What
do Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Paul Robeson,
Lorraine Hansberry, Bayard Rustin, W. E. B. Du Bois, Mrs. Raymond
Parks,, and Martin Luther King, Jr. all have in common? Yes, they
were all blacks, or Negroes as the more common term used in the
earlier era. And many would have had other common experiences, but
one I want to stress here – they were all, at some point in their
lives, in the orbit of the Communist Party of the USA. My point is
that the CPUSA, though a small political party, had influence far
beyond its numbers, which at its height, was only 100,000. McKay, a
West Indian native who came to the US, in November 1922 traveled to Moscow to present “A Report on the Negro Question” to the 4th gathering of the Comintern (the Communist International). His bitter poem, “If we must die,” had stirred black reaction to
continued oppression following victory in the Great War, the war to
save the world for democracy. His novels explored race and he then became
something of a black nationalist. Four years before his death in 948, Mc Kay was baptized and received into the Roman Catholic Church.
Langston
Hughes also wrote some bitter poetry, like “Christ is a n*****,”
and a play about the Scottsboro boys facing electrocution because of
false accusations of rape in Alabama in the 1930s. Even earlier, in the 1920s Hughes partook in a sit-in in North Carolina. But by
the late 1940s, he is denying any connections to the CP. Author
Richard Wright, who had portrayed some individual communists heroes in
his novels, turned against the party and its ideology, even
contributing a chapter to the influential, strongly anti-communist collection, The God
that Failed. Robeson had been an all-American football player
for Rutgers University in the 19teens while excelling in academia,
graduating cum laude. He then earned a law degree from Columbia U.,
while playing in early professional football leagues. Robeson found limitations in the legal field; he had a
bass/baritone voice and sang professionally, performed in the theater
more and more, and then in films, singing “Ol Man River” in the
1935 film version of Show Boat. He and his wife lived in Britain as
he performed on the stage there, and in British films, where, ruling
half of Africa, they wanted films with black stars – and Robeson
became one. He met and befriended some film extras, African
university students studying in the U.K. But he did not forget
America. Robeson and a student, Johnstone Kenyatta, headed the
British Scottsboro Defence Committee in Britain. (Somewhat later,
Johnstone would later return to his homeland, become known as Jomo, and
lead the Mau Mau rebellion against the British in Kenya.) Robeson
himself became more political and decided it best if his son grew up
without racism, so Paul sent his son to live with his grandmother in Moscow in the
late 1930s. The father generally defended anti-colonialist
policies, and supported Soviet approaches into the 1940s and during the Cold War.
Lorraine Hansberry used a line from a Hughes' poem as the title of her major
play (and film), A Raisin in the Sun. She also wrote for Freedom, the Harlem
newspaper founded by Robeson during the Cold War. She became a
spokesperson for Southern civil rights activists, when she, other
celebrities, and activist Jerome Smith met with Atty. Gen. Robert
Kennedy in the early 1960s. Bayard Rustin, from a Quaker family,
opposed the war clouds brewing in the late 1930s. When Nazi Germany
attacked Poland (usually given as the start of WWII), while most of
the West and many Americans supported Britain and the other
“democracies,” the CPUSA followed the notions of Moscow, refusing to
support the imperialist, colonialist powers (Britain, France,
Netherlands, Belgium, and America). To the pacifist, Ruston, this
seemed reasonable, and he joined thethen anti-war Young Communist League.
In summer 1941 Hitler attacked the USSR, and suddenly communist
policy changed – the “imperialist” powers had to be helped as allies in order to
destroy Nazi fascism, the old popular front with liberal democracy
was revived to defeat Hitler. The YCL now became all out for support
of war, and Rustin ceased to be a part of it. He would continue to
protest in various ways, and eventually organize the influential 1963 March on Washington.
Du
Bois had supported the drums of the Great War, but soon
discovered that Wilson's notion of democracy did not extend to black
people. The new NAACP gave him a platform, and provided some
national center to fight violent and overt racism. The
organization's magazine, The Crisis, was edited by Du Bois, and he
wrote much of the material as well. Still, the virulently black
nationalist Universal Negro Improvement Assn., founded by a very
black Marcus Garvey, won a larger following than did the proper
middle-class NAACP. Worse, Garvey made deals with the growing Ku Klux
Klan, supported segregation, and even championed a return of Negroes to Africa.
Du Bois was certainly not chagrined when the US deported Garvey. In
the 1930s Du Bois was critical of the CP, especially in its defense
of the Scottsboro boys. Du Bois had hoped to regain control of the defense from the CP, but the boys and their moms chose the communists
instead of the NAACP. Du Bois traveled in Germany in the 1930s, and had kind
words for the people of color of imperial Japan. But with WWII, he became more
anti-imperialist, and certainly more skeptical of the Missouri
Democrat, Harry Truman, who became President opon FDR's death in spring
1945. Truman, who had a Confederate heritage, was close to leading segregationists like South Carolina's Jimmy Burns, whom Truman appointed as Sed. of State. But in 1948, hoping to win another term in office, Truman began to seek black votes, addressed the NAACP, the first
President to do so. When Du Bois refused to support Truman and
backed a previous FDR VP, Henry Wallace for President in 1948 against
Truman, the NAACP fired Du Bois. With that, the NAACP in effect, became a Democratic party front-group. Truman got further revenge when his
Atty. General had Du Bois arrested as a foreign agent in 1950. Just
before Du Bois chose to leave the US for the Gold Coast, now
independent Ghana, he joined the CPUSA. Ironically, Du Bois, who had opposed Garvey's Back to Africa campaign of the 1920s, became the most prominent American black to return to Africa in 1961.
Rosa
Mc Cauley married Raymond Parks, a barber in Montgomery, Alabama in
1932. The Scottsboro rape cases had become international news,
thanks to the International Labor Defense, a CP front organization.
Alabama authorities had raided some CP attempts to organize share
croppers into unions, and sheriffs and deputies and some of their
posses had killed those who dared attend such subversive meetings.
Raymond worked with the ILD to bring food and fresh clothing to the 9
jailed black boys. He also had meetings at his home. Rosa was
sometimes look-out to warn if any strange cars were coming. With her
husband, Rosa Parks also attended some CP meetings.
In
1948 the civil rights movement in the South WAS the Henry Wallace
Progressive Party. The 1948 PP was endorsed by the CPUSA. That
year, Virginia Durr ran for the US Senate from Virginia on the PP ticket. She and her
husband were Alabama natives who had moved to the Washington area
when Clifford was appointed to a federal agency in 1933, and they
remained during the New Deal era. When FDR sought to gain support
in the South (after many in Congress had rejected his court-packing
bill), the New Deal sought to promote uplift to the South, the
poorest part of the nation. As part of this effort, Eleanor Roosevelt was also involved in
the creation of the Southern Conference on Human Welfare, and
Virginia Durr was on its civil rights committee. Of course, to many
Southerners, integration was communism, or often called
race-mixing or mongrelization. Harry Truman's Attorney General would
place the SCHW on his list of subversive organizations, so it would
be targeted for destruction. Durr did not the Virginia Senate seat she sought. She
and Clifford then returned to Alabama, Montgomery. She required a
seamstress to help, and then she helped the seamstress get a
scholarship to Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, a “progressive”
school where one might learn about protest. So seamstress Rosa Parks went. The
rest is history.
Martin
Luther King, Jr. also attended Highlander. There was a famous
photograph taken of him seated beside a member of the CPUSA. If you
drove through the South in the 1950s or 60s, you might have seen the
bill boards showing King at the "communist" training school. (They may
have been the same bill boards that had earlier displayed IMPEACH
EARL WARREN signs after the Supreme Court ruled against segregation
of the public schools. King was a young minister, thrust into the
fire of the Montgomery bus boycott, with all its dangers. If there
were threats, there was also help, and one helper became one of
King's chief advisors, Stanley Levison. According to the FBI,
Levison was s secret member of the CPUSA, and handled some of its hidden funds. Levison was now fund-raising for King. More, he was advising
on tactics, writing some of King's speeches, perhaps chapters of his books.
Both Pres. John Kennedy and Atty . Gen. Robert Kennedy told (ordered)
King to break with Levison. King lied, said he had split with his
advisor, but King maintained his contact with the controversial, and quite influential Stanley Levison.
CAN
THERE BE ANY DOUBT THAT THE CPUSA HAS HAD GREAT INFLUENCE ON AMERICA?
It
was not only blacks who were swayed by the CP. For whites, I shall
mention only one name of a person involved in the communist orbit. Some disagree. However, his wife was a member of the CP; his mistress was also a member of the CP, and his brother was a member of the CP. Was he in the orbit of the Communist Party? The man I am referring to is J. Robert Oppenheimer. With a wife, mistress, and brother all party members, did that color his thinking closer to red? Moreover, according to an article in the September 2023 Commentary magazine, "Oppenheimer Was a Communist," by Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, not only did J. Robert contribute healthy sums to communist front organizations in the 1930s, they contend that he himself was also a member. Then, which is it; CP leaders told him to drop out of the organization, for he might have to pass an important security check? Or he heard of the major scientific project, and on his own, decided to keep a distance from the CP? He did pass the test, and was soon working in the Manhattan Project. The rest is history, and a movie.
