 5, 6, 104, 107, 148: "It is recognized by freedom-loving peoples the world over, that the freedom movement of the American Negro people is objectively part of the national-democratic revolution against colonialism and neo-colonialism which the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America are waging against imperialsm wth the support and soldarity of all progressives and working people, and the socialist nations. "A sector of the world front against colonialism and imperialism, the Negro freedom movement has a special, unique importance because it is that part of the anti-colonial front that lies within the very inner chambers of the citadel of world imperialism--the United States of America. * * * Negroes are largely a proletarian people and constitute an important percentage of the total working class of the country. Therefore the Negro democratic struggle is not merely allied to but increasingly tends to merge with, combine with, the general class struggle. ***" "The reality of their experience is conditioning Negro youth in New York City and in Jackson, Miss., to view police and law enforcement officers not as protectors, but as adversaries who are zealous in seeking to maintain the racial status quo as are the most ardent segregationists'. "It is evident that three things must be done at once in respect to the violence that was visited upon Harlem by Murphy's Gestapo: 1. End the police occupation of Harlem at once. 2. Police Commissioner Murphy must be promptly replaced 3. The citizens board of review *** must be established with adequate authority." "The Communists are and always will be partisans at the side of the oppressed people in battle for justice, equality and the implementation of their Constitutional liberties. The Communists do not advocate, and never have advocated, the resort to acts of individual terror, vengeance or violence. * * *” "the young generation, especially, of the Negro people have gained a wide experience with the CLASS nature of the capitalist STATE and how its police and court system defends its privilege and power. *** They seek a progressive alternative to capitalism. Now, as at no other time in its history, the Communist Party of the U.S.A. has the opportunity and duty to disclose the socialist alternative to the young generation, to bring to the Negro militants the science of Marxism-Leninism to help illumine the way to lasting victory for the masses in the struggle for freedom, equality and justice." W. E. B. DUBOIS CLUBS OF AMERICA (DCA) 18531⁄2 McAllister, San Francisco, Calif. (first natl. office-1964-1966) 180 N. Wacker Drive, Chicago, Ill. (second natl. office-1966–1967) 34 West 17th Street, New York, N.Y. (third natl. office-Sept. 1967) ORIGIN: Founding convention was held June 19-21, 1964, in San Francisco, Calif. PURPOSE: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover has stated that the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America were "spawned" by the Communist Party; that they were formed by mandate of Gus Hall, the party's general secretary, after top party leaders decided in October 1963 that the party should take additional measures to attract young Americans. Hall "ordered the formation of a Marxist-oriented youth organization to attract non-Communists as the first step toward their eventual recruitment into the party." On March 2, 1966, then Attorney General Nicholas deB. Katzenbach petitioned the Subversive Activities Control Board to issue an order requiring the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America (DCA) to register as a Communist front organization as required by the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950. In support of his petition, the Attorney General stated: "From its inception, DCA [DuBois Clubs of America] has been and is substantially directed, dominated and controlled by the Communist Party and has been and is primarily operated for the purpose of giving aid and support to the Communist Party. * * In support of this statement, the Attorney General cited a number of facts in his petition, including the following, about the DuBois Clubs, their origin, and activities: Communist Party members and officers were assigned by the Communist Party to attend the founding convention of the DuBois Clubs; These people directed the activities of the DCA founding convention; A substantial number of persons who have been active in the management, direction, and supervision of the DuBois Clubs have also been active in the management, direction, and supervision-and also as representatives of-the Communist Party; The Communist Party has given the DCA financial and other support; The Communist Party has furnished speakers and lecturers for DCA meetings and other functions; 1 Testimony of J. Edgar Hoover, House Appropriations Subcommittee, Mar. 4, 1965. The Communist Party has conducted classes in Marxism for DCA members and has supplied DCA with literature for the education of its members in Marxism-Leninism. Gus Hall, general secretary of the CPUSA, acknowledged the relationship between the party and DCA in an interview in Moscow in August 1966. He stated- "we have the closest relations with the 'DuBois Clubs' since they take the Marxist positions. This organization has become a real fighting vanguard of the youth movement." ORGANIZATION: 25-30 chapters; approximately 300 members. KEY LEADERS: Phil Davis, DCA's first chairman (1964-1965), is known to have attended a Communist Party recruiting school in October 1962. Franklin Alexander was elected DCA chairman in 1966. His membership in the Communist Party was revealed in February 1967 by J. Edgar Hoover. Jarvis Tyner, the newly elected national chairman of DCA, was appointed to the National Committee of the CPUSA at the party's 18th National Convention in June 1966. Other key leaders of DCA who were appointed to the National Committee of the Communist Party at the 18th National Convention include: Betting Aptheker, Carl Bloice, Robert Duggan, Michael Eisencher, Peggy Goldman, Matthew Hallinan, Donald Hammerquist, and Robert Heisler. Other DCA leaders such as Jim Kennedy, its Southwest coordinator, made a public announcement of his Communist Party membership in a letter which was printed in the November 18, 1965, issue of Lobo, a publication at the University of New Mexico. Carl Bloice, DCA publications director, as a delegate from DCA participated in the "World Forum of Solidarity of Youth and Students in the Fight for National Independence and Liberation and for Peace," held in Moscow September 16-24, 1964. The forum was sponsored by the World Federation of Democratic Youth and the Council of Soviet Youth Organizations. DCA International Secretary Mike Myerson and DCA'er Harold Supriano attended the World Peace Congress in Helsinki in July 1965. At the congress, Myerson, Supriano, Chris Koch, a radio announcer for WBAI, and Richard Ward, a freelance writer living in Paris, sought out members of the North Vietnam. Peace Committee and requested permission to visit North Vietnam. An invitation from the North Vietnamese was extended, and the four spent the last week of August and the first week of September in North Vietnam. Myerson was made an honorary nephew of Ho Chi Minh and since his return to the United States has sported a Viet Cong cap and carried a Viet Cong flag at demonstrations protesting the war in Vietnam. PUBLICATIONS: Publication of periodicals for national distribution by DCA has been erratic for at least the past year. Spur-newsletter of the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America Various local DCA groups have intermittently published newsletters of their own. The Organizer-monthly newsletter of the Midwest Region of DCA Struggle-weekly information bulletin of the DuBois Community Action Movement in Chicago The Encounter-Chicago DCA Avanti-Detroit DCA The Activist-New York DCA ACTIVITIES: (1) has collaborated with the Free Speech Movement at the University of California and urged club members throughout the Nation to support FSM through demonstrations and protest letters; (2) has organized marches and rallies protesting alleged "police brutality"; (3) has organized demonstrations to protest the war in Vietnam; |