Congress. House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Subversive Influences in Riots,
Looting, and Burning. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1967, 1968. Pt. 1: Subversive Influences
in Riots, Looting, and Burning (October 25, 26, 31, November 28, 1967).
SuDoc No.: Y4.Un1/2:R47/pt.1
Date(s) of Hearings: October 25, 26, 31, November 28, 1967
Congress and Session: 90th - 1st
EXCERPTS
SYNOPSIS
On October 25, 26, 31, and November 28, 1967, a subcommittee of the Committee on Un-American
Activities held public hearings in Room 311, Cannon House Office Building, on the subject
of subversive influences in riots, looting, and burning.
The subcommittee was composed of Hon. Edwin E. Willis, chairman; Hon. William M. Tuck, of
Virginia; Hon. Richard H. Ichord, of Missouri; Hon. John M. Ashbrook, of Ohio; and Hon.
Albert W. Watson, of South Carolina. Hon. John C. Culver, of Iowa, was appointed October
25, 1967, as an associate member of the subcommittee to serve at such times as Chairman
Willis was unable to be present.
The purpose of the hearings was to determine "the extent to which, and the manner
in which" acts of rioting, looting, and burning in various cities in the United States
had been "planned, instigated, incited, or supported by Communist and other subversive
organizations and individuals, and all other questions in relation thereto that would aid
Congress in any necessary remedial legislation."
On October 3, 1966, Chairman Willis had directed the committee staff to undertake a
preliminary inquiry into the rioting, burning, looting, and other tragic acts of violence
which have afflicted a number of principal cities in the United States. The chairman
appointed Representatives Tuck and Watson to oversee the general conduct of the preliminary
inquiry. Mr. Tuck rendered a report to the full committee on August 2, 1967, which clearly
indicated that Communist and/or other subversive elements have been involved in acts of
rioting, looting, and burning in the United States to a significant degree.
In his opening statement, Mr. Tuck stated that there had been "well over 100
riots" in the past few years, several dozen of which can be classified as "major
disturbances." Property damage estimates were staggering, as were the cost –
in the millions of dollars – of overtime for police and fire departments,
mobilization of National Guard and Federal troops, in addition to millions of dollars
in lost business in the riot-torn areas.
Congressman Tuck stated that while poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and lack of
educational opportunity may be factors contributive to riots, these factors have existed
both in this country and abroad in years past – and to a greater degree than in recent
years – without rioting.
Mr. Tuck said:
It is not the view of this committee that Communists or other subversive elements are the
sole cause of the recent riots; that without these elements there would have been no riots
at all.
It is my personal view that those persons who have gone about counseling, urging, and
advising so-called civil disobedience – which is no more than calculated violation
of any law you do not like, the root of anarchy – have created disrespect and
contempt for law and order which has contributed to the mob violence.
Congressman Tuck stressed that only 2 to 5 percent of the Negro population had taken part
in the riots, and these figures represented a small minority of the total Negro population
in America. He added that even this small minority was comprised, in significant part,
by youths, teenage gangs, and persons with criminal records.
In his opening statement, Mr. Tuck also noted that other inquiries have been undertaken
for the purpose of judging the factors contributing to the riots, but that the jurisdiction
of the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities was limited to subversive
activities (in the perspective of the riots) and would "not embrace social problems
as such."
Commenting on the historical aspects of riots, the Virginia Congressman said:
Throughout history riots have been used for political purposes. They can be and have
been, deliberately instigated to weaken and undermine existing governments and pave
the way for the establishment of a new and different type of governmental system.
In 1960 the Annual Report of the House Committee on Un-American Activities stated:
There is considerable evidence that in the United States, as well as on a world scale, the
Communists feel that the present tactical situation calls for increased utilization of
rioting and mob violence.
Mr.Tuck regretted that the committee analysis had proved to be accurate.
TESTIMONY OF ARCHIE MOORE
Former professional light heavyweight boxing champion, Archie Moore, now a resident of
San Diego, was the lead-off witness, in the committee's hearings.
Mr. Moore, recipient of the 1968 outstanding citizen of San Diego award, stated that he
did not see any sense in rioting and submitted a statement he had earlier delivered to
the San Diego Union. The article by the boxing champion, published as a
page-one feature, was reprinted by many other newspapers. It stated in part:
Granted, the Negro still has a long way to go to gain a fair shake with the white man
in this country. But believe this: If we resort to lawlessness, the only thing we can
hope for is civil war, untold bloodshed, ad the end of your dreams.
We have to have a meeting of qualified men of both races. Mind you, I said qualified
men, not some punk kid, ranting the catch phrases put in his mouth by some paid hate
monger. There are forces in the world today, forces bent upon the destruction of America,
your America and mine. And while we're on the subject, do you doubt for a minute that
communism, world communism, isn't waiting with bated breath for the black and white
Americans to turn on each other full force? Do you want a chance for life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness in the land of your birth, or do you want no chance at
all under the Red heel?
Mr. Moore stated that he had devised a program – called ABC, Any Boy Can –
based on "truth, honesty, respect for self and for other people, their rights
and property." The ABC program teaches young Negroes and whites in the ghettos
the basics of moral, physical, and spiritual self-defense.
He added:
A good student in the ABC class does not lie, steal, cheat, smoke, gamble, refuse to
go to church, play hooky from school, get into trouble, participate in riots, throw bombs,
smoke dope, smoke weeds, use narcotics of any kind, use LSD. We do teach them
this is wrong.
TESTIMONY OF CLARENCE MITCHELL
Clarence Mitchell, director of the Washington Bureau of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was sworn in and stated that he had been
director of the Washington Bureau since 1950 and began his work with the well-known
civil rights organization in 1945.
Mr. Mitchell read a prepared statement into the record in which he praised committee
chairman Edwin E. Willis for his courageous challenge of the Ku Klux Klan.
In his statement, Mr. Mitchell said: "It is my opinion that it is an insult to the
millions of law-abiding colored people to align them with the terrible destruction and
violence that we have witnessed in some of our cities." He added: "It is
my opinion that the vast majority of colored people in this country seek to settle
their grievances and to achieve their objectives just as all other Americans, through
the lawful channels of the land."
Mr. Mitchell noted that his impression was that "Communists have never made any
great headway in recruiting colored followers and they do not have any substantial
following at this point."
The NAACP bureau director noted that long before many other groups were conscious of
Communist infiltration his organization had avoided contacts with Communists. The
NAACP had "an ironclad rule that we didn't want anybody who was Communist affiliated
or any out-and-out Communist."
Further, Mr. Mitchell stated that the NAACP had initiated a concerted campaign at the
local level during the summer of 1967 in hopes of heading off violence in communities.
Demonstrating just one facet of this campaign, Mr. Mitchell offered for exhibit several
printed cards and bumper stickers which had been printed and distributed by the NAACP.
The cards and bumper stickers read:
KEEP COOL, Let the Other Guy BLOW HIS TOP
THE OTHER SIDE WINS IF WE LOSE OUR COOL
BRICKS THROUGH WINDOWS DON'T OPEN DOORS
The NAACP director said that it was his opinion that a "great deal of the turmoil
in this country is fomented by the playing up of those who are wiling to say anything
that is irresponsible for the purpose of getting on television or getting into the
papers." He recalled getting a call from a lady who represented a very reputable
lady's magazine. She asked Mr. Mitchell to "help her find a Negro who was a
college graduate, who was disillusioned by the war in Vietnam, disillusioned about our
domestic policy, and therefore had decided to become a sniper." The woman had been
assigned to "keep looking for that particular kind of Negro" for a
"Christmas story."
TESTIMONY OF ASA T. SPAULDING
Mr. Asa T. Spaulding, resident of Durham, N.C., and president of North Carolina Mutual
Life Insurance Company, was the next witness. Mr. Spaulding had started with the
insurance company in 1932 and worked his way up from assistant secretary to comptroller
to vice president in 1948 and finally to president in 1959.
The witness is a member of the board of directors of a number of large financial
institutions and a trustee of Howard University and Shaw University. Mr. Spaulding
is a recipient of a Presidential citation in 1946 for his work in helping to stabilize
the economy of the United States Government during World War II. The witness had
recently returned from a trip to Africa as a member of a trade mission for the U.S.
Department of COmmerce and had recently completed a tour of military installations
in this country under the auspices of the Department of Defense.
After reading his personal statement to the committee, Mr. Spaulding read a statement on
his company's position in the current civil rights struggle.
In conclusion, Asa T. Spaulding, himself a Negro, stated:
I am of the opinion that Communists never miss an opportunity to capitalize on
dissatisfaction, strife, and turmoil no matter what the cause. ...their alliances are
more or less "marriages of convenience," subject to being dissolved when it
will serve their interest to do so.
I, therefore, doubt that Communists "sincerely have the interests of the Negro at
heart," or that they will work with the Negro in his efforts to achieve full equality...
TESTIMONY OF WHITNEY M. YOUNG, JR., ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE, INC.
Mr. Young was unable to appear before the committee on October 25, 1967. However, he
submitted a statement which the chairman authorized to be inserted in the record. The
statement read in part:
In the light of the deaths, injuries, arrests, and destruction of Negro-owned property
this past summer, it is obvious that the interests of Negro citizens are not advanced
by riots...
In answer to the question concerning whether or not Communists sincerely have the interests
of the Negro at heart, the statement pointed out that the "Communist Party has spent
much time and effort in wooing the Negro population, all to no avail" and that there
"is little evidence that Communists have any significant influence on the civil rights
movement..."
TESTIMONY OF EVELLE J. YOUNGER
At the start of the afternoon session of the committee hearings on Wednesday, October 25,
1967, the first witness to be called and sworn in was Evelle J. Younger, district attorney
for Los Angeles County, Calif. Mr. Younger told the committee that he grew up in Nebraska
and received his A.B. and LL.B. degrees from the University of Nebraska. He then went on
to graduate studies in criminology at Northwestern University.
After Northwestern, Mr. Younger joined the FBI as a special agent. He served with the
Army Counterintelligence Corps.
He has been deputy city attorney in Los Angeles, in the Criminal Division; prosecuting
attorney in the city of Pasadena; and on the municipal and superior court in Los Angeles
for 11 years before becoming district attorney in 1964.
Mr. Younger stated that his first major involvement with rioters and rioting was in 1965
during the Watts riot, where approximately 2,500 felony cases were prosecuted. The
district attorney defined a riot as "thousands of people enraged in burning, looting,
assault, and murder." A riot, he said, "involves a complete breakdown of law
and order... it most certainly is one tremendous crime spree."
Commenting on his own experiences with rioters, he said:
We have been experiencing a number of actions by persons who resort to physically coercive
methods to effect change which, in effect, amount to a repudiation of the orderly
governmental process – professors and clergymen urging young men to resist military
service; the editor of the UCLA student newspaper urging students to violate the laws
against the use of marijuana; public figures advocating a refusal to pay taxes because
the Government finances programs with which they disagree.
...
When police are called upon to perform their duty to preserve order and protect life and
property, they are often jeered, insulted, and spat upon by the very people they are paid
to protect.
Screams of "police brutality" drown out those who urge higher standards of
training and better pay and a higher degree of professionalization to produce better
law enforcement...
Concerning technical developments in our society which affect a riot situation, Mr.
Younger said:
Unquestionably, the television medium can be a major factor in contributing to or
sustaining a riot. A newspaper can also do much to mold and influence public opinion over
a period of time.
However, he noted:
Only TV can inspire immediate action – good or bad. TV can be the monster or the
Jolly Green Giant, depending on how its power is used.
Mr. Younger said that the TV stations in the United States are licensed to be operated
"in the public interest, necessity, and convenience." He added that –
if Rap Brown is making an inflammatory speech before 20 people... should TV come along and
give him an audience of several million... is it in the public interest?
...
When does TV stop reporting the news and start creating news? At a recent Ku Klux Klan
convention in southern California, there were literally more TV cameras present than
delegates.
...
Should rioters be able to use TV as a means of publishing battle orders?
He stated that the "riot-prone group" comprises only about 5 to 10 percent, and
most of this extremist fragment of the Negro race are "young and they are psychotic.
Each is a potential killer."
Mr. Younger opined that:
These racists, haters, political extremists, and agitators and the confirmed criminals
are the real villains (in any riotous situation)... They comprise at most 20 percent of
the participants in any modern American riot...
The Los Angeles district attorney continued:
Certainly, after a riot starts, this group moves in fast and pours fuel on the flames and
tries to make the riot as bloody, as damaging, and as extensive as possible. The fact is,
though, that while this 20 percent could probably start a riot, they cannot sustain it.
Only the remaining 80 percent of the 5 to 10 percent can sustain a riot, make it last anywhere
from 24 hours to a week.
Mr. Younger was asked if he had any suggestions toward eliminating or reducing the possibility
of riots in the future. He replied:
First, we must insist that all Americans obey all our laws at all times, period.
Not just the laws they like, but all laws, period...
...
Step II: Free the slaves... And we must be honest with the Negro and say we are not talking
about equal cars or equal homes or equal salary, but equal opportunity.
In concluding his testimony, the Los Angeles district attorney said:
While we are working out our problems, let us get rid of our national inferiority complex.
Government should cease its preoccupation with introspections and feelings of guilt and
should stop espousing the idea that society is at fault for riots. This self-pity
syndrome is extremely dangerous...
Mr. Younger was thanked for his contribution by Mr. Tuck and was questioned on certain
points of his testimony by various members of the subcommittee.
The district attorney noted that his statement was not a criticism of television, but rather
"a concern that television is so powerful that the potential for doing great damage
during the riot is there."
The district attorney restated an earlier point made in his testimony – that the
Communists and other extremist elements are quick to move in once the riot starts in order
to exploit the disruption to their own ends.
TESTIMONY OF ADRIAN H. JONES
The next witness, Adrian H. Jones, was sworn in and gave his address as 8365 East Beach
Drive NW., Washington, D.C. The witness attended public schools in Roslyn and Spokane,
Wash. He received a master of arts degree in psychology from the University of Kansas
in 1963. The witness had been studying for the past 4 1/2 years in the sociology
department of the American University. At the time of the hearings he had completed all
the course work and qualifying examinations for a Ph. D. and was writing his dissertation
on civil disturbances.
The witness served two tours of duty in Europe and participated in the occupation of
Japan from 1946 to 1949. He is former commanding officer of the Harlem Military Police
detachment and former provost marshal of Fort Leavenworth, Kans.
For 4 1/2 years prior to the hearings, he had been engaged in research and study in the
area of internal security. He is employed by the Center for Research in Social Systems
of the American University.
Mr. Jones is the coauthor of a study entitled "Combating Subversively Manipulated
Civil Disturbances" and is guest lecturer at the International Police Academy. He
is also a guest lecturer for the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
The witness noted that "law enforcement has not been extensively researched."
Due to the controversial nature of investigations into riots, his studies were systematically
approached from three separate areas: (1) political subversion, (2) community conflict,
and (3) the control of mobs and crowds. His study encompassed historical, social science,
police operational, and news media references.
Addressing the question of salient basic elements necessary for any riot, the witness
noted that group hostility or antagonism, latent or active, "must be aroused to a
high emotional stage in order to trigger a crowd to violent action."
Mr. Jones gave "dissident groups with real or imaginary grievances" as the
number one basic component element in a riot situation. He added that dissident groups
may be subversive or nonsubversive.
Another essential element for a riot is a physiological crowd. These crowds may be
"spontaneous, casual, or planned and intentional." Other important components
essential to riots are: the agitator, who may or may not intend to trigger a riot; the
precipitating incident, either accidental, spontaneous, natural, or developed; internal
security forces brought in to try to control civil disturbances; and the general
population of the community.
In determining the "character of a riot" it must be considered that "the
subversive is interested in a riot for a political purpose." Normally, subversives
do not hope to overthrow a government through one riot, "but they do see in a riot
a means of weakening the existing power structure and of turning people against it."
The witness spoke of the evidence which indicates a riot is subversively manipulated
and noted that an analytical device or system had been developed in order to eliminate
speculation. The riot must be broken down into four phases and each phase analyzed
separately.
The four riot phases are: (1) the precrowd phase, (2) the crowd phase, (3) the civil
disturbance phase, and (4) the post-civil disturbance phase.
The precrowd phase is defined as a "preparatory period which is characterized by
the development of antagonisms within a community between groups which have a different
position on some economic, social, political, or other issue."
In a subversively manipulated riot, the precrowd phase is marked by: (a) the existence
of a subversive organization used to create conflict; (b) selection of target groups
"on the basis of the conflict potential in the community"; (c) preconditioning
measures to influence the attitudes of target groups; (d) the acquisition and storage of
weapons and explosives and the planning of escape routes for key individual leaders.
In the crowd phase, the crowd is "turned into a mob which throws aside all restraint
and engages in collective social violence."
Subversive elements bent on starting a riot "may themselves insure that a crowd
will be present" by planning a meeting or rally or "staging an incident"
which will draw a crowd.
"Once a crowd is assembled, the subversives deploy their personnel in the crowd
to agitate and excite it" by shouting slogans, circulating rumors, or making speeches.
The most vulnerable crowd is one which has been preconditioned in the aforementioned
precrowd stage to react emotionally to certain slogans, phrases, and accusations.
In the civil disturbance, or actual riot phase, the witness noted, the highly excited
crowd becomes a "mob which through a kind of emotional contagion engages in
large-scale, collective social violence."
In a riot which is manipulated by subversives, a "booster incident will be initiated
– rocks will be thrown, windows broken, a fire or fight started" and
"sniping or looting" may also occur. "A martyr will be exploited or
perhaps even created – someone who has been arrested, wounded, or killed by
riot-control forces or intentionally injured or killed by the subversives."
Mr. Jones, in answer to a question at this point in the testimony, stated "that
there is a formal organization that attempts to protect the very important subversive
manipulators in order to preclude their being arrested."
The witness then went into the fourth stage or "post-civil disturbance phase"
of the riot which is characterized as that "period when the violence is ended and
social order has been restored."
If subversives are involved, evidence of efforts to further violence will be noted in
a continuance of propaganda and agitation. "Demands which the Government cannot
possibly meet will be made."
The witness then directed his testimony to the question of counter-measures to the
rioting and said:
The basic objective of internal security forces is to restore order, the corollary
is to reestablish respect for law and order and public safety...
One of the techniques of controlling crowds is very solidly based upon the specific
panic response which is expressed by individuals in the desire to escape or take flight
from an immediate threatening area...
He noted that chemical munitions (i.e., tear gas) or streams of water cause individuals
to start thinking of themselves. Usually this has the effect of dispersing the crowd.
Clues which signify the plotting of a riot may include: "the observation of known
subversives moving into an area, the discovery of arms caches, the circulation of
propaganda, attempts to hire demonstrators, attempts to train and orient agitators,
arrangements for safe houses and escape routes."
Countermeasures suggested by the witness to an apparent plot to create a riot include
"either to disperse the crowd or to bring the crowd under control, to maintain
contact with the leaders, and possibly to give the dissidents some sort of outlet."
Mr. Jones commented on countermeasures in the actual riot or civil disturbances
phase and said:
The procedure of the United States Army is to first use a show of force; then to use
riot control formation; then to consider the use of streams of water; then the use of
chemical agents; then fire by selected marksmen; and finally, under very extreme
conditions, full fire power.
In the postdisturbance period, countermeasures include the use of intelligence in
identifying the subversive agitators. During this period the authorities involved
should listen to the complaints of members of dissident groups. It is equally
important "to get information to the public to undercut the lies, half-truths,
and rumors of subversives."
The witness was appraised of current investigation and research of the committee
which indicated that certain groups in the United States were actually advocating
guerrilla warfare and insurgency in this country. He was asked if he saw a
relationship between subversively manipulated riots and insurgency or guerrilla warfare.
He answered that he felt that subversively manipulated riots are definitely a part of
the political weapon system of the international Communist movement.
At the close of his testimony, Mr. Jones indicated that his research spanned a length
of time dating prior to the rush of riots in the summer of 1964.
The witness made a passing reference to the October 21, 1967, demonstrations at the
Pentagon, stating:
I think there is certainly some evidence based upon my analytical scheme to support
the contention that someone was trying to incite riotous violence in this particular
instance.
TESTIMONY OF HERMAN D. LERNER
On Thursday, October 26, 1967, the subcommittee convened at 10:25 a.m., and the
next witness, Herman D. Lerner, was sworn in. Mr. Lerner, who resides at 6825
Laverock Court, Bethesda, Md., stated that he was born in Baltimore, Md., in 1923.
He attended public schools in Baltimore and studied the physical and social sciences at
the University of Maryland. His studies were interrupted in 1943-46 for a term of
military service, after which he resumed college and graduated with an A.B. degree
in 1948.
Mr. Lerner did graduate work at harvard University, where he was a teaching fellow in
social change. Since that period he has done additional periodic graduate work at the
American University.
For the past 14 years, the witness had been conducting many studies of military systems,
research planning and utilization, social and economic issues, and political trends.
Mr. Lerner is a member of various professional associations in operations research,
sociology, management, and general science.
Concerning fields of study related to organized rioting, the witness stated that over
the past 10 years he had studied "national cohesion, military strategy, general and
limited warfare, political rioting, crime, and internal security, with special reference
to military-civilian relations, force, propaganda, and strategy."
Commenting particularly on an Office of Naval Research study into riots, during his tenure
with them, the witness said:
As for the possibility of rioting as a tactic in general warfare, this was a problem which
the study team looked into since it was believed that there would be enormous destruction
during a thermonuclear war and that military units might be required to cope with many
emergencies, including threats to naval installations and internal security which might
arise from political rioting and insurgencies.
The witness listed five headings under which an analysis of recent urban rioting in the
United States could be classified: (1) "urban disorganization and poverty";
(2) "community conflict (social, religious, economic, ethnic, racial, et cetera)";
(3) "criminality and delinquency"; (4) "domestic subversion";
(5) "foreign subversion."
The witness defines subversion as "any activity which has as its objective the
illegal displacement of power from one group to another; ...the weakening or destruction
of national cohesion through propaganda, military and industrial sabotage, or other
economic or political measures."
He added: "Subversion is political criminality."
Drawing a distinction between domestic and foreign subversives, Mr. Lerner said:
A domestic, or "benign" subversive is a person whose disloyalty, alienation,
and illegal activity are directed against our national institutions. Including our
political structure and the incumbents of power, but whose loyalty and allegiance to the
Nation – as a people – are still intact.
...
A foreign or "malignant" subversive on the other hand, is a person who is
uncommitted to the Nation and who may in fact be an agent of a foreign power with primary
allegiance to that power.
Turning to the circumstances under which political rioting occurs, the witness explained
that three subjects must be considered here: (1) "the functions of government";
(2) "how those functions are defined or interpreted by the persons governed";
and (3) "organized exploitation of real or alleged governmental inadequacies and
injustices."
In answer to the query of how "people react to organized exploitation of the failure
of governmental authority and power, either real or alleged," the witness replied:
The most important determinant of this reaction is the set of basic attitudes and
sentiments which people already have concerning the Government.
...
An urban Negro in a low income group in the U.S. is unlikely to compare himself with an
urban Russian or an urban Chinese or... a man in Harlem ordinarily will not compare
himself with one in Watts, and vice versa.
...But he is more likely to view himself with other nearby Negroes who have more than
he or with nearby whites...
This sense of comparative or relative deprivation which results from consistently
unfavorable comparisons causes frustration, which in turn may lead to aggressive
tendencies...
The witness observed that authorities in the field of crowds, mobs, and riots had
denoted certain "features of aggressive group action which are noteworthy for
an understanding of recent urban rioting in the United States."
These include:
(a) weakening of customary restraints or inhibitions which ordinarily block illegal
behavior and overtly aggressive action against authorities;
(b) moral support for aggressive action from other participants in the group;
(c) reinforced or increased power of the individual;
(d) intensification of the influence of what might be called negative or antisocial norms;
and so forth.
The witness reviewed the steps or stages in the development from a psychological point
of view. These stages are: the preconditioning or propaganda stage, a feeling of
resentment over unjust deprivation stage, the assembly or crowd-forming stage, the
"riot-inciting idea or incident," and finally the riot.
The riot will have several kinds of significance to the participants, including:
"physical and symbolic redress, or righting, of injustice" through damage,
looting, or burning, which "symbolizes the punishment of the guilty," the
"power holders and others identified with the established order."
Following the riot, the political goal of the rioter – ordinarily an increase
in legitimate power (actual or symbolic) – either is achieved or not achieved.
Mr. Lerner then stated:
These stages should be understood as general concepts which help describe much of
the recent political rioting. They do not necessarily apply to all cases... Also,
guerrilla units – one person or small groups – may take advantage of the
riot by sniping and by other specialized acts of theft, destruction, and terror.
Mr. Lerner was asked if he found evidence of subversion in political rioting. He
replied, "Yes. There is no question about it." He cited examples from
the testimony of J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director, regarding subversion in certain riots
in the United States. He said it was also announced and documented by congressional
committees (that evidence of subversion in riots exists) and added:
But even if we were to cast aside the official information such as that which I have
just quoted... there would be no question about the existence of subversion in recent
urban rioting because the acts of many of the rioters – individually and
collectively – are themselves subversive.
Mr. Lerner stated that there "are definite patterns which are repeated over and
over again in subversively manipulated riots and in their development," and
cited as examples the "frequent, systematic repetition of... standardized events,
styles, and sequences in widely dispersed areas" such as Watts and Harlem.
Mr. Lerner pointed out the involvement of teenage gangs in riots and added:
Youths are more suggestible and impressionable... are more readily disposed to
physical responses to frustration... more idealistic, more highly sympathetic to
the underdog, and more highly displeased over apparent deficiencies in the social
structure than adults.
All of these characteristics make youths a good target for propaganda by those
who may wish to represent themselves as sincere, legitimate reformers or idealistic
revolutionaries.
Mr. Lerner presented his suggestions for dealing with riot situations. He divided
his recommendations into (a) "emergency steps" and (b) " long-term
programs," stating that: "Emergency steps are those which should be taken
immediately at the threat or outbreak of a riot."
"Among the long-term recommendations," he suggested:
(1) Make ethnic "hate" activities a Federal offense...
(2) Impose limited weapons control (on subversives and criminals)...
(3) Formulate a set of civil duties which corresponds to civil rights...
(4) ...selectively and temporarily reducing rights to speech and assembly of subversion...
(5) ...devise specific, workable programs for bringing the quality of Negro life
in this country to an acceptable level...
(6) Provide a program for rehabilitation of subversive and insurgents...
(7) Consider the advisability of broadening the mandate of this committee (House
Committee on Un-American Activities)... to encompass increased constructive action
toward dealing with the conditions which create subversives in this country and toward
rehabilitation of subversives.
Mr. Tuck thanked the witness for his testimony and discussed further the definition
and classification of subversives.
TESTIMONY OF HON. SAM YORTY, MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, CALIF.
On Tuesday, November 28, 1967, the subcommittee of the Committee on Un-American
Activities met in the committee hearing room in the continuation of public hearings
into "subversive influences in riots, looting, and burning."
The witness, Hon. Sam Yorty, mayor of Los Angeles, Calif., was sworn in and stated
that he was, by profession, an attorney at law.
Mayor Yorty was a Member of Congress in 1950 to 1954 and mayor of Los Angeles since 1961.
His tenure in the California Legislature in the mid-1930's gave him an opportunity to study
the subject of communism. Since that time, the witness has maintained an interest in
Communist activities.
In answer to a question concerning his opinion of underlying factors which caused the
riots in the last few years, Mayor Yorty replied:
I would certainly say that one of the factors is the constant repetition of subversive
propaganda, the agitation, and propaganda conducted by the Communist Party within the
framework of their historic objective to break down the respect for government, certainly
for law and order, and to personalize, as they always do, this objective mainly in the
police officer.
Asked if he believed these riots have been spontaneous or planned, the mayor said,
"I think that there are some of both." He added:
I think that the propaganda over the years has been so constant and at times very effective...
I also think there are some riots where subversive forces have actually planned...
incidents that they would hope would spark a riot.
Mayor Yorty introduced an exhibit into the record, a pamphlet entitled "The Big
Lie." The pamphlet, produced by the Los Angeles city government, contained a
short history of the charge of police brutality over a period of 21 years – or
since 1946, by the Communist Party.
The witness stated that law enforcement has been handicapped "by the reinterpretation,
really the rewriting of the Constitution by the United States Supreme Court..."
He cited examples of the exclusionary rules of evidence, the rules of search and seizure,
and the registration of known criminals.
Mayor Yorty recalled that Lenin, in his writings, as early as 1902, had made reference
to police brutality and noted that he knew of no period in history where the
"campaign against the police has been quite as effective as it is today."
The mayor was asked if police brutality charges were made in his city during the Watts
riot. He replied that an attempt was made "to blame the police for the rioting,"
and added: "This led to my unpleasant confrontation with Dr. Martin Luther King,
who –
persisted in arguing that the police were to blame for the rioting. Then he went out
and got before the cameras and newspapers and made that same charge. I felt it necessary
to answer that charge and to tell him that it was very unfair for him to come out to Los
Angeles and try to blame the police for the rioting.
Mayor Yorty then stated that he did not "know of any case where an officer has had
to be dismissed for brutality."
The mayor noted that there were many people who made charges of police brutality whose
motive was to discredit the police department and to carry on the so-called Communist
struggle campaign to "break down respect for the law enforcement officials...
eventually... break down the ability of our Government to operate."
The Los Angeles mayor said that:
Unfortunately, the nature of news is... usually negative. The bizarre makes more news
than the everyday hard work of law enforcement.
Mayor Yorty saw a need for people to understand the Communist Party and its apparatus.
He said:
The public has been conditioned to feel that the charge of communism is some kind of
smear on innocent people...
He cited several examples of "conditioning" of the American public "until
they have lost their understanding of the true effectiveness of Communist agitation and
propaganda."
The witness submitted that he "wouldn't want to go so far as to say that no
policeman has ever been guilty of brutality," but that "the major problem
is brutality to police on the part of citizen groups."
In considering a question propounded by staff director McNamara on whether riot
legislation should be levied at the State or Federal level, the mayor said:
I think you have to take whatever action you can at every level. I don't think trying
to maintain law and order is just a matter for any one level of government...
The Los Angeles mayor commented on the Communist manipulated demonstration against
the President on June 23, 1967, in his city. He noted that the "police permit
for the so-called parade was issued to a person who has been identified as a Communist."
The parade was slated as a demonstration against the war in Vietnam, but, as the mayor noted,
the "war in Vietnam just happens to be the current issue that the Communists use
to try to cause citizens to confront policemen and to defy them."
The mayor also noted that the demonstration reached riot or near-riot proportions.
Don Healey, former husband of one of the leaders of the Communist Party in California,
Dorothy Healey, was the identified Communist who had obtained the parade permit for
the riotous demonstration on June 23, 1967, in Los Angeles.
Prior to the clashes with the police on June 23, about 10,000 had turned out to parade
past the hotel where President Johnson was speaking. As the parade reached the hotel,
elements in the front stopped short. Police were ordered to disperse the crowd, as
the parade permit stated that the parade was to continue its movement. Hard-core
agitators at the rear of the crowd got behind the crowd and pressed the people in front
onto the ranks of police. This led to clashes.
The mayor said that the people in America did not understand the Communist theory of
the struggle. He added:
We have a constant series of struggles in this country, all the time conducted, of
course, in most cases by legitimate and sincere people who will never understand that
they have become part of the struggle.
The June 23 demonstrations in Los Angeles were organized and sponsored by the Peace
Action Council. The chairman of this Peace Action Council is Irving Sarnoff, a fifth
amendment witness before the Committee of Un-American Activities on September 5, 1958.
Sarnoff is identified in a committee report as a member of the district council,
Communist Party, Southern California District.
The mayor quoted from a Communist Party Manual on Organization. The manual was
demonstrated to be a good example of where the Communists try to take advantage of a
movement in the country, such as the current civil rights movement.
Mayor Yorty stated:
I think it is rather apparent that over the long years the Negro people did not prove
very susceptible to Communist propaganda and agitation...
But I do think that in the civil rights movement today there is a growing success on the
part of the Communist apparatus to manipulate some of the organizations...
The Los Angeles mayor was asked if he had any recommendation, in addition to antiriot
legislation, which might help solve the problem of rioting and looting.
He indicated that some action in the nature of a reversal of recent U.S. Supreme Court
decisions which have restricted "the ability of law enforcement agencies to do
their job" might be in order.
The chairman, Mr. Willis, and members of the committee expressed their gratitude to
Mayor Yorty for his excellent contribution to the subject under investigation.
TESTIMONY OF ROBERT H. MEHAFFEY
On Tuesday, October 31, 1967, at 10 a.m., the subcommittee of the Committee on Un-American
Activities met in the continuation of hearings into "subversive influences in riots,
looting, and burning."
Mr. Mehaffey was sworn in and stated that he was employed with the House Committee on
Un-American Activities as a research consultant.
Mr. Mehaffey read excerpts from Committee Exhibit No. 3, the staff papers on various
organizations in this country whose activities have included racial agitation.
Prior to Mr. Mehaffey's testimony on the investigation and research carried out by
the committee staff in conjunction with the present inquiry, Mr. Smith, general counsel
of the committee, stated:
Because some of these organizations are relatively new and others are small and little
known, the subcommittee has agreed that staff documents containing basic data about these
organizations and also statements which they or their recognized leaders have made
concerning riots, the use of violence, and related issues should be made a part of the record.
General Counsel Smith stated that the purpose for inserting the staff papers at this
point in the chronicle of testimony "is to make the record clear." Mr. Smith added:
When facts are presented about these organizations and individuals in these hearings,
the general nature of the groups will be known and understood...
Mr. Smith emphasized that the documents to be presented "are not intended to convey
any more than they actually say." He noted that some of the organizations are
openly Communist and subversive. "Others have been cited as Communist and/or
subversive by official agencies." Other organizations, not cited, should not be
interpreted as a committee finding or implication that the organization is Communist
or subversive.
Committee Exhibit No. 1 is headed: "International Communist Statements on Racial
Agitation and Riots in the United States."
Committee Exhibit No. 2 is headed: "FBI Statements on Communist Racial Agitation."
Committee Exhibit No. 3 contains the following organizational reports:
Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA).
W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America (DCA).
Freedomways (magazine).
Progressive Labor Party (PLP).
Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
Workers World Party (WWP).
Youth Against War and Fascism (YAWF).
Spartacist League.
Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM).
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (also known as SNCC, SNICK).
Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC).
Southern Conference Educational Fund, Inc. (SCEF).
Liberator (magazine).
ACT.
Organization for Black Power.
Freedom Now Party.
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
Nation of Islam (NOI).
TESTIMONY OF ARCHIE MOORE (EXCERPTS)
Mr. McNamara. Is it not a fact, Mr. Moore, that in addition to being
the former light heavyweight boxing champion of the world you are also "Mr. San
Diego"?
Mr. Moore. A title that was given me this year for 1968, "Mr.
San Diego."
Mr. Ashbrook. Will you repeat that? The acoustics are very bad.
Mr. McNamara. "Mr. San Diego." It is an annual award presented
to an outstanding citizen of San Diego, or the outstanding citizen, I should say.
Mr. Moore, the instances of rioting, looting, and burning which have taken place in this
country during the past few years have been a matter of deep concern to all Americans,
no matter what their race, religion, or national origin.
Will you tell the committee your reaction to these riots?
Mr. Moore. My reactions to the rioting are that it does not make sense
for people to riot in this sense. It does not make sense to loot and burn and destroy
people's property or do any kind of things that are wrong, morally or physically wrong;
to harm other people, to shoot at people whom you don't even know, and this sort of
malicious disturbance.
Mr. McNamara. As indicated in the chairman's opening statement, Mr.
Moore, and in a committee release of August 2, there is evidence of Communist and other
subversive involvement in these riots. That evidence will be presented for the record
in later hearings of the committee.
Will you state for the committee your belief concerning the Communists' professed
interests in civil rights for Negroes and other minorities? Are they sincere in this?
Can minorities accept them and work with them in their efforts to win full equality?
Mr. Moore. This is only my opinion.
I do not believe the Communist doctrine. I have been to an anti-Communist meeting, at
which Senator Dodd was present, in San Diego to hear a speaker who was also a writer
of a book on communism, Dr. Fred Schwarz.
What Dr. Fred Schwarz relayed to the public at this meeting thoroughly convinced me
that the communistic area was not one I wanted to be in and that they would seek to
destroy a nation the way, mostly, worms destroy fruit, from the inside.
(At this point Mr. Watson entered the hearing room.)
Mr. McNamara. Mr. Moore, a few months ago you wrote a statement
about rioting which you submitted to the San Diego Times, which published it
as a page-one feature. This statement has won national acclaim. It has been
circulated abroad by the USIA, the United States Information Agency.
Will you be good enough at this point to read that statement for the record please?
Mr. Moore. I will.
The devil is at work in America, and it is up to us to drive him out. Snipers and
looters, white or black, deserve no mercy. Those who would profit from their brother's
misfortunes deserve no mercy, and those who would set fellow Americans upon each
other deserve no mercy.
I'll fight the man who calls me an Uncle Tom. I have broken bread with heads
of state, chatted with presidents and traveled all over the world. I was born
in a ghetto, but I refused to stay there. I am a Negro, and proud to be one. I
am also an American, and am proud of that.
The young people of today think they have a hard lot. They should have been around
in the '30s when I was coming up in St. Louis. We had no way to go, but a lot of
us made it. I became light heavyweight champion of the world. A neighbor kid down
the block, Clark Terry, became one of the most famous jazz musicians in the world.
There were doctors, lawyers and chiefs who came out of that ghetto. One of the
top policemen in St. Louis came from our neighborhood.
BAIT FOR SIMPLE-MINDED
We made it because we had a goal, and we were willing to work for it. Don't talk
to me of your "guaranteed national income." Any fool knows that this is
insanity. Do we bring those who worked to get ahead down to the level of those
who never gave a damn? The world owes nobody – black or white – a
living. God helps the man who helps himself!
Now then, don't get the idea that I didn't grow up hating the injustices of this
world. I am a staunch advocate of the Negro revolution for the good of mankind.
I've seen almost unbelievable progress made in the last handful of years. Do we
want to become wild beasts bent only on revenge, looting and killing and laying
America bare? Hate is bait, bait for the simple-minded.
Sure, I despised the whites who cheated me, but I used that feeling to make me
push on. If you listen to the professional rabble-rousers, adhere to this idea
of giving up everything you've gained in order to revenge yourself for the wrongs
that were done to you in the past – then you'd better watch your neighbor,
because he'll be looting your house next. Law and order is the only edge we have.
No man is an island.
Granted, the Negro still has a long way to go to gain a fair shake with the white
man in this country. But believe this: If we resort to lawlessness, the only thing
we can hope for is civil war, untold bloodshed, and the end of our dreams.
We have to have a meeting of qualified men of both races. Mind you, I said qualified
men, not some punk kid, ranting the catch phrases put in his mouth by some paid
hate-monger. There are forces in the world today, forces bent upon the destruction
of America, your America and mine. And while we're on the subject, do you doubt for
a minute that communism, world communism, isn't waiting with bated breath for the
black and white Americans to turn on each other full force? Do you want a chance
for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the land of your birth, or do
you want no chance at all under the Red heel?
NOT ONE SQUARE INCH
There are members of the black community who call for a separate nation within
America. Well, I do not intend to give up one square inch of America. I'm not
going to be told I must live in a restricted area. Isn't that what we've all been
fighting to overcome? And then there is the element that calls for a return to Africa.
For my part, Africa is a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.
If the Irishmen want to go back to the Emerald Isle, let them. If the Slavs want
to return to the Iron Curtain area, OK by me. But I'm not going to go any part
of Africa to live. I'm proud of ancestry, and the country that spawned my forefathers,
but I'm not giving up my country. I fought all my life to give my children what I'm
able to give them today; a chance for development as citizens in the greatest
country in the world.
I do not for a moment think that any truly responsible Negro wants anarchy. I
don't think you'll find intelligent – no, let's rephrase that –
mature Negroes running wild in the streets or sniping at total strangers.
God made the white man as well as the black. True, we haven't acted as brothers
in the past, but we are brothers. If we're to be so many Cains and Abels, that's
our choice. We can't blame God for it.
Something must be done to reach the Negroes and the whites in the ghettos of this
country, and I propose to do something.
'ANY BOY CAN'
As a matter of plain fact, I have been doing something for the past several years. I
have been running a program which I call the ABC – Any Boy Can. By teaching our
youth, black, white, yellow and red, what dignity is, what self respect is, what honor
is, I have been able to obliterate juvenile delinquency in several areas.
I would now expand my programs, change scope. If any boy can, surely any man can. I
want to take teams of qualified people, top men in their fields, to the troubled areas
of our cities. I know that the people who participated in the recent riots, who are
participating and who will participate, are misguided rather than mad.
If some bigot can misguide, then I can guide. I've spent too much of my life building
what I've got to put it to torch just to satisfy some ancient hatred of a man who beat
my grandfather. Those men are long dead. Do we have to choke what could be a
beautiful garden with weeds of hate? I say NO! And I stand ready to start
"Operation Gardener." I invite the respected Negro leaders of our country
to join me.
TESTIMONY OF HERMAN D. LERNER (EXCERPTS)
Mr. Ichord. I have heard many speakers say and have read many times
that the Negro riots are the result of a hundred years of deprivation and discrimination.
You indicated that you partially subscribe to that theory when I believe you said at one
time to a great extent we are victims of the past.
Don't you think this is somewhat oversimplifying the matter; that is, in terms of
relativity, the Negro today, even in the urban ghetto, is much better off politically,
economically, and socially than he was 25 or 50 years ago or for that matter at any time
in the history of the United States?
Mr. Lerner. It is true that it would be an oversimplification to state
that the riots are just the result of generations of disadvantage or to state that we
are victims of the past and nothing more. Apparently there is some misunderstanding
because I said that we were not responsible for the acts of previous generations.
I do not feel that it is valid or constructive to say that the problem we face today
is simply a result of what has happened over the last hundred years, or 350 years.
The problem is what is happening now in this generation. Certainly Negroes are much
better off today than they were a hundred years ago. They are much better off today
than Negroes and whites in other countries, or some whites in this country, for that matter.
I am reminded of a statement attributed to Dick Gregory by Life magazine recently:
At a national conference of Black Power leaders held in Newark after the riots there,
Dick Gregory... summed up in one word the direction of the 1967 riots. If asked what
they wanted, Negroes, he recommended, should reply, "Nothing." Gregory
explained: "How in the hell are you going to make a list of 400 years of them
misusing you?"
But it would be unrealistic and almost meaningless to think of compensation for
the deprivations of past generations. other groups besides Negroes also could make
lists of past deprivations and grievances. What would we do about the white Anglo-Saxon
Protestants in the Appalachia and other descendants of the early settlers whose
standards of living are lower than that of urban Negroes? What would we do about the
families who lost 780,000 in the war which freed the Negroes? What would we do about
southerners who were economic and social victims of that war and its aftermath and who
sometimes even today are regarded as social inferiors by some persons in the North?
A complete social and historical accounting would include a fantastic inventory.
This sort of thinking would lead to impossibly complex, impractical, and meaningless
tradeoffs. We can try to arrive at equitable settlements only within the framework
of living generations.
The point I was making earlier was that Negroes compare themselves with those who
are immediately contiguous with them. People in Watts do not compare themselves
with those in Harlem or in Cuba, but with those in Bel Air or some other community nearby.
This comparison results in a sense of deprivation that brings about feelings of
resentment and aggression.
When I said that we are all victims of the past I meant that the entire community
– all of us, white, blacks, everyone – are victims of our history.
None of us has created the circumstances, the prejudices, the attitudes, and the
values which constrain us, although we can influence them.
Therefore, none of us can be held wholly responsible for the situation. No one
is really guilty. All of us are products of our heritage. I would say that the
best that each generation can be expected to do is to make a determined effort to
provide dignified social treatment and sufficient opportunities for satisfactory
education, employment, and quality of life for everyone and to base compensation
for work on uniformly applied standards of performance rather than group membership,
except where physically and mentally handicapped persons are concerned. And I do
not know of any scientific evidence that Negroes are a physically or mentally
handicapped race.
********************************************
Mr. McNamara. Mr. Lerner, when Mr. Younger was testifying yesterday
and outlining the steps he would take if he wanted to start a riot, he said that he
would not go to a city where no progress had been made but, on the contrary, he would
select one where there had been definite improvement of the lot of the Negro. He did
mention the fact that this might sound surprising to many people.
I have here a quotation from a study of the Los Angeles Watts riot made by some
professors of the University of California Department of Sociology and based on what
they found it would seem that they would agree with Mr. Younger. This is a quotation
from their report:
Our data contradict the common notion that those persons who are the most deprived
will sense the greatest frustrations and express the highest levels of discontent.
Instead, they support the other common contention that those most aggrieved are those
who have begun to overcome traditional barriers but who are impatient with the
yet-existing constraints placed upon them. This point of view is well expressed by Pettee:
(They quote George S. Pettee, The Process of Revolution.)
"The consciousness of repression leads to discontent only when it is felt
unnecessary. This is the reason why a rising class, which is actually becoming
constantly better off objectively, generally rebels most readily, and why the most
severe repression has so often failed to cause a revolution."
Would you care to comment on that finding as it is related to the view of Mr. Younger?
Mr. Lerner. That point of view has been expressed very widely
by social scientists in recent months as one explanation for the fact that, even
though there has been objective improvement in the lot of the Negro, there has been
a tremendous amount of overt, violent aggression.
I think that there is a great deal of soundness to it. It is consistent, by the way,
with a classic study in sociology which was done in a different field but which
expresses a similar principle, a study which was published under the title of
"The American Soldier."
This was large-scale studies of soldiers' attitudes on a wide variety of subjects.
It was observed regularly that the adjustment to military life, feelings about
military service, attitudes toward promotion, and other characteristics seemed to
depend to a significant extent on the comparisons which soldiers made with others.
Their standards, expectations, and aspirations seemed to arise from these comparisons.
For example, Air Corps personnel, whose opportunities for promotion were substantially
greater than those of men in the ground forces, nevertheless were more critical of
promotion policy than the latter. Men in the Air Corps, when comparing themselves
with others, apparently learned to be more highly sensitive to promotions and more
expectant of them than ground forces personnel.
(Similarly, it may be reasoned, in recent years Negroes have begun to expect more,
have been more likely to compare themselves with whites, and therefore have
experienced greater impatience and resentment than before.)
An idea that has been expressed several times during this session, the idea that was
referred to as relative or comparative deprivation and which was brought up during
the discussion with Mr. Ichord, was developed and used by analysts in that study to
explain many of the findings.
However, I think one other point ought to be made about this. To those concerned
with constructive remedies, simply referring to comparative deprivation does not
explain sufficiently the rise in Negro and other urban violence. And this is not
just a question of the impatience of those who have recently begun to taste a
change for the better. Nor is it simply discontent over what may be felt to be
unnecessary repression.
I think other important elements also are involved. I am not completely clear on
what those are, but I think the situation should be looked at very carefully. For
example, I believe it would be highly dangerous to ignore the needs of youth in
slums – of all races. In terms of job opportunities their lot is worsening,
not improving. It would be at least equally dangerous to ignore the divisive
influences of the very small groups of professional agitators and revolutionaries,
a number of whom obscure and aggravate the problems with intensification of race
hatred. And it would be disastrous to overlook the potential insurgency implications
and the coordination with groups in other countries.
We cannot simply dismiss such matters and say that Negroes have more freedom than
before, that they have had a taste of the good life, and that they want more. Some
of this may be true. But we must look at the situation more carefully than this,
both as scientists and as lawmakers.
TESTIMONY OF HON. SAM YORTY (EXCERPTS)
Mr. McNamara. It is my understanding, Mayor, that you had planned
to introduce as an exhibit a publication entitled Day of Protest, Night of
Violence, published by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union of Southern
California report, July 1967), in reference to this general matter we have been
discussing in reference to Los Angeles.
Mayor Yorty. Yes. This is a publication put out after the President
appeared in Los Angeles and where I feel you had what I would call a manipulated mob
that turned into – whether I would want to term that a riot or not, I am not
sure, but it was very close to it.
Mr. McNamara. That was on June 23d of this year?
Mayor Yorty. When the President appeared in the city of Los Angeles.
Of course, some elements of the manipulated riot were certainly present. The police
permit for the so-called parade was issued to a person who has been identified as a
Communist.
The police commission actually did not want to issue the permit because it felt that
we were opening the door to the very sort of thing that happened. The city attorney
ruled that we had to issue the permit; we had no choice.
Mr. McNamara. This permit, Mr. Mayor, was issued for a parade in
front of the hotel, is that right, where the President was speaking?
Mayor Yorty. It was to start in a park. They had authority to come
up to the hotel. I have forgotten whether they were under that permit, permitted to
come in front of the hotel. I believe they were; yes.
Mr. McNamara. The purpose of this parade and demonstration was to
protest the war in Vietnam; is that correct?
Mayor Yorty. That was the stated purpose; yes. But I would say that
again you have to look in the background. The war in Vietnam just happens to be the
current issue that the Communists use to try to cause citizens to confront policemen
and to defy them.
I would say in the real background is the Communist Party's movements to attempt to
break down law and order. Of course, as far as the war in Vietnam goes, that is the
current issue that I think has been the most successful of any that they have been
able to use in the past. They have created a highly emotional situation. They are
far more effective now than they were, say, in 1940. In 1940, the slogans were
about the same. The peace delegations were the same and the same motivation.
But in 1940, of course, they were accusing the allies of conducting an imperialist war,
Britain and France on May Day 1940, Flag Day, when Paris surrendered. But in those
days, of course, Russia was an ally of Hitler. So, the allies were the imperialists,
and Roosevelt was called all kinds of names.
Strangely enough, in California, in that year, a peace delegation was also formed,
as is being formed now, and Roosevelt was denounced in about the same way that
President Johnson is now being denounced by the peace delegation formed.
I notice in my report written in 1940 I said:
The Communists are today finding themselves exposed by their necessary fidelity to the
rapidly changing whims of Comrade Stalin. Czar of all the Communists. In California,
upon finding themselves in this position, and thus unable to continue to work as
Democrats, they were recently forced to arrange for the filing of an independent slate
of Democratic Convention delegates, nominally pledged to Lieutenant Governor Ellis E.
Patterson – a slate which used as its slogan one borrowed directly and totally
from an official Communist May Day pamphlet which said in part:
"We, the working people, must promote the building of a new mass party of the
people – a broad peace party that will fight for us – only through such
an anti-imperialist people's front and party – can we best advance our fight
for JOBS, SECURITY, DEMOCRACY, AND PEACE."
That was in 1940.
I think in 1940 their propaganda and their peace slate would have been more successful
except for the fact that we were not actually fighting. So, today, because we are
fighting in Vietnam, they are more effective.
I was very much surprised the other day to read an account of a statement in the
Strike for Peace, in which this woman said that the demonstrations and the
dissent here in the United States area a second front. Certainly, that is true,
but I am surprised that she would say it.
Mr. McNamara. I might point out, Mayor that the Vietnam Courier,
which is published in Hanoi, has made the same statement, that there are two fronts
against the United States today, one in Vietnam and the other one here in our cities,
and it was referring specifically to the riots.
But going back to this demonstration in Los Angeles on June 23d of this year, is it
your recollection that the person who applied for the permit for that parade was
Don Healey?
Mayor Yorty. That is correct. He is the former husband of one
of the leaders of the Communist Party in California, Dorothy Healey, an openly
admitted Communist over the years.
Don Healey, back in the days of the united fronts, when they infiltrated the Democratic
Party in California, in 1936 and 1940, was the head of Labor's Nonpartisan League.
It was quite a bit later before he was identified as a Communist.
Mr. McNamara. In reference to this publication, would you care to
describe for the committee, Mr. Mayor, its general content?
Mayor Yorty. It is a highly inflammatory account of what happened
on June 23d, attempting, of course, to put the whole blame on the police for the
violence that ensued. I do have this copy with me, Mr. McNamara, if the committee
would like to look at it.
Mr. McNamara. We would like to have it.
(Document marked "Yorty Exhibit No.4" and retained in committee files.)
Mr. McNamara. Can you tell me this, Mayor? This demonstration
was primarily and allegedly a demonstration against the war in Vietnam.
Does this book which you have just turned over to the committee emphasize or
accentuate the racial issue?
Mayor Yorty. I would say, on the whole, it is not so much the racial
issue in that publication. It is an attempt to involve a broader spectrum of the public
against the police.
The police also told me that they felt that as they tried to get the crowd back, to move
them back so they could not carry out the threat of rushing into the hotel where the
President was, and so forth, that they felt that the hard-core manipulators of the
mob probably were at the back holding the mob in toward the police so that the
dupes were more in the front and therefore could say the police used force on them
and they could not get out.
They didn't know that the manipulators were blocking them in so they could not get
out and forcing them against the police officers.
Mr. McNamara. Am I correct in my recollection, Mayor, that what
happened on this occasion was that a permit had been granted for this group –
I believe it was some 10,000 people all told that turned out – to parade past
the hotel where the President was speaking and that when they reached the hotel,
instead of continuing on the march, some elements in the front stopped short, creating
a ganging-up of all these demonstrators in front of the hotel, and then, because
this was in violation of the permit, the police were directed to disperse the crowed?
It was then, as you say, that the police have indicated to you that the hard-core
agitators got behind the crowd so that they could not be dispersed by the police.
This, of course, led to clashes.
Mayor Yorty. Of course, I feel myself from the very inception of
the planning of this demonstration that the Communists involved in it and the
hard-core subversives were hoping to manipulate the mob so as to cause violence.
Of course, I don't have to tell the members of this committee this is their constant
purpose. It is part of what they call the struggle movement.
The best description of struggle movements I have seen in a long time is in the
book called Viet Cong, written by a man named Pike (Douglas Pike, Viet Cong:
The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966) who worked for our Embassy, I think, in Saigon, who made
a great study of the Viet Cong. He points out in the early days of the Communist
struggle movement they would try to get the people even to protest like the location
of a school or the location of a post office or something like that because, to the
Communists, any attempt to organize the people and to take part in any kind of cause
that results in a struggle against authority is useful for their purposes.
I think this is one thing that our people don't understand, when you say that the
Communists are involved in something, say, like the erection of a public building
in a city and it may be where they can make a cry that you are destroying a park or
something like that. To the general public it sounds a bit absurd to say there is
a subversive influence in this, but they don't understand the Communist theory of
the struggle. It is any kind of dispute that the Communists can get in and infiltrate
and make contacts and cause confrontations with the Government where people can be
called corrupt. Anything that discredits authority, they will do.
We have a constant series of struggles in this country, all the time conducted, of
course, in most cases by legitimate and sincere people who will never understand
that they have become part of the struggle.
Mr. McNamara. There was a direct confrontation, am I right, on
June 23 in Los Angeles on the occasion of this demonstration we have just referred to?
Mayor Yorty. Yes; to protect the President and enforce the law,
the police had to resort to some physical force.
Mr. McNamara. Is it not a fact, Mayor, that the demonstration on
that day was sponsored and organized by the Peace Action Council?
Mayor Yorty. That is correct.
Mr. McNamara. Mr. Chairman, I would like to state for the record
that the chairman of the Peace Action Council is Irving Sarnoff, who was a witness
before this committee on September 5, 1958, and who invoked the fifth amendment in
response to various questions concerning Communist Party membership and activity.
The committee in its report on the Southern California District of the Communist Party
identified Sarnoff as a member of the district council, Communist Party, Southern
California District. It also indicated that he had been active in earlier years in
various Communist youth organizations, American Youth for Democracy, the Labor Youth
League, and so forth. He attended conventions, as a delegate, of the Southern
California District of the Communist Party.
Mayor Yorty. I notice, Mr. McNamara, that in my same report –
I gave you a copy of that 1940 report, didn't I?
Mr. McNamara. Yes.
Mayor Yorty. That there is one reference here to the Communists
trying to organize the Negro citizens. It is a quote that I made from a Communist
Party Manual on Organization. This is their own document. It says:
Who are the allies of the American working class? The Open Letter, adopted by
the Central Committee in July, 1933, very clearly answers this question.
Their open letter says:
The main task of the Party in its work among agrarian toilers is, above all, the
organization of the agricultural wage workers, organizing them into the trade unions
and the Party, organizing and leading strikes of the agricultural workers for better
wages and working conditions. Such strikes, in many places, have already played an
important part in the development of the farmers' movement...
The other important ally of the American proletariat is the mass of 13,000,000
Negro people...
The Party can stand at the head of the national revolutionary struggle of the Negro
masses against American imperialism only if it energetically carries through the
following tasks:
"The Party must mobilize the masses for the struggle for equal rights of the
Negroes and for the right of self-determination for the Negroes in the Black Belt...
I think it is a good example of where the Communists try to take advantage of a
movement in their country, and they call it a struggle, infiltrate and then turn
it into a confrontation between the Government and the people in a manner where
they can manipulate it and help the Communist Party.
I think it is rather apparent that over the long years the Negro people did not
prove very susceptible to Communist propaganda and agitation and showed a high
degree of resistance, which certainly most still do. That is obvious from the fine
performance of the Negro soldiers in Vietnam; it is really excellent.
But I do think that in the civil rights movement today there is a growing success
on the part of the Communist apparatus to manipulate some of the organizations. I
think the places visited by some of the so-called leaders of Negro organizations
recently would indicate more success than they have achieved in the past, the
Communists have achieved, in influencing some segments of the Negro people.
Now, Wallace Terry, who is a writer for Time magazine, and a Negro, recently
referred to some of these people, in a statement he made in Los Angeles, as self-appointed
leaders without constituencies, and was very critical of them.
Mr. McNamara. Do you have any comment to make, Mayor, on the manner
in which some of these self-appointed leaders have been built up?
Mayor Yorty. Yes.
It is the feeling of Negro leaders – real Negro leaders like Wallace Terry
– that these highly inflammable agitators have been given more attention than their
following warrants. This has a tendency to build them up.
********************************************
Mr. Watson. May I ask one further question along the same lines that
we were interrogating on a moment ago?
While some of these causative factors have been in existence for many years, I will agree
with you that we have some new ones, such as the migration of these minority groups into
the urban areas. But do you not agree, sir, that there is more effort on the local,
State, and national level today to eliminate some of the economic and sociological causative
factors than there has ever been in the past 100 years of this country?
Mayor Yorty. That statement is not refutable; there is no question
about that.
Mr. Watson. So we would have to say that the rioting or we would
have to conclude, I think reasonably, that the rioting and the other conditions that
we have had during recent years would more nearly be the result of the Communist
agitation in these particular areas, rather than just blaming it on the sociological
and other factors which have been in existence for many years.
Mayor Yorty. Well, I think that the Communist factor is more
effective than it has been before and partly because of the movement of people into
the urban centers and the conditions with which they are confronted there. There
is no question about it that when you have people who are not really part of the
American economy, they have no training for a job that is available to them and
they are simply put on relief, that they are certainly more subject to subversion
than a person who has training and has a job. Now, the kinds of jobs that untrained
people can do in the Los Angeles area are disappearing.
Mr. Watson. They are all over the country, are they not?
Mayor Yorty. So you have an aggravation of the problem. You have
tremendous want ads looking for employees.
Mr. Watson. There is no genuine interest on the part of the Communist
agitator or manipulator of this unfortunate circumstance to improve the lot of these
people, but rather to cause disunity and unrest and a general breakdown in law and order.
Mayor Yorty. The purpose of the subversive is always to exploit any
situation that he can find. That is not only true in our cities; that is true in the
Middle East; that is true every place.
The public has no idea of the success of the international Communist Party in the
world today. There is not a conflict, even in Nigeria, where they have moved in
with a group at Lagos to help them against Biaffra, at the same time they tell the
Biaffrans that we have refused help to them, that they have the situation confused,
both sides hate us: Biaffra because we don't help them and Lagos because they are
getting help by the Russian Communists. They move in every place in this world that
they can create more confusion, the more opportunity for their kind of propaganda
to make Communist incursions.
The Chairman. Thank you again, Mayor Yorty.
Mayor Yorty. I was pleased to be here.
SUBVERSIVE INFLUENCES IN RIOTS, LOOTING, AND BURNING
PART 1
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1967
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON UN-AMERICAN
ACTIVITIES, WASHINGTON, D.C.
PUBLIC HEARINGS
The subcommittee of the Committee on Un-American Activities met, pursuant to call, at
10:00 a.m., in Room 311, Cannon House Office Building, Washington, D.C., Hon. Edwin E.
Willis (chairman) presiding.
(Subcommittee members: Representatives Edwin E. Willis, of Louisiana, chairman; William
M. Tuck, of Virginia; Richard H. Ichord , of Missouri; John M Ashbrook, of Ohio; and
Albert W. Watson, of South Carolina; also John C. Culver, of Iowa, in absence of Mr. Willis.)
Subcommittee members present: Representatives Willis, Tuck, Ichord, Ashbrook, and Watson.
Staff member present: Francis J. McNamara, director; Chester D. Smith, general counsel;
and Herbert Romerstein, investigator.
The Chairman. The committee will come to order.
...
The Chairman. Mr. Mehaffey, please raise your right hand.
Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you give this committee will be truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Mr. Mehaffey. I do.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Chairman, before he starts his testimony I have a
few documents I would like to introduce.
The Chairman. All right.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Chairman, in preparation for these hearings the staff
has prepared a compilation of statements by foreign Communist powers and organizations
on the recent riots in this country. Inasmuch as there are groups in this country which
have been involved in the riots and which take orders from these powers, or openly
adulate them and hold them up as models, it is believed these statements are relevant
to this inquiry.
Is permission granted to make these statements a part of the hearing record as
Committee Exhibit No. 1?
The Chairman. Without objection they will be included.
(Document marked "Committee Exhibit No. 1." See pp. 863-878.)
Mr. Smith. Mr. Chairman, the staff has also compiled statements made
by the FBI and its Director, Mr. J. Edgar Hoover, during the past 6 years on the
subject of Communist activity in the area of racial agitation. Because the FBI has
a network of informants within Communist and other subversive organizations and is in
a better position to know what these organizations are doing than any other agency of
Government, and because these statements are relevant to this inquiry, permission is
requested to make this compilation a part of the record.
The Chairman. That compilation will be mad a part of the record.
(Document marked "Committee Exhibit No. 2." See pp. 878-883.)
Mr. Smith. Mr. Chairman, in connection with Mr. Mehaffey's testimony,
investigation and research which have been carried out by staff in connection with this
inquiry have revealed that certain organizations as such have been directly involved
in riots and racial incidents involving violence; that individual leaders and members
of other organizations have played a role in certain of the riots; and, finally, that
certain organizations and/or their leaders have been engaged in the dissemination of
inflammatory racial propaganda and agitation which, expert testimony has indicated,
may well contribute to the outbreak of riots.
Because some of these organizations are relatively new and others are small and
little known, the subcommittee has agreed that staff documents containing basic data
about these organizations and also statements which they or their recognized leaders
have made concerning riots, the use of violence, and related issues should be made a
part of the record.
The purpose is to make the record clear. When facts are presented about these
organizations and individuals in these hearings, the general nature of the groups
will be known and understood. It is emphasized that these documents are not intended
to convey any more than they actually say. Some of these organizations, as the
documents make clear, are openly Communist and subversive. Others have been cited
as Communist and/or subversive by official agencies. Still others have not. In
such cases, the inclusion of these documents in the record is not to be interpreted
as a committee finding or implication that the organization is Communist or subversive.
Permission is requested at this time to enter these documents, to be presented by
Mr. Mehaffey, into the record.
The Chairman. Permission is granted.
Mr. Smith. It was originally planned that all these exhibits would
be placed in the record before receipt of testimony concerning the Harlem riot of 1964
and racial agitation in New York City prior to and since the riot. A number of
factors prevented this being done. Therefore, it is requested that these exhibits
be placed in the record before the testimony of Detective Hart and immediately
following that of those witnesses who testified as authorities on the subject of rioting.
The Chairman. The request is granted.
TESTIMONY OF ROBERT H. MEHAFFEY
The Chairman. At this point, Mr. Mehaffey, just in a thumbnail
sketch form, can you read highlight excerpts from some of the staff documents referred
to by counsel which you are now submitting for the record?
(Documents marked "Committee Exhibit No. 3." See pp. 884-922.)
Mr. Mehaffey. Yes, sir.
Mr. Smith. Give the reporter your full name.
Mr. Mehaffey. Robert H. Mehaffey.
Mr. Smith. Where are you employed?
Mr. Mehaffey. I am employed with the House Committee on Un-American
Activities as a research consultant.
Mr. Smith. Will you proceed.
Mr. Mehaffey. Thank you.
(At this point, Mr. Mehaffey read excerpts from Committee Exhibit No. 3, the staff
papers on the Communist Party, U.S.A., the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America, and the
Progressive Labor Party. As he finished the excerpts from the document on the
Progressive Labor Party, the following exchange took place:)
The Chairman. Off the record, gentlemen.
There is a quorum call going on. I think I will try to make it.
The committee will stand in recess for 20 minutes.
(Brief recess)
The Chairman. The committee will be in recess until 10 o'clock
tomorrow morning.
(Whereupon, at 4:50 p.m., Tuesday, October 31, 1967, the committee was recessed, to
reconvene at 10:00 a.m., Wednesday, November 1, 1967.)
(Committee Exhibits Nos. 1 through 3 follow:)
COMMITTEE EXHIBIT NO. 1
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST STATEMENTS ON RACIAL AGITATION AND RIOTS IN THE UNITED STATES
Foreign Communist parties and capitals, in statements and commentaries broadcast to all
parts of the world and published in international and national Communist journals, have
not only welcomed and supported the racial riots in this country, but have made it clear
that it is their desire that additional riots take place – a message that will not
be lost on their U.S. followers.
They described the "so-called riots" as justified "insurrections"
and "rebellions," as "revolutionary violence" which is a part of
the class struggle in this country and the worldwide struggle against U.S. imperialism.
They have placed full blame for the riots on the United States Government. They portray
the riots as "massacres" in which Negroes are "murdered" and
numerous "atrocities" are committed against them by the police and military
forces called in to restore order. The riot cities are "battlefields" in
the "limited war" of "genocide" being waged by the U.S. Government
against Negroes in this country.
The statements of Moscow, Peking, Hanoi, and Havana quoted in this exhibit, as well as
similar statements made by these and other Communist capitals not reproduced herein,
have a number of obvious purposes:
1. To discredit the United States everywhere by creating the impression that the Negroes
in this country are so brutally treated and oppressed that, unable to tolerate conditions
any longer, they have risen in rebellion against the Government;
2. To make it clear to Communists in all parts of the world that, in whatever way possible,
they are to publicize, support, and promote individuals and organizations in the U.S.
engaging in racial agitation and the instigation of rioting;
3. To convey the message to U.S. Communists that they themselves should do all they can
to promote the outbreak of riots which, for obvious reasons, are believed to assist in
the accomplishment of Communist objectives both here and abroad;
4. To convince civil rights organizations and activists, and Negroes in general, that
Negroes in this country cannot achieve full equality unless the United States ends the
war in Vietnam, i.e., pulls out of Vietnam and permits the Communists to take over
that country;
5. To the degree that these statements reach Negroes in the United States, they are
clearly designed to arouse hatred, resentment, and enmity against the Government and
create a willingness to riot in the future against an allegedly coldblooded, oppressive
regime that is making a calculated effort to wipe out the Negroes in the United States.
THE SOVIET UNION
MOSCOW RADIO, ENGLISH LANGUAGE COMMENTARY TO SOUTH ASIA ON THE WATTS RIOT, AUGUST 16, 1965:
"The residents of the Negro ghetto [Watts] staged a peaceful campaign against
segregation a few days ago. The racists tried terror to impede them... This small
civil war... has witnessed the local and federal administrations taking the side of
the racists. Tens of thousands of police and national guardsmen, reinforced by regular
troops are taking action against the Negroes.
...
"It is remarkable that the massacre in Los Angeles took place exactly two weeks
after Congress passed a bill on Negro voting... The bullets, bayonets, and teargas
used... is eloquent disproval of the fairy tale about race harmony for which the
present American administration is allegedly fighting... These events have proved
that the struggle for equality cannot be won by demonstrations and signing of psalms
alone."
MOSCOW RADIO ON WATTS RIOT, AUGUST 16, 1965:
"The Los Angeles events have further demolished the fairytale of freedom and
democracy in the United States. For the Negro population... these principles meant
thousands of arrests, hundreds of wounded, and dozens of murdered people... The
population, cut off from the rest of the world, is facing hunger. Police and National
Guardsmen are combing the ruined streets. Acting on the hysterical command of the
City Police Chief Parker, they go on arresting, arresting, arresting... The
bloodstained events in Los Angeles began six days ago with a peaceful demonstration
against racial discrimination. No one stopped the racists when they attacked the
demonstrators. But the full force of the strongest military power of the capitalist
world was brought to bear on the Negroes of Los Angeles when in their despair they
took up arms...
"The word 'ghetto' often occurs in reports from Los Angeles, sometimes in
conjunction with the term 'Warsaw.' Many people are reminded of the events linked
to rising of the population of the Jewish ghetto in the Polish capital occupied by
the Nazis. The Nazis quelled this rising with bestial and methodical cruelty.
...
"the soldier who disperses a Negro demonstration is being morally prepared
for killing people in Vietnam or the Dominican Republic... reports from Los Angeles
stress that the behavior of U.S. soldiers in the city's Negro quarters is reminiscent
of their action in Santo Domingo... It is no accident that Vietnam, Santo Domingo,
and the American city of Los Angeles are joined in one line, the line of the fight
against the common foe, American imperialism."
TASS INTERNATIONAL SERVICE, AUGUST 17, 1965:
"News coming from Los Angeles shows that the actions of the Negro population of
that city have been suppressed by the most ruthless means.
...
"politicians accentuate individual cases of 'violence' by the Negro population...
"Despite the demagogic statements of U.S. officials... the Negroes still remain in
the vise of inequality in all spheres of life... What is happening in fact is that
Negroes from rural areas, particularly from the souther states... pour into the big
cities in search of a better life... But in the city ghettoes they find the
same hopelessness...
...
"The bloody events in Los Angeles, just as last year's events in Harlem, have
a common basis... the absence of radical action by the government to restore the
elementary rights of the Negro population; that is, such measures which are not
in the interests of the monopolies.
"The demands for change in the status of the Negro population in America keep
rising, and where this movement encounters most reactionary forms of official
resistance... it takes violent forms...
MOSCOW RADIO BROADCAST TO U.S. TROOPS IN VIETNAM, MAY 17, 1967:
"The American FBI and the CIA sent a secret letter to the commander of the
American occupation forces in South Vietnam which dealt with the alleged unreliability
of Negro soldiers and proposed measures to strengthen controls over them... In the
United States itself, a new movement against racial discrimination has started...
Negro soldiers serving in the U.S. Army will not be indifferent to this... American
Negro soldiers are fully aware of all this and they themselves are subjected to racial
discrimination...
"...General William Westmoreland... issued an order for Negro soldiers to be
thrown into the most dangerous areas and to use them for cover for the white soldiers.
Because of his orders, the Negroes are sent to parachute troop detachments, which
suffer the greatest losses in the Vietnam jungle...
"Perhaps there are some Negro soldiers listening to this program. If so, do
they ask themselves in whose interests they have to rot in the Vietnam jungles...?
For the interests of those who lynch their fathers and brothers in America... The
Negro soldiers must not betray their ideals and their hopes for freedom and equal
rights. And it is exactly this that the Vietnamese patriots are fighting for. They
are fighting the same Yankee racists against whom today the black ghettos of America
are rising in their just struggle."
MOSCOW RADIO BROADCAST TO SOUTH ASIA, JULY 25, 1967:
"America has never seen the likes of it before and America is... accustomed
to racial disturbances. Real battles are raging in the streets of American cities...
"The United States is actually on the brink of civil war... Earlier it
was the South that was the citadel of racism. Now Negroes are beaten up and killed
in the North too... the full power of the police and the army, tanks and armored
cars, is thrown against the unarmed Negroes.
"American racism is celebrating a gory victory. It is suppressing, killing,
beating up, arresting, and imprisoning...
...
"The Negro movement is growing in scope and vigor... Experience has shown them
that only by fighting can they accomplish anything. In Newark... there was a national
conference by representatives of the Negro movement... The conference decided to set
up a single center to coordinate and unite the movement for Negro rights... Rap
Brown, one of the delegates, said: There are three forms of genocide in the United
States today. There is the genocide toward the Negro children in Mississippi...
Then there is the police genocide... Finally, there is the war in Vietnam...
American imperialist circles are now waging two race wars – one against the
Negroes at home, the other against Asians in Vietnam..."
MOSCOW DOMESTIC RADIO COMMENTARY ON NEWARK RIOT, JULY 25, 1967:
"The long, hot summer of Negro demonstrations... is now at its height... there
was an explosion in Newark. For six days the unarmed Negro population of the city,
rising in despair to the din of police shooting... tried to force the federal authorities
in Washington to listen to them. The response of the authorities was that dozens
of Negroes were killed, hundreds wounded, and thousands arrested... the wave of despair
and anger spread throughout the country... The rising in the Negro ghetto of Newark
spread to New Brunswick, Plainfield, Minneapolis, Birmingham, and finally reached the
country's largest cities, New York and Detroit.
AN ARTICLE IN NEW TIMES (MOSCOW) OF AUGUST 16, 1967, TITLED "REAPING THE
WHIRLWIND," AND WRITTEN BY HARRY FREEMAN, A U.S. CITIZEN AND TASS CORRESPONDENT
IN THE U.S., STATED:
"Last year there were insurrections in Negro ghettos of thirty-eight cities across
the United States...
...
"By cutting funds for the ghettos, they made slum insurrections inevitable, and
they were prepared to use force at home just as they were using it abroad...
...
"As the world knows, there were major ghetto insurrections in Detroit, Michigan,
and in Newark, New Jersey... The guardians of American 'law and order' were ruthless
in suppressing the ghetto insurrections in these two cities.
...
"the entire struggle of the embittered black slum dwellers across the land has
assumed a new character... It bears the heat of dynamite. ...the rules of the
United States... find themselves engaging in a thus far 'limited war' to suppress
black people at home... The battlefields and potential battlefields at home may be
less numerous than in Vietnam, but surely sufficient to cause concern to Washington
strategists as they try to calculate in what cities and in what numbers army troops
may be required to supplement reservists and police.
"No one can gauge precisely the power of the social dynamite stored in
the country's ghettos: no one can surely predict how far the 'limited war' on
the home front will escalate. What is clear is that the country is in the midst
of an internal crisis of major proportions.
...
"young and new leaders in the struggle, such as Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap
Brown of the Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee, clearly welcome the
insurrections..."
COMMUNIST CHINA
On August 12, 1963, there was held in Peking, China, "The Rally of People From
All Walks of Life in peking Opposing U.S. Imperialism and Supporting the American
Negroes' Struggle Against Racial Discrimination."
Four days earlier, on August 8, while receiving a group of visitors from Africa,
Mao Tse-tung, at the request of Robert Williams (who was then visiting Peking with
his wife), made a statement on the theme of the above-mentioned rally.
EXCERPTS FROM MAO TSE-TUNG'S STATEMENT WHICH WAS READ AT THE RALLY FOLLOW:
"An American Negro leader now taking refuge in Cuba, Mr. Robert Williams,
...has twice this year asked me for a statement in support of the American Negroes'
struggle against racial discrimination. On behalf of the Chinese people, I wish
to take this opportunity to express our resolute support for the American Negroes
in their struggle against racial discrimination and for freedom and equal rights.
...
"The American Negroes are awakening and their resistance is growing stronger
and stronger...
...
"A gigantic and vigorous nationwide struggle is going on in nearly every city
and state, and the struggle is mounting. ...the struggle of the American Negroes
is a manifestation of sharpening class struggle and sharpening national struggle
within the United States...
"I call on the workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals, enlightened
elements of the bourgeoisie and other enlightened persons of all colours in the
world, whether white, black, yellow or brown, to unite... and support the American
Negroes in their struggle against racial discrimination. In the final analysis,
national struggle is a matter of class struggle. ...I am firmly convinced that, with
the support of more than 90 per cent of the people of the world, the American Negroes
will be victorious in their just struggle..."
EXCERPTS FROM OTHER SPEECHES AT THE AUGUST 12, 1963, RALLY:
Liu Ning-I, representative of the People's Organizations of China and
president of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions:
"The current struggle of the American Negroes which started in Birmingham is a
great revolutionary struggle... for the liberation of the Negroes. ...it shows that
the American Negroes have discovered a correct path in their struggle, that is, the
path of unity and resolute struggle against the reactionary ruling class... Just
as Robert Williams, a leader of the American Negroes in exile in Cuba, has said,
"The stranglehold of oppression cannot be loosened by a plea to the oppressors'
conscience. Social change in something as fundamental as racist oppression involves
violence. You cannot have progress here without violence and upheaval." Casting
away their illusions about the reactionary ruling class, the broad masses of Negroes
have moved from the courts to the streets and carried on resolute struggles. Here
lies the real hope of the liberation of the American Negroes. Robert Williams
said, "The future belongs to today's oppressed and I shall be witness to that
future in the liberation of the Afro-American...
...
"The struggle of the American Negroes against racial oppression and for freedom
and equal rights is a component part of the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed
peoples and nations the world over. This revolutionary struggle springing up in
the heartland of U.S. imperialism is of very great significance to the common
struggle of the people of the world against imperialism headed by U.S. imperialism,
and gives a powerful support to the fighting peoples of different countries...
...
"In our common struggle we shall for ever give each other encouragement
and support... By relying on their firm unity and resolute struggle... and on
the sympathy and support of the world's people, our American Negro brothers will
certainly win great victory in their just struggle...
"People of the whole world, unite! Stop the U.S. imperialists' fascist crime
of persecuting and suppressing the American Negroes!
"Long live the victory of the American Negroes' struggle against racial oppression!"
********************************************
On August 8, 1964, a rally was held in Peking to celebrate the first anniversary of
Mao Tse-tung's statement in support of the American Negroes.
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES MADE AT THIS RALLY FOLLOW:
Frank Coe:
"Comrade chairman, comrades, and friends: One year ago today Comrade Mao Tse-tung
issued his historic statement calling upon the people of the world to unite and...
support the American Negroes in their struggle... The statement was... widely
circulated among the American Negroes, despite the efforts of the U.S. capitalist
press to suppress it. ...By now almost every national liberation struggle in the
world has declared that the struggle of the Afro-Americans is part of its own cause.
So have all the Marxist-Leninist parties and groups in the world. ...Negro leaders
are reaching out to form links with the national liberation struggles throughout
the world...
...
"Afro-Americans are beginning to talk more and more about armed self-defense,
...about guerrilla warfare, and civil war. Why not armed self-defense?...
"The U.S. Marxist-Leninists advocate armed self-defense; black nationalist
organizations advocate it and are gaining ground. Some of the leaders liken the
stand of nonviolence to that of Khrushchev, and the stand of the more militant leaders
to that of Mao Tse-tung. Negro intellectuals are saying that the tactics of nonviolence
are not sufficient... These local leaders are tending to the view that violence must
be met with violence (applause).
...
"These 20 million people, battering down the walls of U.S. imperialism from within,
are a great support for every people's struggle in the world...
"Speaking for the people of the United States of America, whether white,
black, red, brown, or yellow, I wish to say to this rally in Peking: We the
American people oppose and condemn the aggression of the U.S. Government against
the DRV. ...support the North Vietnamese people... We want the Vietnamese people
to win and we are sure they will...
"Soon there will be no (Negro people?) willing to serve as cannonfodder...
"We, the American people of all colors, are grateful for the support the Chinese
people have given to the struggle of our Afro-American people...
"We thank the people of Peking for organizing this splendid rally of support
and for your confidence in our victory (applause). Long live the heroic American
Negro people! Victory for their struggle (applause)!
"Finally, on behalf of all the American people, I wish to thank Chairman Mao
Tse-tung for the statement he issued one year ago declaring the support of the Chinese
people for the struggle of the American Negro people and calling on all of the people
of the world to do likewise..."
********************************************
PEKING RADIO COMMENT ON WATTS RIOT, AUGUST 15, 1965:
"Leaflets distributed by the demonstrating Negroes... linked up their struggle...
with the battle fought by the other oppressed peoples of the world against U.S. aggression.
One leaflet reads in part: 'After years of frame-ups, brutalities, and intimidations, the
black people are throwing off control of the same rulers who are making war on people
throughout the world – in Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, and the Congo.'"
PEKING RADIO COMMENT (ENGLISH LANGUAGE) ON WATTS RIOT, AUGUST 16, 1965:
"The struggle of the Negro people in Los Angeles and other places in the United
States is a veritable revolutionary movement, and, like the revolutionary movement
of other peoples, the struggle of the American Negroes will be crowned with victory,
says the PEOPLE'S DAILY commentator today.
...
"The Chinese people firmly support the just struggle of their American Negro
brothers and strongly protest against the atrocities of the U.S. ruling circles
against them. ...On the surface the Negro question is a national question. But as
Chairman Mao Tse-tung said: 'In the final analysis, a national struggle is a
question of class struggle.' ...Class contradictions between the Negroes and the
monopolist groups are irreconciliable [sic]...
...
"One new characteristic of the Los Angeles struggle is that the Negro masses
link their struggle against the domestic reactionary policies of the Johnson
Administration with their struggle against its policy of aggression abroad...
...
"The American Negroes know full well that they are not alone in their struggle.
The anti-U.S. forces throughout the world are on their side and fight shoulder to
shoulder with them..."
PEOPLE'S DAILY, EDITORIAL ON THE WATTS RIOT, AUGUST 19, 1965:
"'more and more American Negroes are coming to realize... that they must meet
counterrevolutionary violence with revolutionary violence'...
"The editorial points out that the American Negroes' struggle against racial
discrimination is an inseparable part of the worldwide revolutionary struggle of
the oppressed nations and people...
"The editorial says that 'the 20 million American Negroes... have become an
important revolutionary force in the United States and cannot be over looked...'
...
"It notes that the American Negroes have, since the beginning of this year,
taken an active part in the widespread struggle in the United States against the
U.S. Government aggression in Vietnam. 'This important development in the Negro
movement in the United States marks a great advance in the revolutionary level of
the American Negroes' struggle for emancipation.'
"Two years ago Chairman Mao Tse-tung said in his statement in support of the
just struggle of the American Negroes: 'The fascist atrocities committed by the
U.S. imperialists against the Negro people have laid bare the true nature of the
so-called democracy and freedom in the United States and revealed the inner link
between the reactionary policies pursued by the U.S. government at home and its
policies of aggression abroad.'
...
"'...The African people and the other peace- and justice-loving people of the
world must join the Negroes... in resolutely carrying through to the end the struggle
against the U.S. imperialist policies... The bond which links the American Negroes
with the revolutionary people in other countries in their common struggle will be
strengthened as the Negro movement grows in the United States.'"
********************************************
On August 8, 196, a rally was held in Peking to mark the third anniversary of Mao
Tse-tung's 1963 message in support of American Negroes. The rally was reportedly
attended by Premier Chou En-lai and Vice-Premier Chen Yi and 10,000 Chinese people.
A message to Rober Williams from Robert Epton, vice president of the Progressive
Labor Party, was read at the rally. Williams was one of the rally speakers, as was
another American, Sidney Rittenberg.
EXCERPTS AND SUMMARIES FROM RALLY SPEECHES AND STATEMENTS, AS PUBLISHED IN THE
PEKING REVIEW, AUGUST 12, 1966, FOLLOW:
William Epton's message:
"'The black people in the U.S.A. are in the midst of their struggle to achieve
their self-determination and liberation. We, at the same time, offer our resolute
support to the heroic Vietnamese people who are waging a militant armed struggle against
U.S. imperialism to win their self-determination. We salute the Chinese people for
giving leadership to the world revolutionary movement against U.S. imperialism, and
revisionism led by the Soviet Union. We join hands with you on this occasion with
the knowledge that the world revolutionary movement will be victorious over U.S.
imperialism and its revisionist collaborators.'"
********************************************
Kuo Mo-Jo speech:
"The Chinese people hail the heroic struggle of their American Negro brothers!
...
"The facts have proved that the exploited and oppressed American Negro people
are the most staunch and most reliable revolutionary force in the United States.
...
"Chairman Mao has said that the fascist atrocities of the U.S. imperialists
against the Negro people have exposed the true nature of the so-called American
democracy... Like all reactionary ruling classes in history, the reactionary U.S.
ruling clique has all along relied on violence to maintain its rule. Therefore,
it is inevitable that the American Negro people should use violence to resist the
reactionary U.S. ruling clique...
...
"By striking hard at U.S. imperialism in the battlefield, the Vietnamese people
have rendered powerful support to the struggle of the American Negro people. Similarly,
by fighting against U.S. imperialist discrimination, the American Negro people have in
turn given important support to the Vietnamese people's struggle against U.S.
aggression... In the past three years, our American Negro brothers have firmly
opposed U.S. imperialism's expansion of its war of aggression against Vietnam by
refusing to enlist and burning draft cards... They have done a good thing, and
the right thing too! We are deeply convinced that... our American Negro brothers...
will surely rise in still more vigorous action and push their struggle against
tyranny to a new high in order to support the Vietnamese people in their struggle
against U.S. aggression... In the struggle... against U.S. imperialism, the Soviet
revisionist leading clique is playing the role of number one accomplice to U.S.
imperialism... It has never supported our American Negro brothers... it absurdly
describes the correct stand of supporting the national-liberation movement as
'substituting a racial point of view for the point of view of class struggle.'...
and consequently gives support to U.S. imperialism's reactionary internal policy.
Not only does it serve as an accomplice of U.S. imperialism in the latter's expansion
of the war of aggression, but it has at the same time placed itself in the shameful
position of helping U.S. imperialism attack the American people and the American Negroes.
...
"In the excellent revolutionary situation... it is our primary task at present
to form the broadest and most genuine international united front against U.S.
imperialism. This front includes the broad masses of the American Negroes and
the American people...
...
"The Chinese people are friendly to the American people. ...the most reliable
friend of the American Negro people. In your struggle, you will always receive
infinite sympathy and active support from the Chinese people..."
STATEMENT SUPPORTING AMERICAN NEGRO PEOPLE'S STRUGGLE ADOPTED AT THE RALLY:
"The American Negroes' struggle has begun to take the road of using revolutionary
violence against counter-revolutionary violence... The American Negroes' struggle
has been ever more closely linked up with the American people's movement against
the U.S. imperialist war of aggression against Vietnam. This constitutes a
powerful support to the Vietnamese people's struggle against U.S. aggression...
as well as to the anti-U.S. struggle of the people of the whole world.
...
"The American Negroes' struggle is by no means isolated. They will for ever
receive boundless sympathy and resolute support from the 700 million Chinese people.
********************************************
PEKING REVIEW, AUGUST 4, 1967, COMMENT ON DETROIT RIOT:
"Beginning early July 23, several thousand Afro-Americans in Detroit, the fifth
largest city in the United States, mounted a stirring armed struggle against fascist
police violence...
...
"Inspired by the militant heroism of Detroit's Afro-Americans... Black Americans
in other cities and states also rose in armed rebellion...
...
"The powerful, surging Afro-American armed struggle against racial oppression, is
of great significance... to the struggle of the people of the world against U.S.
imperialism. The raging flames of the Afro-American struggle were ignited at a time
when U.S. imperialism faces an impasse in its war of aggression against Vietnam and
when the struggle of the people the world over against U.S. imperialism and its
running dogs is pressing ahead powerfully. Fighting Afro-Americans are dealing telling
blows at U.S. imperialism from within the United States, smashing down the reactionary
power structure's so-called 'law and order' and paralysing and causing confusion in
more than a dozen cities. Because this rising armed struggle against oppression is
battering fiercely at U.S. imperialism's rule at home, it will inevitably weaken U.S.
imperialist aggression abroad and aggravate its already insurmountable difficulties.
The struggle of the Afro-American masses will not only give tremendous impetus to the
revolutionary struggle of the entire American people; it will provide powerful support
for the struggles of the people of the world against U.S. imperialism, especially for
the Vietnamese people in their war of resistance against U.S. aggression and for
national salvation."
********************************************
CUBA
********************************************
HAVANA RADIO, AUGUST 25, 1967, BROADCAST, TEXT OF RESOLUTION ADOPTED AT THE LASO CONFERENCE,
THE RESOLUTION READ IN PART:
"In the new phase of the struggle of the Negro people symbolized in the rebellions in
the ghettos by the citizens of Watts, Selma, Chicago, Harlem, and more recently Newark
and Detroit, leaders have arisen who know how to interpret correctly the anxieties,
inclinations, and aspirations of the Afro-American people; ...the relations of the
U.S. Negro movement with the national liberation struggles in Asia, Africa, and Latin
America have been raised to a higher level... during the events... in Newark and Detroit,
the Negro masses have responded... practically converting these cities into battlefields...
the struggle of the U.S. Negro is part of the struggle of all the U.S. people against
the U.S. imperialist government and it tied... to the struggle of all the peoples of
Africa, Asia, and Latin America against Yankee imperialism, which, in fact, establishes
the necessity and the advisability of forming a militant solidarity movement between
the Afro-American people and the peoples of the three continents:
"The peoples of... the First LASO Conference, fully support the struggle of the
U.S. Negro... and urge them to answer the racist violence of the U.S.... with stepped-up
direct revolutionary action...
"They resolve, further, to proclaim 10 August a day of solidarity with the Negro
people of the United States, in memory of the rebellious events begun by the U.S.
Negro population in the streets of Watts on 18 August 1965, which marked a change in
the strategy of the struggle of the U.S. Negro, abandoning peaceful forms of protest
in favor of violent, armed demonstrations against imperialist oppression and
discrimination."
NORTH VIETNAM
VIETNAM COURIER, OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF COMMUNIST GOVERNMENT OF NORTH VIETNAM,
ARTICLE ENTITLED "SECOND FRONT AGAINST U.S. IMPERIALISM," ISSUE OF AUGUST 29, 1966:
"The first front against U.S. imperialism is Vietnam.
"The second front lies in the United States.
"There live in the U.S. 20 million Afro-Americans. They are oppressed, exploited
and treated with contempt like slaves...
...
"The Vietnamese people's fight against the U.S. aggressors, for national salvation,
has brought a great influence to bear upon the Afro-Americans who have realized that they
have the same enemy as the Vietnamese people – U.S. imperialism – and that
to achieve freedom and equality they must oppose revolutionary violence to
counter-revolutionary violence, just as the Vietnamese are doing. No wonder they
sympathize with the Vietnamese people and from non-violence they have begun using
violence for self-defense...
...
"Another important thing is that the Afro-Americans continue their struggle against
racial discrimination with that against the U.S. war in Vietnam.
...
"These two combined movements of the Afro-Americans and white Americans are
a tremendous force which is the second front against U.S. imperialism...
"Attacked on both fronts, the U.S. imperialists will certainly be defeated
and victory will surely belong to the American and Vietnamese peoples."
COMMITTEE EXHIBIT NO. 2
FBI STATEMENTS ON COMMUNIST RACIAL AGITATION
J. EDGAR HOOVER – HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE TESTIMONY, MARCH 6, 1961:
FBI ANNUAL REPORT FOR 1963:
"Throughout the 1963 fiscal year the Communist Party, USA, circulated tons of
propaganda on the race issue. This pictured the Party as the great champion of Negroes
and other minority groups. Actually, the Party is not in the least bit concerned
with helping the Negro or any other minority – it merely hopes to ensnare those
persons who are naive enough to accept the communists for their claims instead of
their deeds."
********************************************
FBI ANNUAL REPORT FOR 1964:
"The Party waged a constant effort in the fiscal year 1964 to exploit the civil
rights issue. During the August 28, 1963, March on Washington, communists and Party
sympathizers sought to involve themselves in every aspect of this demonstration.
Although attempting to conceal their communist connections, approximately 200 Party
members actually participated in the March.
"Other recent racial demonstrations have attracted communists, usually in a hidden
role, and the legitimate leaders of these activities have been hard pressed to keep them
out and minimize their influence.
"The FBI does not investigate the legitimate activities of civil rights groups, but
from an intelligence standpoint it is concerned with determining the extent of possible
communist infiltration of these organizations."
********************************************
FBI ANNUAL REPORT FOR 1965:
"The communists have been much encouraged by the current wave of social unrest
in the United States. They view this situation as the development of a climate
favorable to their operations and are constantly probing to exploit areas of discord.
It is a rare civil rights activity, whether it be a voter's registration drive, a
demonstration, march or picket, that does not attract communists to some degree.
...
"In general, legitimate civil rights organizations have been successful in
excluding communists, although a few have received covert counseling from them and
have even accepted them as members. The Communist Party is not satisfied with this
situation and is continually striving to infiltrate the civil rights movement at
every level."
********************************************
FBI ANNUAL REPORT FOR 1966:
"Exploitation of racial unrest in the United States continues to be a major
program of the Communists. During the year, the Party issued numerous directives
through its National Negro Commission instructing members to participate in the
civil rights movement and to be alert to the provocation of militant action among
Negroes."
********************************************
FBI ANNUAL REPORT FOR 1967:
"Merging the struggle for civil rights with the Vietnam war protest movement
occupied much of the Communist Party's efforts during the fiscal year. Speaking
before the National Committee, CPUSA, in December, 1966, National Chairman
Henry Winston suggested that white backlash was a weapon of the monopolists
and the ultraright to conceal their drive against the rights of Negroes. West Coast
Party leader Roscoe Proctor, writing in the March, 1967, issue of
Political Affairs, embraced civil rights extremists by calling for
Marxist-Leninists to provide more 'flesh and bone' to the inflammatory slogans
of Black Power groups. He called for Party programs and guidelines around which
the black masses could be mobilized in day-to-day struggles to improve their
conditions of life."
COMMITTEE EXHIBIT NO. 3
[Organizational Background Material]
COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
23 WEST 26th STREET, NEW YORK, N.Y.
Origin: September 1919 at convention in Chicago.
Purpose: As the arm of the Soviet Union inside the United States,
it is committed to the overthrow of our democratic institutions.
Organization: 12,000 members.
Key Leaders: Gus Hall – general secretary
Henry Winston – national chairman
80-member national committee
The current chairman of the Negro Commission is Claude Lightfoot, formerly of Chicago,
now New York.
Publications: (Circulation)
The Worker – semiweekly East Coast Communist newspaper – 14,718
People's World – weekly West Coast Communist newspaper – 9,628
Political Affairs – monthly theoretical journal – 4,550
Freedomways – quarterly Marxist Negro review – 7,000
Labor Today – bimonthly trade union magazine – 2,380
Jewish Currents – monthly Jewish magazine – 4,300
American Dialog – bimonthly Communist cultural magazine.
Statements:
On October 22, 1967, the Communist Party's official newspaper, The Worker,
reported that during the past week "an extraordinary meeting of over 80 leading
Communists" called by the party's Negro Affairs Commission had endorsed a
statement supporting Negro violence. The meeting, in effect, approved a new Communist
Party line regarding Negroes and rioting which included the following statement:
"We as Marxists have always affirmed that oppressed people have the right to
forcibly overthrow an oppressive regime when the channels for democratic change are
closed to them. This right is affirmed in the Declaration of Independence. Therefore
there can be no question of the right of black people in the U.S. to use violence to
achieve change."
It appears that the main reason for the adoption of this statement was the fact that
the official softer line the party had been following on the Negro question during
recent years had placed it in a disadvantageous position, in competition with other
Communist parties, from the viewpoint of influencing and recruiting members from black
nationalist and ultramilitant civil rights organizations and from the violence- and
riot-prone minority Negro element.
The party's former declared position of supporting full integration and rejecting
violence had, in effect, placed it in the position of rejecting, rebuking, and
contradicting these organizations and elements which had the greatest potential for
furthering the Communist aim of disrupting and weakening the United States. If the
Communist Party were to capitalize on the riots, it had no choice but to reverse its
official position on the question of "civil rights."
From its earliest years until 1959 the Communist Party had propounded the
"Black Belt" theory regarding American Negroes. It was Stalin's position
that Negroes were a people apart from whites in this country and that a separate
republic should be set up for them in the South.
This position proved a serious hindrance to the party's recruiting and propaganda
activities among Negroes, who rightly considered themselves as American as any white
man and had no desire to secede from the United States.
Repeated appeals to Moscow by U.S. party leaders for a change in the line went
unheeded. Stalin refused to let the party change its position on this subject.
When Khrushchev took power some years after Stalin's death, however, and instituted
his de-Stalinization program, a change was effected.
Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders undoubtedly perceived that a Communist Party
claim that it believed in complete integration and full equality for Negroes in the
United States would provide it with a much better recruiting potential than its
former segregationist line had. Moreover, Khrushchev, unlike Stalin, could approve
a reversal in the U.S. Communist Party line without admitting a past error on his
part. Finally, in rejecting the "Black Belt" position, Khrushchev would
be finding a Stalinist policy in error and would thus be furthering his aim of
discrediting Stalin with U.S. Communists.
Therefore, in 1959, at its 17th National Convention, the Communist Party adopted a
new line on the Negro question. It abandoned its advocacy of a separate Negro
republic. It proclaimed that it stood for full integration and civil rights for Negroes.
Pursuing its new line, the Communist Party became increasingly active in the civil
rights movement (see Committee Exhibit No. 2 statements of J. Edgar Hoover on this
subject). Despite the outbreak of riots in 1964 and 1965, the party held to its
integration and nonviolence position. At its 18th National Convention in June 1966,
it adopted a resolution on "The Negro Question" which proclaimed that the
Communist Party disassociated itself from those "in and outside of the Negro
liberation movement, who maintain that only through violence can progress be made
in the achievement of equal rights, or who call for acts of terrorism."
Despite this proclaimed repudiation of violence, the party gave backhanded support
to the riots once they had started. It justified the rioters' use of violence by
claiming that they were merely reacting to "police brutality" and that
they had the right to take up arms in "self-defense." The party completely
absolved the rioters of blame for their violence and placed full responsibility for
the rioting, looting, and burning on the local, State, and the Federal Governments.
During recent years, Communist Party statements have more and more strongly –
though indirectly – supported the radical revolutionary tactics of the black
militants. Wary of openly advocating violence by Communists because of the Smith
Act prosecutions of the last decade, the party had used various devices for
communicating its support of rioting. One of these is "historic parallel"
– the device of quoting an historical figure on the necessity of violence and
equating the events of his time with conditions today. The recently published book
by Herbert Aptheker, the party's leading theoretician, utilizes this device. In
reviewing this book, A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United
States, the Communist magazine, Freedomways, praised Aptheker for having
"brilliantly placed the necessary dynamite charges and, wisely, let those who
made the history light the fuses."
The 1967 riots apparently convinced the Communist Party that, in order to capitalize
on them fully, it would have to reject the official repudiation of violence it had
reiterated as recently as its 1966 convention. Its October 1967 statement was careful
not to say that the Communist Party advocated violence but only expressed its
Marxist belief that "oppressed people have the right to forcibly overthrow an
oppressive regime..."
The following statements by the Communist Party and its leaders exemplify the recent
development of the party line on racial matters and demonstrate how in the past few
years the Communist Party has more and more openly supported militancy and violence.
GUS HALL, THE WORKER, MAY 1, 1960, P. 12:
"To all Members and Friends of the Communist Party. Comrades:
...
"This situation demands from all of us greater initiative, activity and leadership.
We must be first... in the sitdowns, on the picketlines, in the peace marches and
meetings and in election struggle."
JAMES E. JACKSON, WORLD MARXIST REVIEW, SEPTEMBER 1963, PP. 35, 36:
"the freedom struggle of the Negro people is a specialized part of the general
struggle of the working class against deprivation and class exploitation and oppression.
...
"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
of 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..."
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 requisite to victory in this – fight...'"
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 forces –
is 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... the Negro people must
win their full equality...
"This does not mean that black will go it alone and white will go it alone..."
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.
"WE CHARGE the stage was set for this mailed fist policy by... your 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 imperialism with the support and solidarity 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)
1853 1/2 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." (Testimony of J. Edgar Hoover, House Appropriations
Subcommittee, Mar. 4, 1965.)
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 – 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;
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: Bettina 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
Insurgent – bimonthly national magazine of DCA
Dimensions – national theoretical journal of DCA
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;
(4) has supported antiwar demonstrations sponsored by other Communist and
"New Left" groups;
(5) sponsored a national youth conference at Washington, D.C., August 27-28, 1966,
for "jobs, peace and freedom";
(6) leaders visited Soviet Union and North Vietnam;
(7) published propaganda praising socialism (communism); supporting North Vietnam and
foreign policy of the Soviet Union; inciting hatred for all uniformed authority and
instilling a suspicion of the motives of the United States Government in both foreign
and domestic policies.
Statements:
OPENLY "SOCIALIST" (COMMUNIST)
SPUR, AUGUST 25, 1965, P. 3
"Our goal then, to fight now to eliminate the most blatant forms of brutality and
poverty as part of a long struggle for an America free of exploitation – a
Socialist America."
DIMENSIONS, SPRING 1966, PP. IV, 4, 20:
"Radical social change, socialism, is believed to be the necessary culmination of
the struggles of working people to overcome the myriad problems which are daily produced
by a system organized to their disadvantage..."
"When racism has been decisively defeated in America, the logical next step will
be the establishment of a party of the workers, black and white, North and South, which
can bring a Socialist America."
"The American movement awaits its Brecht, its Sequieros. The time is ripening..."
THE WORKER, JUNE 25, 1967, P. 3:
"'We are a socialist organization...,' one [DCA] member said.
"Another member said, 'We have not been socialist enough... Our Marxist
education has declined.'"
ON VIOLENCE
DCA FLYER "POVERTY, FRUSTRATION, DEATH":
"We are not in favor of violence; we do not condone what is happening in Watts,
but... the condition in Watts is our fault..."
ON THE POLICE
SPUR, AUGUST 25, 1965, P. 1:
"the Watts district... was the battle ground for a class war... When they battled
the Los Angeles police department, they took on one of the most brutal instruments of
racism."
SPUR, OCTOBER 1966, P. 5:
"Several DuBois clubs have taken the lead in the fight against police brutality
in their communities (Watts, Philadelphia, Chicago)... We strongly support the right
of people to protect and defend themselves from police brutality..."
THE WORKER, JUNE 25, 1967, P. 3:
"'There is a campaign under way... to use police brutality against those who
oppose the war in Vietnam...'"
"DuBois clubs have themselves been the victims repeatedly of police brutality..."
ON CIVIL RIGHTS
THE WORKER, SEPTEMBER 10, 1967, P. 9:
"the 'membership of the DuBois Club is committed to building an interracial
movement against the war, racism and poverty... we must prove it is possible to find
common ground between Negro youth and white youth.'"
ON RIOTS
JARVIS TYNER, THE WORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 1967, P. 5:
President "Johnson's answer to the rebellions in America's cities was genocide..."
PEOPLE'S WORLD, SEPTEMBER 23, 1967, P. 9:
DCA's third annual convention resolution on black liberation declares the DuBois Club will:
...
"move in support of the Negro community at times of intensified attack, such as
Newark and Detroit, to mobilize protest against the genocidal practices of the police."
"THE FIRE THIS TIME," A PUBLICATION OF THE LOS ANGELES DCA, WAS DEVOTED TO
THE WATTS RIOTS. THE FOLLOWING QUOTATIONS ARE FROM THAT PAMPHLET:
"'...Does one need to be Negro to be thrilled about the South Los Angeles uprising?'
DR. HERBERT APTHEKER, People's World Testimonial Banquet, Statler-Hilton Hotel in Los
Angeles, October 12, 1965"
"Some phrases have been around for a long time, like 'police brutality.' The way
to get rid of these words is to get rid of brutal police. 'Poverty', 'Oppression',
'White Power Structure', are all cliches, but are facts of life for millions of
Americans today."
"we maintain that what occurred in Los Angeles last August was not a 'riot',
but a spontaneous insurgence of thousands of angry, oppressed people..."
"Thus it is left to us, the conscious people, the victims, and the potential
victims, to combine our bodies and minds in order to stop this hideous machine from
crushing us all...
"If we, the people, are to enforce democracy we must take heed of the words of
that great freedom fighter, Frederick Douglas, 'The whole history of human progress
shows that all concessions have been won in earnest struggle. If there is no struggle,
there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it
never will.'
"The Negro revolt will eventually do more to bring true democracy to these
United States than any other single factor in the life of the nation. When the
masses of whites realize this and further recognize that the Negro revolt is expressing
the needs and demands of all working people, then we can combine and
accomplish these demands."
FREEDOMWAYS
799 BROADWAY, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10003
Origin: Freedomways Associates, Inc., publisher, incorporated
February 28, 1961. First issue appeared spring 1961.
Purpose: Quarterly review of the "Negro freedom movement"
by which the Communist Party hopes "to indoctrinate more Negroes with Marxist
dogma." (J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Annual Report for 1961, p. 26)
Organization: Freedomways Associates, Inc., was incorporated by:
Henry O. Mayfield
Dorothy Burnham, wife of Hyman Lumer, a member of the National Committee of the CPUSA
and associate editor of the party's theoretical journal Political Affairs
Cyril Philip, a known Communist
Original Editorial Board: Shirley Graham DuBois – identified
as Communist Party member by Louis Budenz
W. Alphaeus Hunton – identified as Communist Part member by Louis Budenz
Esther Jackson – wife of the Communist Party leader James E. Jackson
A few other known Communist Party members and leaders who have served on Freedomways
editorial board are George B. Murphy, Jr., J. H. O'Dell, and Augusta Strong, wife of
The Worker columnist and known Communist, Joseph North.
Articles have been contributed to Freedomways by well-known Communists as
William Patterson, Ben Davis, W.E.B. DuBois, James E. Jackson, Herbert Aptheker,
Carl Bloice, Claudia Jones, John Pittman, Anne Braden, and Paul Robeson.
Circulation: Total copies printed: 7,000
STATEMENTS WHICH EXEMPLIFY FREEDOMWAYS' BASIC POSITION ON SOCIAL MATTERS:
A review of Herbert Aptheker's book, A Documentary History of the Negro People in
the United States, praised the veteran Communist theoretician as having
"brilliantly placed the necessary dynamite charges and, wisely, let those who
made the history light the fuses."
It states that Henry Highland Garnett's Call to Rebellion is "a
masterpiece of revolutionary exhortation." "The bitter-sweet deeds of
Nat Turner... and other men of revolution" are seen as examples of Negro
builders of history who had "the will to resist... and the willingness to
engage in creative and often violent social struggle..." [Emphasis added.]
(Freedomways, Winter 1963, pp. 109, 110)
"The struggle for freedom in our country today is a struggle against a native
totalitarianism... That is why our Freedom Movement cannot afford to fail in meeting
the challenges which confront us today." (J. H. O'Dell, "A Special Variety
of Colonialism," Freedomways, Winter 1967, p. 15)
The riot which erupted in Newark, N.J., on July 12, 1967, was seen by Freedomways
as "the scene of yet another massacre of the poorest of black Americans... a
deadly pogrom, an urban lynching designed to terrorize and cover the slum-dwellers...
...
"Newark and Plainfield, New Jersey, point to the need for united action... to
put an end to the police terror that reigns over the Negro communities from one end
of the country to the other. ...there must be launched a movement to stop police
brutality and to put an end to the use of National Guardsmen... Among other things,
such an anti-police brutality program should call for: placing the Negro community out
of bounds to white police and uniformed National Guardsmen..."
Detroit was seen as "a class confrontation" in what Freedomways
called "the spreading battles for freedom." "The flames of Detroit
should serve to light up a great truth: It's that time, America. Grant Negroes freedom
and equality or invite catastrophe!" (Freedomways, Vol. 7, No. 3,
Summer 1967, editorial: 197-198)
In the same 1967 issue (p. 279) Freedomways called the following statement a
"PROPHECY":
"Watts means that the time for stalling and demagogic promises and goodwill
platitudes has run out. It has come down to this: either wipe out the conditions that
produce the slums or the slums will wipe out the cities." (NEGROES IN BATTLE:
FROM LITTLE ROCK TO WATTS. By James E. Jackson – Publishers New Press, 23
West 26th Street, New York City.)
PROGRESSIVE LABOR PARTY
132 NASSAU STREET, ROOM 622, NEW YORK, N.Y.
Origin: January 1962. (originally established as the Progressive
Labor Movement, which changed its name to Progressive Labor Party in April 1965)
The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) grew out of a faction within the Communist Party,
U.S.A. (CPUSA). The PLP was established by Milton Rosen and Mortimer Scheer, who were
expelled from positions of leadership in the orthodox Communist Party because of
disagreement with CPUSA's strategy and tactics. The CPUSA has described Rosen and
Scheer as organizers of active opposition to CPUSA strategies within the party ever
since the party's 17th National Convention held in December 1959. Condemnation by the
CPUSA National Committee and los of party offices in August 1961 failed to deter Rosen
from "secret factional activities" which included conducting meetings and
recruiting members to the faction from various parts of the country, according to the
CPUSA. The CPUSA claimed that the Rosen group had admitted at a party hearing to
building a faction meeting on December 2-3, 1961. The expulsion of Rosen and three
other party members was announced in The Worker of January 7, 1962; the
ousting of Scheer and five others in the Buffalo area had been reported in
The Worker of December 31, 1961.
Purpose: The PLP is an avowedly revolutionary Communist organization
which aggressively and militantly strives to destroy the democratic form of government
in the United States and replace it with a socialist one based on the principles of
Marxism-Leninism. The PLP supports the ultrarevolutionary Chinese and Albanian Communists
in their dispute with the less militant Russian Communists. This organization has
publicly encouraged the use of force and violence as a means of attaining the
Communist totalitarian goals. PLP literature is replete with statements supporting
the violent revolutionary overthrow of the U.S. Government.
Organization: 200-300 members. (PLP claimed a membership of 1,500 in 1965.)
Directed by a 20-member national committee.
Composed of various national commissions, including one called Black Liberation.
Offices and mailing addresses: (national headquarters listed above)
P.O. Box 158, Cambridge, Mass.
P.O. Box 7814, Chicago, Ill.
45 Moscow Road, Flat 9, London, W.2, England.
P.O. Box 19724, Los Angeles, Calif.
3382 18th Street, San Francisco, Calif.
2929 16th Street, San Francisco, Calif.
G.P.O. Box 808, Brooklyn, N.Y.
336 Lenox Avenue, New York, N.Y.
1 Union Square West, Room 617, New York, N.Y.
225 West 100th Street, New York, N.Y.
P.O. Box 208, Church Street Station, New York, N.Y.
345 Alexander Street, Apt. #19, Rochester, N.Y.
P.O. Box 223, Greenbelt, Md.
Front groups: (All of the following are now defunct:)
Harlem Defense Council
Mothers' Defense Committee
Committee to Defend Resistance to Ghetto Life (CERGE)
Student Committee for Travel to Cuba (SCTC)
May 2nd Movement (M2M)
Publisher of PLP literature:
Tri-Line Offset Co., Inc. (owned by identified members of the PLP)
Key Leaders: Milton Rosen – president (former CPUSA New
York State committeeman and CPUSA New York State labor secretary)
Mortimer Scheer – vice president (former CPUSA New York State committeeman and
chairman of the Communist Party of Erie County)
William Epton – vice president (former CPUSA member)
Publications:
Progressive Labor (national bimonthly magazine)
Challenge (East Coast monthly newspaper)
Spark (West Coast monthly newspaper)
World Revolution (national quarterly digest of revolutionary periodicals)
Marxist Leninist Quarterly (published during 1963 and 1964 – no longer
published – merged with Progressive Labor in 1965)
Activities: The PLP or its front groups have –
(1) strongly condemned the capitalist economic system of the United States and
have continually agitated against it by exploiting such issues as inadequate
housing, unemployment, unequal employment opportunities, poverty, discrimination,
corruption, and alleged indifference of employers and trade union leaders toward
the workers;
(2) waged an intensive and deceitful propaganda campaign against United States
military involvement in South Vietnam;
(3) promoted the solicitation of money and medical aid for the Communist Viet Cong;
(4) prepared, published, and distributed propaganda aimed at persuading young men
to avoid service in the Armed Forces;
(5) attempted to exploit Negro unrest through –
(a) organized agitation in urban ghettos, and
(b) preparation, publication, and distribution of inflammatory literature calling
for violence;
(6) prepared, published, and distributed literature creating hate and distrust of
law enforcement officers and has disseminated propaganda falsely charging police
brutality; and
(7) arranged for the travel of American youths to a Communist country where they
would be assisted in the development of Marxist-Leninist ideology and revolutionary
organization.
Statements:
OPENLY COMMUNIST
PLP "CONSTITUTION," PROGRESSIVE LABOR, MAY-JUNE 1965, P. 5:
"To win, we will have to work closely together, disciplined by the urgency of the
goal before us; we will have to study and learn to utilize our communist principles
and the science of Marxism-Leninism to evaluate honestly our own strengths and
weaknesses and those of the enemy at each new stage of the campaign.
...
"As communists we cannot tolerate in ourselves or in our comrades any form of
racism, or male supremacism..."
PLP STATEMENT, AUGUST 16, 1966, PROGRESSIVE LABOR, OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1966, P. 2:
"We are communists. We are proud of it..."
EDITORIAL, PROGRESSIVE LABOR, NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1964, P. 19:
"We still ascribe to the view that the major goal for communists in the United
States is to build a revolutionary party necessary for winning socialism..."
MILTON ROSEN SPEECH BEFORE NEW LEFT CLUB AT UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA DECEMBER 3, 1962,
AS PUBLISHED IN THE DAILY TAR HEEL, DECEMBER 5, 1962, PROGRESSIVE LABOR,
JANUARY 1963, P. 12:
"'We American Communists are few in number and the stakes are high... but if we
are to take advantage of the state of discontent and the injustices in the U.S., we must
press the socialistic movement at all costs. We must maintain the outlook of smashing
the ruling party.'"
WILLIAM EPTON SPEECH BEFORE RECEIVING SENTENCE IN A NEW YORK COURT FOR A CONVICTION OF
CRIMINAL ANARCHY ON JANUARY 27, 1966, "WE ACCUSE" (PLP PAMPHLET
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 1966), P. 14:
"We as communists, will fight against fascism as we have always done –
no matter how it disguises itself..."
REVOLUTIONARY VIOLENCE
"BLACK LIBERATION" (RESOLUTION ADOPTED BY PLP FOUNDING CONVENTION, APRIL
15-18, 1965), PROGRESSIVE LABOR, MAY-JUNE 1965, P. 27:
"A principle task of the PLP is to strive to train black and white Marxist-Leninist
revolutionary leadership to play a vanguard role...
...
"While we will not be strait-jacketed by mechanical formulations, we will be
guided by the tested revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism..."
"PLP NATIONAL COMMITTEE STATEMENT," MAY DAY 1967, PROGRESSIVE LABOR,
JULY-AUGUST 1967, P. 1:
"For our people to go onto the offensive and fulfill the aspirations of millions
of U.S. workers, Black and white, students and intellectuals and other sections of the
people whose interests run counter to U.S. imperialism's aims, the involvement of U.S.
workers is essential; to secure a revolutionary base and to successfully wage
revolutionary struggle to defeat U.S. imperialism means that U.S. workers must
participate actively and lead in the struggle.
...
"In the spirit of this May Day we pledge our continuing faith in the U.S.
workingclass and to the triumph of revolutionary socialism in the USA. Our party is
founded on the class outlook of Marxism-Leninism which is proving its invincibility all
over the world. The banner of revolution is triumphing over counter-revolution.
Marxism-Leninism will defeat U.S. imperialism..."
"BLACK LIBERATION – NOW!" (BOOKLET PUBLISHED BY BLACK LIBERATION
COMMISSION PLP), 1967, PP. 23, 24:
"We all know that this system of U.S. imperialism cannot solve the problems
facing the Black people of this country, or the working class in general...
"We must replace this system with one that will truly represent us as a national
group and as members of the working class... A system that is run by us... And
finally, a system where racism will be smashed and destroyed. THIS SYSTEM WE
CALL SOCIALISM!
"ORGANIZE!
"The U.S. ruling class is not going to give this to us. The only way we are
going to get it is to take it..."
"ROAD TO REVOLUTION – THE OUTLOOK OF THE PROGRESSIVE LABOR MOVEMENT"
(PLM PAMPHLET PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 1964 – "A BASIC POLICY DECLARATION OF THE
PLM, ISSUED AROUND MARCH, 1963."), PP. 119, 120:
"We envision no easy transition to socialism... Naturally, communists would
welcome a peaceful transition to socialism, and do all in their power to compel the
ruling class to surrender peacefully. However, to date, nothing indicates that the
U.S. imperialists would even remotely contemplate this eventuality under any set of
circumstances..."
FRED JEROME, EDITORIAL, "WHAT THEY CAN NEVER RESTRAIN," CHALLENGE,
AUGUST 1, 1964, P. 4:
"I will go furthur [sic]. I will say 'that whenever any form of government
becomes destructive... it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and
to institute new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing
its powers in such forms, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety
and happiness...'
"In case anyone thinks I am hiding behind quotes to avoid prosecution, I
will 'hide' no more:
I urge and will continue to urge and attempt to induce and persuade public demonstration
in the streets of Harlem...
"I advocate precisely that the people disturb the peace...
...
"There is no lawful government in this country today. Only a revolution will
establish one. If that is civil rebellion, let us make the most of it."
EDITORIAL, "ARMED SELF-DEFENSE," CHALLENGE, APRIL 6, 1965, P. 4:
"It is a foregone conclusion that no oppressor can be overcome with a non-violent
appeal to his non-existant [sic] morality.
...
"Non-violence is fine when the enemy is unarmed and non-violent also. When the
enemy is a master at violence and filled with generations of hate, you dare not turn
the other cheek because you can be certain he will blow that one away, too."
PEKING ORIENTED
EDITORIAL, PROGRESSIVE LABOR, NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1964, P. 19:
"Regarding the position of the Soviet Union in its ideological attack on the
Peoples' Republic of China, the Progressive Labor Movement has continually stated that
we believe that China, some communist parties, and others have fought for a correct
Marxist-Leninist position. We believe that the Chinese and others have prevented the
Soviet leaders from engulfing the international communist and revolutionary movement with
revisionism. We are strongly opposed to the attempt of the Soviet Union to split the
international movement..."
EDITORIAL, MARXIST LENINIST QUARTERLY, VOL. 1, NO. 2 (UNDATED – DISTRIBUTED
AUGUST 1963), PP. 20, 21:
"U.S. imperialism realizes that in several decades a socialist China will be the
world's greatest power. ...the Chinese people and their party have been steeled in four
decades of war, civil war, revolution, and national reconstruction."
"U.S. WORKERS REQUIRE REVOLUTIONARY THEORY: STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL COORDINATING
COMMITTEE OF THE PROGRESSIVE LABOR MOVEMENT," MARXIST LENINIST QUARTERLY,
VOL. II, NO. 1 (UNDATED – DISTRIBUTED MARCH 1964), P. 44:
"It is true that the Chinese are conducting a vigorous struggle for Marxism-Leninism
in the international movement, but only after and because the Soviet leaders opened the
assault on Marxism-Leninism... The Chinese have made great efforts to prevent the
splitting of the international movement. At the beginning, their position was not put
forward as a drive against the Khrushchev leadership of the international movement, but
as an effort to persuade those who had departed from Marxist-Leninist ideas..."
"THE PLOT AGAINST BLACK AMERICA" (PAMPHLET PUBLISHED BY HARLEM BRANCH, PLP),
SEPTEMBER 1966, P. 3:
"China operates by revolutionary example and not by dictation to other peoples
who are fighting for their liberation. It is China's exemplary and principled opposition
to U.S. imperialism which serves as an inspiration to national liberation struggles all
over the world...
...
"China has proved to the oppressed people of the world that a correct revolutionary
ideology and a well disciplined political organization, uniting the whole people against
the common enemy, are indispensable to a successful revolution..."
STATEMENTS ON RIOTS – GENERAL
"THE PLOT AGAINST BLACK AMERICA," P. 6:
"The event of the past two years put the lie to imperialism's plot to kill
whitey myth. From July 18, 1964 to July 23, 1966, there have been no less than
20 uprisings in ghettos across America... Absolutely no attacks have been made on white
communities adjacent to the ghettos which have risen in rebellion... The uprisings have
been defensive in character and have taken place only within the boundaries of the ghettos.
Black people have defended their families and homes against racist attacks mounted
inside the ghettos by imperialism's cops and soldiers..."
"BLACK LIBERATION – NOW!" (BOOKLET), P. 1:
"The threats are rising. Recent events and news stories clearly show that the
United States Government and its State, county and city administrations in the large
northern industrial areas are preparing a reign of terror against the Afro-American
people this summer. They are deliberately planning to start a so-called 'race war.'
In fact, they have not waited for this summer – they have already started their
attacks in Jackson (Miss.), Houston, Cleveland and other cities."
"STUDENTS AND THE GHETTO REBELLIONS" (PLP LEAFLET DISTRIBUTED DURING
SUMMER OF 1967), P. 1:
"Each of these rebellions was launched in response to the deteriorating
conditions of life within ghetto communities – and was sparked by vicious and
repeated police attacks. These attacks constitute a campaign of terror directed
against Black people in order to stem their increasing militancy."
EDITORIAL, CHALLENGE, AUGUST 1967, P. 2:
"Even as rebellions continue to erupt in the oppressed ghettos across the country,
those forces who directed the use of troops to kill scores of innocent people have
announced that 'investigations' will begin to find the 'causes' and 'culprits' involved.
...
"THE PEOPLE OF THE GHETTO WILL NOT BE FOOLED by this baloney. They know who
charges them exorbitant rents, overcharges them for food and clothing, and steals
their low wages with fantastic interest rates. It's definitely NOT militant people's
leaders or communists."
STATEMENTS ON JULY 1964 NEW YORK RIOT
EDITORIAL, CHALLENGE, JULY 25, 1964, PP. 1, 5:
"The big-money boys downtown are running scared. They have seen the writing
on the bloodstained walls of Harlem.
"War is nothing new to the people of Harlem: ...But this time the people are
organizing to fight back – that is new.
...
"We advocate and work for a people's revolution to establish socialism...
...
"This is not the hour to 'stay home' from the freedom fight."
"HARLEM UNITE: LET US DEFEND OURSELVES!" (HARLEM PLM LEAFLET DISTRIBUTED
DURING JULY 1964 RIOT), PP. 1, 4:
"They are tightening the screws on Harlem.
"The police, the press, the politicians and all the other agents of the white
power structure have launched a campaign of terror and slander against the 500,000
black people in this community...
...
"BUT WE HAVE THE POWER TO STOP THEM. HALF A MILLION BLACK PEOPLE IN HARLEM CAN
LET THEM KNOW WE WILL NOT BE TERRORIZED, WE WILL CONTINUE FIGHTING FOR OUR FREEDOM
– AND WE WILL DEFEND OURSELVES.
...
"AND IF THIS GOVERNMENT WILL NOT PROTECT US, OR CANNOT PROTECT US, THEN WE MUST
GET A GOVERNMENT THAT CAN."
LISA ARMAND, EDITORIAL, 'BEHIND THE RIOTS,' CHALLENGE, AUGUST 1, 1964, P. 5:
"Do the Afro-American people – from Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Rochester,
Mississippi, Birmingham, Atlanta, Florida, California and points north, east, south
and west fight for freedom?
"They do and they will and they will be joined by others and nothing will stop
them until they have it.
...
"The struggles of the people are a 'lash-back' against exploitation and oppression..."
BILL EPTON, FRED JEROME, AND MILTON ROSEN, "ARMED POLICE TERROR,"
PROGRESSIVE LABOR, JULY-AUGUST 1964, P. 3:
"The recent police riots in Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Rochester have thrown
the fear of God into the money magnets [sic] that rule the country. The power
structure has now seen black people rebel against the brutality of the police. The
precepts of non violence have been thrown out and violence has swept the black ghettos
of two major New York cities. Black people in New York have been forced into the
streets to defend themselves against the police and slum conditions.
...
"The people of Harlem began to talk of 'revolution' and 'guerilla warfare.'"
SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY
873 BROADWAY, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10003
Origin: The Socialist Workers Party (SWP), largest and oldest U.S.
Trotskyist organization, originated at the Sixth World Congress of the Communist
International in Moscow, U.S.S.R., during the summer of 1928.
While attending the congress, U.S. Communist leader James P. Cannon became converted to
the ideas of Leon Trotsky, who had broken with Stalin and who was now expounding his
own doctrine of worldwide "permanent" revolution, as opposed to Stalin's
line of primary emphasis on building and defending the Soviet Union as the basis for
the world Communist movement.
Upon his return to the United States, Cannon became active in promoting the Trotskyist
position within the Communist Party. THis led to the expulsion of Cannon and a small
group of his followers from the Communist Party on October 27, 1928.
On November 15, 1928, the expellees brought out the first issue of their newspaper,
The Militant, which has since served as the official organ of the SWP.
On May 17-19, 1929, Cannon and his followers organized the Communist League of America
(Opposition). This group, the first Trotskyist Communist organization in the United
States, was the first in a progression that led to the formation of the SWP on
January 1, 1938.
Purpose: The SWP is an avowedly Trotskyist Communist group that
stands for "a new radicalization of the working class" leading to "a
revolution that will end the alien rule of the Government of Money and establish a
new government of the people – a Workers and Farmers Government." The
SWP espouses the "international solidarity of the working class" and supports
the principles of the Fourth International, founded under Trotsky's guidance in 1938
with SWP participation, although the SWP dissolved its formal ties with the International
when the Voorhis Act was passed in October 1940. The SWP opposes the
"bureaucratic" leadership of the Soviet Union, but defends the U.S.S.R.
as a Communist state. In the Sino-Soviet controversy, the SWP has expressed critical
preference for the more militantly revolutionary stance of the Communist Chinese
leadership.
Organization: Approximately 600 members.
Directed by a national chairman, a national committee of indeterminate membership,
and a political committee.
Addresses:
873 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10003 (national office)
1702 E. 4th Street, Los Angeles, Calif. 90033
3797 Woodward Avenue, Detroit, Mich. 48201
295 Huntington Avenue, Room 307, Boston, Mass. 02139
302 S. Canal Street, Room 204, Chicago, Ill. 60606
9801 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44106
P.O. Box 2649, Denver, Colo. 80201
704 Hennepin Avenue, Hall 240, Minneapolis, Minn. 55403
Box 361, Newark, N.J. 07101
2003 Milvia, Berkeley, Calif. 94704
P.O. Box 8412, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101
1733 Waller, San Francisco, Calif. 94117
5257 University Way, Seattle, Wash. 98105
Contact in St. Louis, Mo.: Dick Clarke, EVergreen 9-2895
Youth section:
Young Socialist Alliance (YSA)
Educational groups:
Militant Labor Forums
Friday Night Socialist Forums
West Coast Vacation School
Political support groups:
Socialist Workers Campaign Committee
Young Socialists for Halstead and Boutelle
Afro-Americans for Halstead and Boutelle
Foreign issues propaganda groups:
Alexander Defense Committee
Fair Play for Cuba Committee (Greater Los Angeles)
Anti-Vietnam war propaganda publication: Bring the Troops Home Now Newsletter
Defense groups:
Committee to Aid the Bloomington Students
Committee to Defend the Rights of Pfc. Howard Petrick
Committee to Oppose the Deportation of Joseph Johnson
Publishing house:
Merit Publishers (formerly Pioneer Publishers)
Key Leaders: James P. Cannon – founder and national chairman
Fred Halstead – member, national committee
Robert Himmel – member, national committee
Nat Weinstein – member, national committee
Farrell Dobbs – national secretary
Edward Shaw – organizational secretary
Joseph Hansen – editor, The Militant
Tom Kerry – editor, International Socialist Review
Frank Lovell – Michigan chairman
Theodore Edwards – California chairman
Peter Camejo – California organizer
Jack Barnes – New York organizer
Joel Britton – Chicago organizer
Paul Boutelle – 1968 SWP vice presidential candidate
Publications:
The Militant (national weekly newspaper)
International Socialist Review (theoretical quarterly)
The October 9, 1967, issue of The Militant includes a statement of ownership
which reveals a total circulation of 5302, including a total of 5071 paid circulation
and 231 distributed free, these figures applying to the single issue that was nearest
the date of filing.
The January-February 1967 issue of International Socialist Review includes a
statement of ownership which reveals a total paid circulation of 2749 and a total
free distribution of 1430, with a total distribution of 4179 copies of the issue nearest
the date of filing.
Activities: The Socialist Workers Party in recent years has –
(1) engaged in political action and propaganda, running its own candidates for major
public offices and urging the development of a truly class-based political movement to
counter the influence of the regular political parties in the United States;
(2) collaborated with such groups as the Constitutional Liberties Information Center
and the Los Angeles Committee for Protection of Foreign Born in attacking government
security programs;
(3) participated in the drive to abolish the House Committee on Un-American Activities
and Senate Internal Security Subcommittee;
(4) demonstrated and propagandized in support of Communist Cuba;
(5) propagandized for the release from prison of convicted atom spy Morton Sobell;
(6) agitated against the Vietnam war, both by itself and in collaboration with such
groups as the National Mobilization Committee, Student Mobilization Committee, and Fifth
Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee;
(7) supported organizations – such as the Committee to Defend the Rights of Pfc.
Howard Petrick and the Fort Hood Three Defense Committee – which promote agitation
against the Vietnam war within the Armed Forces;
(8) publicized the doctrines and pronouncements of the late Malcolm X and his
Organization of Afro-American Unity;
(9) attempted to stimulate anti-Vietnam sentiment among Negroes through involvement
with such organizations as Afro-Americans Against the War in Vietnam, founded by SWP
member Paul Boutelle;
(10) supported the activities of the Freedom Now Party in New York and Detroit as
a means to the creation of a class-based all-black political movement; and
(11) disseminated inflammatory propaganda against so-called "racist cops"
and "police brutality."
Statements:
POSITION ON NEGROES
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW, SUMMER 1959, P. 82:
"The Negroes, more than any others in this country, have reason and right to be
revolutionary.
"An honest workers' party of the new generation will recognize this revolutionary
potential of the Negro struggle, and call for a fighting alliance of the Negro people
and the labor movement in a common revolutionary struggle against the present social
system."
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW, SUMMER 1962, P. 74:
"the Negro movement... is connected with the uprisings of the disinherited
colored peoples in the colonial and semicolonial countries. The Negro demand for
democratic rights is the most forcible and advanced expression to date within our
own borders of this world-wide revolutionary process. This is understood, at least
in part, by its most active participants who have been uplifted and strengthened by
the Asian, African and Cuban revolutions."
"FREEDOM NOW: NEW STAGE IN THE STRUGGLE FOR NEGRO EMANCIPATION" (SWP
PAMPHLET PUBLISHED OCTOBER 1963), PP. 9, 10:
"Negro socialists must bring forward, as an inspiration and guide for American
Negroes, the example of Cuba where the overthrow of capitalism through the socialist
revolution has uprooted discrimination and established genuine equality and
fraternity of black and white citizens ninety miles from the Southern coastal
states."
RACIAL VIOLENCE
THE MILITANT, MAY 18, 1964, P. 3:
"Robert Vernon discussed the difference between the North and the South in terms
of what tactics were appropriate. He pointed out that whereas the tactic of non-violence
was appropriate in the opening stages of the struggle in the South, and had been
effective in organizing mass movements there, it never was appropriate in the North."
"THE REAL DIFFERENCES IN 1964: SOCIALIST WORKERS VS. DEMOCRATS AND
REPUBLICANS" (SWP LEAFLET):
"We uphold the right to organized self-defense against racist attack and
police brutality."
GEORGE BREITMAN, "HOW A MINORITY CAN CHANGE SOCIETY" (PAMPHLET), 2ND
EDITION, OCTOBER 1966, PP. 13, 16:
"A minority, properly oriented and led, can go much farther than it has thus
far gone to make the present system unworkable and intolerable... [Some] give it
the name of 'mass civil disobedience.' Whatever you call it, it has barely been
utilized in America up to now...
...
"They [the slaves before the Civil War] continued, just as before, or more so, to
run away by the thousands and tens of thousands, to commit sabotage and arson, and to
engage in various forms of civil disobedience, self-defense and insurrection... Imagine
what will happen when the Negro militants absorb this lesson from history and then
consciously work out a strategy to fully utilize this process that is set in motion by
the elemental desire of the masses to be free!"
HARLEM RIOTS, 1964
THE MILITANT, JULY 27, 1964, P. 4:
"The attempt by New York Mayor Robert F. Wagner's cops to repress the people of
Harlem by brute force and open violence is not a sudden reflex. These police military
tactics are well thought out and known in advance in top governmental circles...
...
"'Leaders' who are interested solely in concessions within the capitalist system...
were worse than useless in the defense of Harlem against the police repression of the
recent days. And they are worse than useless for organizing the revolutionary political
struggle which is required to win justice, decent housing, jobs, and human dignity for
the black working-class."
THE MILITANT, JULY 27, 1964, P. 1:
"Armed with nothing more than courage, bottles, bricks, bare fists, and occasional
Molotov cocktails, Harlem's residents, provoked by years of savage brutality by New
York's corrupt and racist cops, managed to fight the tactical riot force of the police
to a stalemate in three days of demonstrations and open hostilities."
THE MILITANT, AUGUST 24, 1964, P. 1:
"The indictment of William Epton, Harlem spokesman for the Progressive Labor
Movement, on trumped-up charges of 'criminal anarchy,' was denounced by Clifton
DeBerry, Socialist Workers Party candidate for President, as 'part of a concerted
drive by the New York City cops to establish a police state in Harlem.'"
THE MILITANT, AUGUST 10, 1964, PP. 1, 2:
"The Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Rochester encounters were not all peaceful. They
were provoked by police violence and answered in kind. These justifiably vehement
uprisings contained the shoots of civil and racial war.
"...The cops [in Harlem] were attacked and fought in roving battles of urban
guerrilla warfare.
...
"These protests had a revolutionary edge and implication... They were revolutionary
defiances aimed at the overthrow of the whole rotten system that condemns them to such
misery and brutality. It was anti-capitalist in effect, if not in consciousness.
"...these July incidents have been rough, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, black
nationalist in spirit, wholly proletarian in composition and revolutionary in tendency.
...
"the New York uprisings give warning that the patience of the black masses penned
in the ghettos is nearing exhaustion. They'd better look up from their Martinis and
take notice of the Molotov cocktails that were tossed into the midst of the police
battalions and at their patrol-wagons..."
WORKERS WORLD PARTY
46 WEST 21st STREET, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10010
Origin: The Workers World Party (WWP) originated on February 12, 1959,
when the former members of the Socialist Workers Party National Committee –
Sam Marcy (Ballan), Dorothy Flint, Jack Wilson, Ronald Jones, and Vincent Copeland
– issued a "Final Statement" and left the SWP because of
"irreconcilable" ideological and strategic differences. The minority held
that the SWP had become insufficiently revolutionary in outlook and program, that
true "revolutionary Trotskyism" had been abandoned in favor of
"parliamentary reformism" and "people's front coalition."
In March 1959, the first issue of Workers World appeared under the editorship
of Vincent Copeland. The manager of this official Workers World Party newspaper was
identified as Dorothy Ballan, wife of Sam Ballan (Marcy) and former alternate member
of the SWP National Committee.
The formal organization of the group as a party appears to have taken place in April
1959 at a conference in Buffalo, N.Y., at which the new party's officers and national
committee members were chosen.
Purpose: The WWP proclaims itself a Trotskyist Communist organization
working for the "revolutionary overthrow of American capitalism." Regarding
itself as the true heir to the Trotskyist-Leninist doctrine, the WWP scorns both the
CPUSA and the SWP as deviationist. Internationally, the WWP advocates
"unconditional defense" of the Soviet Union as a Communist state. The
party's sympathies, however, lie with the Communist Chinese, whom the WWP regards
as the leaders of the international Communist revolutionary drive.
Organization: Membership unknown.
Directed by a national chairman, national committee of indeterminate membership,
and political committee.
Location of known branches:
New York City, N.Y. (national office; address above)
Buffalo, N.Y.
Los Angeles, Calif.
Seattle, Wash.
Milwaukee, Wisc.
Youth section: Youth Against War and Fascism (YAWF)
Key Leaders: Sam Marcy (real name Sam Ballan) – national chairman
Vincent Copeland – editor, Workers World; member, national committee
Dorothy Ballan – manager, Workers World; member, national committee
James Boulton – leader, Milwaukee branch
Fred Goldstein – New York organizer
Publication: Workers World (national newspaper; twice monthly)
Activities: The Workers World Party, by itself and through its youth
section, Youth Against War and Fascism, has –
(1) carried articles in Workers World implying that President Johnson was
implicated in a rightist conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy;
(2) supported the travel of a group of young people to Communist Cuba in 1963;
(3) supported Communist and ultranationalist organizations working to undermine the
United States in Puerto Rico;
(4) accused the United States of aggression and genocide in Vietnam and advocated a
Communist victory and the complete withdrawal of United States forces;
(5) supported and encouraged resistance to the draft and agitation against the Vietnam
war within the Armed Forces;
(6) endorsed the concept of black power as a class weapon against white capitalist
oppression;
(7) advocated armed "self-defense" organizations among Negroes as part of
its inflammatory propaganda against "racist cops";
(8) specifically endorsed the violent doctrines of Robert F. Williams and given
circulation to his pronouncements;
(9) collaborated in Communist-serving united front activities with such organizations as:
Revolutionary Action Movement
Monroe Defense Committee
Movement for Puerto Rican Independence
International War Crimes Tribunal
Student Mobilization Committee
Spring Mobilization Committee
National Mobilization Committee
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee
End the Draft Committee
Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
Emergency Civil Liberties Committee
Fort Hood Three Defense Committee
W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America
Communist Party of the United States;
(10) participated in the violent and disruptive demonstrations during the August 1966
hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, boasting of the number of
arrested YAWF members.
Statements:
COMMUNIST REVOLUTION
"FINAL STATEMENT," FEBRUARY 12, 1959:
"We reject the bourgeois democratic illusion of the constitutional road to power.
And we want to prepare for the revolutionary overthrow of American capitalism..."
WORKERS WORLD, MARCH 1959, P. 1:
"Marxism has always taught that social convulsions, catastrophes, war and revolutions
are the inevitable qualitative changes after the cumulative, quantitative growth of years
if not decades of 'peaceful' development and sharpening of irrepressible class antagonisms.
"Our task is to prepare the masses for these eventualities, not to sing them to
sleep with pacifist lullabys... We say: without a proletarian revolution, imperialist
war is inevitable. That is the Leninist teaching on this subject and that teaching is
still valid."
WORKERS WORLD, JANUARY 9, 1964, P. 2:
"The conclusion is inescapable.
"Full equality cannot be achieved in this country without a socialist revolution.
And... it is the bounden duty of every friend of freedom to devote his life to the
preparation and successful outcome of that event."
WORKERS WORLD, APRIL 2, 1964, P. 2:
"The 'triple revolution' – more than anything else – needs a fourth
revolution, a revolution of the workers and the dispossessed and the oppressed ‐
a proletarian revolution against the bourgeoisie."
WARTIME ALLEGIANCE TO COMMUNISM
WORKERS WORLD, MARCH 1959, P. 2:
"In any war of the imperialist countries against the Soviet Union, China or
Eastern Europe – or any colonial countries – we stand firmly and
unequivocally on their side, which is the side of the working class."
PEKING ORIENTED
WORKERS WORLD, DECEMBER 7, 1962, P. 1:
"the Chinese Communist Party... is leading the revolutionary elements in the
world [Communist] movement."
WORKERS WORLD, JANUARY 20, 1967, P. 1:
"The Chinese Communist Party has been the strongest, truest, and most devoted
of all the parties in the struggle for Marxism and socialism..."
RACIAL VIOLENCE
WORKERS WORLD, JULY 26, 1963, P. 1:
"'Cambridge is different,' says many an observer. The smell of gunpowder
pervades the entire atmosphere of this eastern shore community, where 4,000 Black
people have made a stand for freedom in a manner which has earned the admiration of
freedom-loving people the world over."
WORKERS WORLD, SEPTEMBER 27, 1963, P. 2:
"Neither the vicious police nor the racist State Guard will lift a finger to
protect the Afro-American people... Only the autonomous, independent armed bodies
of the oppressed themselves can be depended upon to keep the peace and at
the same time to enforce the rights that all citizens are supposed to possess.
"...Self-defense, like self-preservation, is a law of nature. And under the
present conditions, that law must inevitably assert itself as a class law.
"The right of self-defense will soon be exercised with the greatest energy and
on the broadest scale..."
WORKERS WORLD, JULY 2, 1964, P. 1:
"Only organized, armed self-defense by the masses themselves will stop
the lynchers and the would-be lynchers. Only such action will end the terror for good.
"The time to make this clear is NOW."
WORKERS WORLD, JULY 30, 1964, P. 2:
"Our slogan has always been to 'disarm the oppressor; arm the oppressed.' The
oppressed Black People are going to implement this slogan against the police and
police agents of the oppressor."
WORKERS WORLD, SEPTEMBER 17, 1964, P. 2:
"The issues of racism are not decided at the ballot box; they are decided by who
has the club, who has the gun, who has the rope, who has the armed power in his own
person or that of his friends."
WORKERS WORLD, JULY 15, 1965, P. 1:
"The racial conflict is part of the global class conflict..."
HARLEM RIOTS, 1964
WORKERS WORLD, JULY 30, 1964, P. 2:
"The people of Harlem have not yet taken up arms. But they have the full
right to do so...
"It is certain that if not in New York, then... somewhere else, a section of
the Black People will take to arms and their action will spread to other sections."
WORKERS WORLD, JULY 30, 1964, P. 1:
"The Black People themselves were heard from instead of the 'leaders.' They
suffered long, endured much and were provoked by the thousand-and-first murder of
the innocent to stand up and fight the oppressor with bare hands, bottles, and bricks."
WORKERS WORLD, SEPTEMBER 17, 1964, P. 3:
"But this time it was different. Daily police brutality, other cop shootings,
had, along with other grievances, driven the Black People to a point where they could
take no more. Gilligan's killing of James Powell was a spark in a huge train of
dynamite which started to explode, car by car.
"The Black People of New York and the whole U.S. began to fight back."
WORKERS WORLD, NOVEMBER 12, 1964, P. 1:
"This time it was the 'Police Board' who pinned a medal on the uniformed murderer
and gave the green light to every sadistic cop in Harlem.
'Police Board Absolves Gilligan;
No Violation of Rules Found,'
– says the latest headline.
"To those familiar with the case, the ugly events of that July day recalled again
with a terrible clearness the crude brutality with which the good-guy cops act when
dealing with the poor.
...
"In spite of the tremendous uprising in the black community which the killing
sparked, the authorities... officially okay the murder of the black schoolboy by the
racist cop."
YOUTH AGAINST WAR AND FASCISM
58 WEST 25th STREET, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10010
Origin: Youth Against War and Fascism (YAWF) was founded early
in 1962 as the Anti-Fascist Youth Committee. The August 10, 1962, issue of
Workers World refers to "Youth Against War and Fascism (formerly the
Anti-Fascist Youth Committee)."
Purpose: YAWF operates as the youth arm and principal agitational
force of the Workers World Party, a Trotskyist Communist splinter group whose leaders
have declared for the "revolutionary overthrow of American capitalism."
Organization: Membership unknown.
Directed by a national chairman, national coordinator, and student coordinator.
Locations of known branches:
New York City, N.Y. (national office; address above)
City College of New York
Brooklyn College
Cleveland, Ohio (Committee Against War and Fascism, Box 91131, Cleveland, Ohio 44101)
Youngstown, Ohio (Committee Against War and Fascism, Box 75, Youngstown, Ohio 44501)
Buffalo, N.Y. (address unknown)
Milwaukee, Wisc. (address unknown)
Front groups:
Ad Hoc Committee on the Middle East
Pvt. Stapp Defense Committee
Committee for GI Rights
Key Leaders: Key Martin – national chairman
Maryann Weissman – national coordinator
Alex Chernowitz – student coordinator; president CCNY chapter
Joel Myers – leader, Buffalo chapter
Deirdre Griswold – editor, The Partisan
Publications: The Partisan (national magazine; six issues
per year)
YAWF Newsletter (national; issued irregularly)
Activities: Youth Against War and Fascism has –
(1) demonstrated in support of the Communist Chinese and in favor of their admission
to membership in the United Nations;
(2) supported the travel of a group of young people to Cuba under Communist auspices
in 1963;
(3) accused the United States of aggression and genocide in Vietnam;
(4) openly advocated a Communist victory in Vietnam;
(5) encouraged both defiance of the draft and open agitation against the Vietnam war
within the Armed Forces;
(6) attempted to stimulate anti-Vietnam sentiment among Negroes through participation
in such groups as Blacks Against Negative Dying (BAND), founded and led by YAWF activist
Ed Oquendo;
(7) participated in or otherwise supported the activities of such organizations as:
W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America
Movement for Puerto Rican Independence
Progressive Labor Party
Student Committee for Travel to Cuba
Spartacist League
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Student Mobilization Committee
National Mobilization Committee
Revolutionary Action Movement
(8) disseminated inflammatory propaganda against so-called "racist cops" in
the middle of riot situations;
(9) demonstrated in support of those engaged in recent urban rioting; and
(10) urged the necessity for armed "self-defense" groups among Negroes as the
only hope for successful resistance to American oppression and racism.
Statements:
HARLEM RIOTS, 1964
REPRINT OF YAWF LEAFLET DISTRIBUTED IN NEW YORK STREETS AND AT GARMENT CENTER
SOLIDARITY RALLY, WORKERS WORLD, JULY 19, 1964, P. 4:
"This is not a riot. This is a genuine rebellion of the people against the
monstrous conditions of existence. Everybody knew it was coming – long before
last Saturday night and long before Thomas Gilligan killed James Powell.
"It is a social convulsion against unbearable oppression. It is not peaceful
and prayerful, it is true..."
"Who occupies Harlem and Bedford Stuyvesant, armed to the teeth? – The police.
...
"Who then, is directly responsible for the violence? – The police.
...
"Write, phone, wire, demonstrate – tell Mayor Wagner to GET THE RACIST
COPS OUT OF HARLEM."
"WHO KILLED JAMES POWELL!" (UNDATED YAWF LEAFLET):
"James Powell was killed by:
A RACIST COP...
James Powell was killed by:
A FASCIST-TYPE POLICE FORCE that recruits and trains people for brutality. Any
decent human being would quit before two weeks on the force – a gang of
storm troopers.
...
"James Powell was the latest casualty in the war of the bosses against the
workers and unemployed, young and old, Black and white. The only way to fight against
this war on the masses is independent mass organization to fight back!"
SPARTACIST LEAGUE
BOX 1377, G.P.O., NEW YORK, N.Y. 10001
Origin: The Spartacist League originated in 1960 as a small group of
dissident members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) who, styling themselves the
Revolutionary Tendency of the SWP, stood in substantial disagreement with the party's
leadership on such basic policy questions as the proper approach to the Cuban
revolution. After 3 years of trying to promote a more revolutionary line than that
of the leadership, the group was expelled from the SWP in December 1963 for alleged
"disloyal attitudes."
Under the leadership of James Robertson, the group, now referring to itself as the
Spartacist Group or Spartacist Committee, brought out the first issue of its official
publication, Spartacist, dated February-March 1964, and proclaiming itself a
bimonthly published by "supporters of the Revolutionary Tendency expelled from
the Socialist Workers Party."
Though dedicated initially to gaining readmission to the SWP, the Spartacists later
shifted their emphasis to the development of an independent Trotskyist Communist
organization and adopted the new name of Revolutionary Committee of the Fourth
International. With the June-July 1966 issue, Spartacist had become simply
a "Bimonthly Organ of Revolutionary Marxism," all reference to the SWP
having been dropped.
Over the Labor Day weekend of September 2-4, 1966, a conference was held in Chicago,
Ill. At this conference, attended by a claimed 50 delegates and observers from various
parts of the country, the Spartacist League was organized as a fully independent
Trotskyist group and its chief officers chosen.
Purpose: The Spartacist League is a revolutionary organization which
proclaims itself a "national section of the international Trotskyist movement"
working for the "victory of the socialist revolution in the United States."
In the Chinese-Soviet dispute, the Spartacists reject the Soviet approach to revolution
in line with basic Trotskyist doctrine. But they also reject the Maoist approach
because of its alleged substitution of "peasant-based guerilla warfare" for
the correct line of the "vanguard role of the working class."
Organization: 60-80 members.
Directed by a central committee of indeterminate membership; by at least two commissions
(Negro and editorial); and by a political bureau.
Regional addresses:
Box 1377, G.P.O., New York, N.Y. 10001 (national office)
Box 852, Main P.O., Berkeley, Calif. 94701
Box 6044, Main P.O., Chicago, Ill. 60680
Box 8121, Gentilly Station, New Orleans, La. 70122
Other known addresses:
Box 8165, Univ. Station, Austin, Tex. 78712
Box 3142, Univ. Station, Columbus, Ohio 43210
Box 1021A, Detroit, Mich. 48232
Box 3061, Eureka, Calif. 95501
Box 18434, Eastwood Station, Houston, Tex 77023
Box 442, Ithaca, N.Y. 14851
Box 4054, Terminal Annex, Los Angeles, Calif. 90054
Box 1827, Wm. Penn Annex, Philadelphia, Pa. 19105
Affiliated group:
Freedom Socialist Party of Washington [State]
Key Leaders: James Robertson – national chairman; editor,
Spartacist
Geoffrey White – West Coast editor, Spartacist
Joseph Vetter (also known as Joseph Verret) – Southern editor, Spartacist
Helen Janacek – managing editor, Spartacist
Paul Gaillard – member, central committee
Albert Nelson – New York organizer
Harry Turner – identified only as a "Spartacist leader"
Publications: Spartacist (national bimonthly)
Espartaco (national Spanish-language bimonthly)
Spartacist-West (occasionally issued publication of the Bay Area Spartacist League,
Berkeley, Calif.)
Marxist Bulletin series (basic documents of Spartacists' official position on such
issues as expulsion from SWP, Cuban revolution, Negro questions, etc.)
Activities: The Spartacist League was –
(1) disseminated propaganda and participated in demonstrations designed to obstruct
the Vietnam war effort;
(2) openly advocated a Communist victory in Vietnam;
(3) disseminated inflammatory propaganda against so-called "racist cops" and
"police brutality" during riot situations;
(4) advocated the creation of a mass Negro-oriented organization, not as a concession
to black power, which the Spartacists regard as divisive, but as a part of the broader
proletarian front;
(5) disseminated propaganda designed specifically to convey the idea that the Vietnam
war is a racist war of oppression against colored people by the U.S. imperialists; and
(6) urged the development of the organizational concepts of the rent strike and
tenants councils into a block-by-block armed Negro "self-defense" network.
Statements:
COMMUNIST REVOLUTION
SPARTACIST, FEBRUARY-MARCH 1964, PP. 2, 12:
"We frankly state in advance that the purpose of our action is to further a
revolutionary regroupment of forces within this country such that a Leninist
vanguard party of the working class will emerge..."
"The theory of the Permanent Revolution, which is basic to our movement,
declares that in the modern world the bourgeois-democratic revolution cannot be
completed except through the victory and extension of the proletarian
revolution..."
SPARTACIST, ELECTION SUPPLEMENT, OCTOBER 1964, P. 3:
"...Marxists emphasize the self-defense of the Negroes in the South, and
look to them ultimately in league with the white workers under a Bolshevik program,
to accomplish a real shattering of the racist system, North and South."
"THESES ON BUILDING THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN THE U.S. – TASKS OF THE
SPARTACIST LEAGUE" (SPARTACIST PRE-CONFERENCE DISCUSSION BULLETIN, JULY 1966, P. 1):
"The Spartacist League is based on the principles embodied in the decisions of
the first four Congresses of the Communist International, the resolutions and documents
agreed to by the 1938 Founding Conference of the Fourth International and the
International resolution on perspectives adopted by the International Committee of
the Fourth International Conference of April 1966. We recognize that these materials
are the indispensible [sic] documentary codification of the Communist movement
internationally and are fundamental to the revolutionary tasks of the SL."
SPARTACIST, NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1966, PP. 11, 13:
"The Spartacist League of the U.S. is a revolutionary organization which, as part
of the international revolutionary movement, is committed to the task of building the
party which will lead the working class to the victory of the socialist revolution in
the United States.
...
"The Spartacist League... [is] a national section of the international
Trotskyist movement..."
POSITION ON NEGROES
R. S. FRASER, "FOR THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF THE NEGRO QUESTION,"
MARXIST BULLETIN NO. 5, P. 26:
"The dual nature of the Negro struggle arises from the fact that a whole people
regardless of class distinction are the victims of discrimination. This problem of a
whole people can be solved only through the proletarian revolution, under the
leadership of the working class..."
"DRAFT TASKS & PERSPECTIVES OF THE SPARTACIST LEAGUE" (SPARTACIST
PRE-CONFERENCE DISCUSSION BULLETIN, JULY 1966), P. 18:
"The only realistic program for black Americans is Communism."
RACIAL VIOLENCE
SPARTACIST, JULY-AUGUST 1964, P. 5:
"The rent strike must be extended... because it, with its concommitant [sic]
tenants councils, offers the best method so far devised to organize the community...
With the present level of mass consciousness, only the lack of experienced organizers
prevents virtually the whole of Harlem and the other New York ghettos from being organized
into tenants councils right now. Moreover, black councils firmly based on building
councils would offer a natural basis for the organization of self-defense..."
SPARTACIST, MAY-JUNE 1965, P. 5:
"The illusion of 'non-violence' spread by King and others is a criminal
disarming of black people, and is consistent with the role of these 'leaders'
as agents of the power structure. The movement must scrap these illusions once and
for all and begin to organize the Negro people to defend themselves from violence..."
SPARTACIST, MAY-JUNE 1967, P. S4:
"It is the duty of a revolutionary organization to intervene where possible to give
these outbursts [riots] political direction."
HARLEM RIOTS, 1964
SPARTACIST, JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1965, PP. 1, 5:
"On this basis SPARTACIST stated early in July '...the bourgeois state now
prepares to fight openly in the streets through its police arm against the resurgence
of the struggle.' This prediction was strikingly confirmed on July 18 and the days
that followed as wave after wave of armed, specially trained elite police – the
Tactical Patrol Force – swept through Harlem indiscriminately beating and terrorizing
all who crossed their paths, when the mood of the ghetto made it clear that the killing
of 15-year-old James Powell by an off-duty police officer would not go unprotested.
...
"James Robertson, SPARTACIST editor, described the role of the cops in
creating the riots and, in reference to attempts being made to blame the riots on
Communists, said that 'unfortunately there aren't many Reds in Harlem now –
but there will be!'"
REVOLUTIONARY ACTION MOVEMENT (RAM)
2811 W. DIAMOND STREET, PHILADELPHIA, PA.
Origin: Winter 1963
Purpose: From the Ram Manifesto of 1964: "RAM was officially
organized... by Afro-Americans who favored Robert F. Williams and the concept of organized
violence... ONE PURPOSE – To free black people from the universal slavemaster...
ONE AIM – To develop black people through struggle to the highest attainment possible.
ONE DESTINY – To follow in the spirit of black revolutionaries... and to create a
new world free of colonialism, racism, imperialism, exploitation, and national
oppression."
In hearings before the subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of
Representatives, on February 16, 1967, J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, described
the Revolutionary Action Movement as "a Negro organization... dedicated to the
overthrow of the capitalist system in the United States, by violence if necessary, and
its replacement by a socialist system oriented toward the Chinese Communist interpretation
of Marxism-Leninism."
Organization: Less than 50
Precise membership figures cannot be stated owing to the clandestine nature of the
organization. However, it should be noted that RAM does not seek mass membership.
Instead, it operates on the principle of a tight-knit, highly selective inner circle
of leaders who accomplish their aims through infiltration and subversion of other
Afro-American groups, through fronts, and through use of Negro teenage gangs schooled
in urban guerrilla warfare.
RAM has units in Philadelphia (home base), Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, and
New York City.
There are three levels of membership in the RAM organization: (1) field organizers,
(2) active members, and (3) associate members.
Fronts: Afro-American Youth Council
Afro-American Student Movement
Jamaica (N.Y.) Rifle and Pistol Club
Black Guard (One of the more recent fronts of the Revolutionary Action Movement is the
Black Guard which is self-described in its "Black Guard Organizers Manual" as
"a black youth group dedicated to black power, black unity and self-defense...
[and] is the forerunner of a black liberation army.")
RAM is affiliated with the United Black Brotherhood in Cleveland.
Key Leaders: Robert F. Williams – chairman-in-exile (also
self-proclaimed "Premier of the African-American-Government-in-Exile")
Maxwell Curtis Stanford, Jr. – field chairman
Publication: BLACK AMERICA
"Black America is the theoretical journal of RAM – Revolutionary Action
Movement, Black Liberation Front of the U.S.A..
"It's [sic] purpose is to bring clarity and give direction in revolutionary struggle.
To help build revolutionary nationalist leadership.
"To present a revolutionary program of national liberation and self-determination
for the African captives enslaved in the racist United States of America.
"To forge a revolutionary unity among peoples of African descent and to give a
new international spirit to Pan-Africanism.
"To unite Black America with the Bandung world (Asia, Africa and Latin America).
"To fight for the liberation of oppressed peoples everywhere.
"Our message ot [sic] the Black peoples of the world: UNITE or PERISH –
WE WILL WIN.' '(BLACK AMERICA, Summer-Fall 1965, p. 2)
Activities: Revolutionary Action Movement members have –
(1) been charged with the planned cyanide poisoning of up to 1,500 policemen and top
city officials in Philadelphia;
(2) been indicted for conspiracy to murder moderate Negro leaders in the United States,
conspiracy to advocate anarchy and "overthrow of organized government by the
assassination of executive officers of the government";
(3) stored arms and ammunition in anticipation of the violent U.S. revolution which
is to be accomplished according to a well-organized plan of urban guerrilla warfare;
(4) send "greeting" to the NLF of South Vietnam and have called for a united
front against "racist U.S. imperialism."
Statements:
RAM MANIFESTO QUOTED IN MONTHLY REVIEW, MAY 1964, P. 6, 7:
"we are at war with white America...
...
"RAM's philosophy is one of the world black revolution or world revolution of
oppressed peoples rising up against their former slavemasters..."
ROBERT F. WILLIAMS, THE CRUSADER, MARCH 1965, P. 5:
"As a representative if [sic] the Revolutionary Action Movement, I am here [Hanoi,
North Vietnam] to give support to the Vietnamese people in their struggle against U.S.
imperialist aggression..."
ROBERT F. WILLIAMS, HAVANA RADIO FREE DIXIE BROADCAST, DECEMBER 18, 1965:
"The U.S. Government is a racist government... The only protection our oppressed
people can expect in racist America is that which we render ourselves. The only justice
we can expect is on-the-spot justice: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
...
"My brothers and sisters, the coming summer is going to be violent and bloody...
Let our people organize, arm, unite, and prepare for a war of survival and liberation!
...Put the torch to the racist strongholds of the cities and remember the forests..."
ROBERT F. WILLIAMS, THE CRUSADER, JULY 1967, PP. 2, 3:
"The racist power structure [in America] hoped to head off the long hot summer
of Afro-American rebellion... The battle of Newark should be a lesson to the oppressor
that his tactic of vicious repression is not an answer to the black man's thrust for
human dignity... Our response... is a clarion call to... Black America to UNITE OR
PERISH! MOBILIZE FOR PEOPLE'S WAR BECAUSE AMERICA IS THE BLACK MAN'S BATTLEGROUND!"
"BLACK GUARD ORGANIZERS MANUAL," DATED OCTOBER 23, 1967:
"THE BLACK GUARD IS A BLACK YOUTH GROUP DEDICATED TO BLACK POWER, BLACK UNITY
AND SELF-DEFENSE. THE BLACK GUARD RESOLVES ANY CONTRADICTION WHICH MAY ARISE IN CARRYING
OUT VANGUARD DIRECTION, AND TO MOBILIZE AND LEAD THE MASSES... THE BLACK GUARD IS
THE FORERUNNER OF A BLACK LIBERATION ARMY."
"When a Black Guard has achieved his third degree RAM star (usually two years) he
will be qualified to govern any society, be in any guerrilla movement in the world,
and will be prepared to lead the NEW WORLD."
STUDENT NONVIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE
(ALSO KNOWN AS SNCC AND SNICK)
360 NELSON STREET, SW, ATLANTA, GA. 30303
Origin: April 1960 in Raleigh, N.C.,
Originally known as the Temporary Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC,
in the fall of 1960, met in Atlanta, Ga., elected its first slate of officers, and
dropped the "temporary" from its name. Primary initiators in the founding
of SNCC were Mrs. Ella J. Baker of Atlanta and Mrs. Anne Braden of Louisville, Ky.
Purpose: SNCC's original claimed purpose was to bring about the
integration of southern "lunch counters and movie theaters." However, in
the recent years, SNCC has deviated grossly from this primary purpose and has been in
the forefront of a number of the more recent violent racial disturbances in the country.
Organization: SNCC's national organization is headed by a chairman
and a triumvirate composed of an executive secretary, communications director, and
program director. While the chairman is the chief spokesman for the organization,
the executive secretary handles all organizational matters and directs the internal
operation. The position of chairman and his triumvirate are elective and are chosen
annually to preside over an 80-man central committee (all of whom have voting privilege)
and a 10-man "observer group" (without voting privilege.) The national
organization employs a number of staff personnel and field organizers.
Note: Friends of SNCC – an adjunct organization whose present
director is Elizabeth Sutherland. "Friends" was formed as a campus-oriented
fundraising organization.
Key Leaders: Hubert Geriod (H. Rap) Brown – chairman (1967-to date)
Stanley Wise – executive secretary
Ethel Minor – communications director
Ralph Featherstone – program director
Stokely Carmichael – chairman (1966-67)
John Lewis – chairman (1963-66)
Charles McLaurin – chairman (1962-63)
Charles McDew – chairman (1961-62)
Marion Barry, Jr. – chairman (1960-61)
Publications: The Student Voice (published by The Student Voice, Inc.)
Activities: SNCC has –
(1) aligned itself with the Havana-based Latin American Solidarity Organization (LASO),
a Castro-led network of guerrilla fighters whose primary aim is to export revolution in
Latin America and among the Negro population in America;
(2) openly assailed Zionism and accused the Israelis of committing atrocities against
the Arabs;
(3) openly exhorted Negroes to refuse to be drafted into armed services of the U.S.;
(4) through its immediate past chairman, Stokely Carmichael, aligned itself
organizationally with the so-called Black Liberation Movement of the U.S. and has called
for the "overthrow" of the present government and the start of "the real
Revolution" in the U.S.;
(5) through its present chairman, H. Rap Brown, been indicted for inciting a riot in
Cambridge, Maryland.
Statements:
H. RAP BROWN, SNCC CHAIRMAN, "WHO ARE THE REAL OUTLAWS?" (SNCC PAMPHLET JULY
1967), PP. 3, 5:
"That government which makes laws that you and I are supposed to obey, without
letting us be a part of that government... is an illegal government. The men who pass
those laws are outlaws; the police who enforce those laws are outlaws and murderers.
"It should be understandable that we, as black people, should adopt the attitude
that we are neither morally nor legally bound to obey laws which were not made with our
consent and which seek to keep us in our place...
...
"We stand on the eve of a black revolution. These rebellions are but a dress
rehersal [sic] for real revolution..."
"ATLANTA'S BLACK PAPER," COMPILED BY ATLANTA PROJECT OF SNCC, AUGUST 25, 1966:
"Saturday, August 20, 1966
...
"At the street corner rally held right after the press conference, two squad cars
with two black cops in each along with the paddy wagons pulled into the area. At the rally,
Bill Ware [SNCC], told the people that the black cops represent the white power structure
in the neighborhood and that the white power structure had sent them... He told the people
of Vine City [Atlanta] about how Black cops had beat him in the City Jail and how they
are white men with black skins; how they are as much our enemy as any white Klu-Klux
Klansmen [sic]."
STOKELY CARMICHAEL, GRANMA, AUGUST 13, 1967:
"To my fellow comrade Che,
"The African-Americans inside the United States have a great deal of admiration
for you. We eagerly await your writings in order to read them, digest them and plan
our tactics based on them.
"We want you to know, wherever you are, that you are an inspiration not only to
the Blacks inside the U.S. but to the Liberation Struggle around the world. Please
keep on fighting because by your fighting you are inspiring us. Do not despair, my
comrade.
"We will win
Stokely Carmichael"
"We are moving toward urban guerrilla warfare within the United States..."
SOUTHERN STUDENT ORGANIZING COMMITTEE (SSOC)
1703 PORTLAND AVENUE, NASHVILLE, TENN.
P.O. BOX 6403, NASHVILLE, TENN. 31212
TEL. (615) 291-3537
Origin: April 3-5, 1964
Founded by former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) "white
community" organizers as a counterpart to SNCC. It was designed to work especially
among white southern college students.
Purpose: The proclaimed purpose of the Southern Students Organizing
Committee is to maintain a liaison between widely scattered activists in the
"peace" and "civil rights" movements throughout the South through
key representatives located on various southern college campuses.
Organization: In the fall of 1966, SSOC became a membership organization
and embarked on a campaign to form local chapters on various college campuses throughout
the South.
It now has an estimated 175 members with representatives on about 34 campuses throughout
the South.
SSOC is loosely coordinated through its central office in Nashville and branch office
in Atlanta, Ga.
Key Leaders: Tom Gardner – chairman
Alan Levin – vice chairman
There are about 15 staff personnel employed by the Nashville headquarters of SSOC.
Publication: THE NEW SOUTH STUDENT (circulation, claimed
4,000); published monthly October through May by SSOC of Nashville; $1 for southern
students, $3 for northern students and adults.
Activities: On its own and in cooperation with other organizations
has –
(1) staged or taken part in various civil rights picket lines and demonstrations;
(2) supported the activities and demonstrations of various U.S. anti-Vietnam war
organizations;
(3) SSOC chairman Tom Gardner, together with 41 other Americans, met with
representatives of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong at a conference in Bratislava,
Czechoslovakia, September 5-12, 1967;
(4) supported the activities and demonstrations of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee;
(5) supported the activities and demonstrations of, and is a fraternal organization to,
the Students for a Democratic Society.
SOUTHERN CONFERENCE EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC.
3210 WEST BROADWAY, LOUISVILLE, KY.
Origin: September 6, 1938
The Southern Conference Educational Fund, Inc. (SCEF), initially functioned as the
"educational wing" of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW).
The SCHW was cited by the Committee on Un-American Activities in 1947 as a Communist-front
organization "which seeks to attract southern liberals on the basis of its seeming
interest in the problems of the South" although its "professed interest in
southern welfare is simply an expedient for larger aims serving the Soviet Union and
its subservient Communist Party in the United States." Public exposure as a
Communist-front group caused the SCHW to suspend its operations in 1949; however, the
SCEF continued as an independent organization and absorbed the remaining functions of
the SCHW. Operating as the successor of the SCHW, the SCEF maintained the same office,
telephone number, and principal officers of the SCHW. The SCEF also continued publishing
SCHW's official organ, The Southern Patriot.
Purpose: The SCEF purports to be an "interracial group"
dedicated to ending "racial discrimination, poverty, and other injustices in
the South." Its main effort at the present time is to "reach white Southerners
and bring them into struggles for social justice, helping them to unite with black
Southerners in meaningful joint action."
Organization: Directed by a 60-member board of directors (SCEF is not
a membership organization with the exception of those individuals who are members of
the board.)
The SCEF has 22 staff members, a 60-member advisory committee and a 6-member medical
advisory committee.
Reported annual budget: $100,000
Offices: (national headquarters listed above)
150 Tenth Avenue North, Nashville, Tenn.
799 Broadway, Suite 412, New York, N.Y. (Eastern office)
SCEF Projects:
(1) Southern Mountain Project & Mountain Education Program
(2) Operation Open Debate
(3) Grass-Roots Organizing Work (GROW) Project
(4) Southern Peace Education Project
(5) Anti-HUAC Project (SCEF operates as the southern regional office of the National
Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee, a Communist-front
organization.)
Affiliate: Friends of SCEF
Key Leaders: Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth – president
Carl Braden – executive director (member of SCEF staff since 1957) –
identified member of the Communist Party, U.S.A.
Anne Braden – associate executive director and editor of The Southern
Patriot (member of SCEF staff since 1957) – identified member of the Communist
Party, U.S.A.
James A. Dombrowski – special consultant (recently retired as SCEF executive
director; served as administrator for SCHW) – identified member of the Communist
Party, U.S.A.; denied identification under oath.
Rev. William Howard Melish – assistant director – identified member of the
Communist Party, U.S.A.
Publication: The Southern Patriot (monthly tabloid newspaper
published since 1942 – circulation [October 1966]: 9,936)
Activities: The SCEF has –
(1) prepared and published propaganda aimed at undermining the capitalist system of
the United States and has continually agitated against it by exploiting such issues
as poverty, racial discrimination, and unemployment;
(2) attempted to develop Negro and white unrest through organized agitation in small
southern towns and rural areas;
(3) waged a deceitful campaign against congressional investigation of Communist
activities in the United States;
(4) engaged in a program of agitation against United States military involvement in
Vietnam; and
(5) maintained influence over certain militant Negro civil rights and "black
power" organizations and has rendered financial support to at least one of them.
Statement:
THE SOUTHERN PATRIOT, (EDITORIAL), AUGUST 1967, PP. 1, 2:
"Past movements for peaceful social change have failed partly because people
in power have not wanted change and have used every device and every form of terror
to crush such movements...
"But movements have also failed... because they have not been radical enough –
radical in the sense of going to the root of what is wrong in our society and dealing
with people's vital needs. They have failed too because sometimes people in these
movements have lost their nerve at crucial moments..."
LIBERATOR
PUBLISHED BY: AFRO-AMERICAN RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INC.
224 EAST 40th STREET, NEW YORK CITY, N.Y. 10017
Origin: January 1960
Daniel H. Watts began publishing the LIBERATOR in 1960 in the name of a largely
paper organization which he called the Liberation Committee for Africa. In 1963, Watts
and Richard Gibson, one of the initiators of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, incorporated
the Afro-American Research Institute as the successor of Watts' "Liberation
Committee." The institute has since served as the publisher of LIBERATOR magazine.
Purpose: LIBERATOR magazine is self-described as the
"intellectual voice for black nationalism and socialism" and the "voice
of the Afro-American protest movement in the United States and the liberation movement
of Africa."
Organization: Other than the staff of the LIBERATOR, no
organization exists in the sense of the word.
Key Leaders: Daniel H. Watts – editor in chief
Len Holt – Washington, D.C.
Bill Mahoney – editor, Southern
Richard Price – editor, West Coast
Richard Gibson – editor, Africa, Asia, and Europe
Clayton Riley – arts editor
Staff:
Evelyn B. Kalibala – secretary
Tom Feelings and James Malone – illustrators
James Connor – photographer
Publication: Monthly. Subscription: $3 per year.
LIBERATOR magazine has featured articles supporting "black arts"
which show domination of blacks over whites and has endorsed the so-called Negro
Liberation Movement in America. It supports an anti-U.S. capitalist movement among
Negroes to alter the present form of government and supports Negro extremist groups
such as the Black Muslims, RAM, SNCC, and the all-Negro Freedom Now Party.
LIBERATOR magazine opposes civil rights groups such as the NAACP and the Urban
League and openly supports African-Marxist leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure,
and Patrice Lumumba.
LIBERATOR magazine, in addition to publishing and distributing its monthly
publication, operates the Liberator Book Service which offers historical, separatist,
and other Negro-oriented books and pamphlets written by a wide range of authors including
Communists and black nationalists.
Statements from LIBERATOR Magazine:
"Mrs. [Gloria H.] Richardson has shown the direction which must be followed, if the
Movement is to be saved from destruction by its so-called friends... She, and others
like her, however, who are providing courageous and effective leadership will continue
to be under growing pressure from the national established civil rights groups..."
(Editorial, "Mrs. Richardson's Revolt," vol. III, No. 11, November 1963, p. 1)
"What is needed at this juncture is a truly national Liberation Front with a program
aimed squarely at basic changes in our economic and social structure – e.g. a
planned economy based on public ownership subject to the needs and will of the masses
who will hold power – which will make for rapid social advance, freedom and equality.
...
"the prospects of victory for our Second Revolution are more than promising; and
through it, perhaps, America can at last rejoin the human family." (James A.
Kennedy, "Toward a National Liberation Front," vol. III, No. 11, November
1963, pp. 19, 20)
"...Afro-America lacks adequate leaders. 'The acknowledged so-called "Negro
leadership" serves as the white man's neutralizer of Black America's struggle.
Therefore it will be removed by dedicated younger Black militants who are more responsive
to the fundamental needs of the Black Masses.'..." (Donald Freeman, "The
Cleveland Story," vol. III, No. 6, June 1963, p. 18)
"The white racist policeman in the Black ghetto does not represent law and order
for Afro-Americans, he is merely the extension of the repressive economic, political and
social system that is imposed on the ghetto by the white power structure..."
(Daniel H. Watts, editorial, "Genocide or Murder?" vol. V, No. 8, August 1965, p. 3)
"The white power structure which had supported these negro anglo-saxons was calling
the chits. The house niggers responded by saying 'we can't control the natives,
they are not one of us. You (whites) must put down the rebellion. We will back you up,
as far behind you, as we can get.'..." (Daniel H. Watts, editorial, "Watts,
L. A., – The Nation's Shame," vol. V, No. 9, September 1965, p. 3)
"The cry is Black Power. Very curiously, of all the slogans that the so-called
civil rights revolution has generated, to date, only the cry of Black power has instill
[sic] fear in the hearts of big and little charlie. Why? Why suddenly, the most 'freedom'
loving of whites, have been driven from the civil rights circles by the cry of Black power?
Is it because after 350 years of struggle we have finally got to where the action
is? Power? Black Power?
"Black power! Power to punish, Power to destroy, and above all Power to survive the
most brutal system of oppression ever devised by man...
"Brothers and Sisters, charlie's finger is on the panic button, let our Black Power
help him push it, to hell. T.C.B." (Daniel H. Watts, editorial, "'Audacious'
Black Power," vol. VI, No. 7, July 1966, p. 3)
ACT
Origin: March 1964 at a conference in Chester, Pa.
Purpose: To support local "action groups" in civil rights
activity "when their anti-discrimination projects are attacked and 'undercut by
the standard civil rights organizations such as the NAACP... and the Urban League.'"
Organization: ACT leader Julius Hobson has stated that the group is
"not a civil rights organization in the classical sense but a revolutionary one
in the American tradition."
Chapters were formed in Chicago, Ill.; New York City; Chester, Pa.; and Washington, D.C.
Key Leaders: Lawrence Landry – chairman
Stanley Branche
Gloria Richardson
Julius Hobson
John Wilson
Jesse Gray
Nahaz Rogers
Activities: ACT has –
(1) planned nationwide school boycott in 1964 to protest de facto school segregation
throughout the country;
(2) planned a nationwide boycott of California wines and fruits to protest a voter
referendum on housing law. ACT took the position that the right to open occupancy should
not be decided by popular vote;
(3) sponsored a 7-day rights offensive, May 24-30, 1965;
(4) participated in the attempted "stall-in" at the 1964 New York World's Fair;
(5) organized civil rights school boycotts, buying boycotts, etc.
Statements:
JULIUS HOBSON, THE EVENING STAR (WASHINGTON, D.C.), AS QUOTED IN THE
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, MAY 22, 1967, P. H5866:
"'You can't make Socialist promises within the Capitalist system. It won't work.
I'm a Marxist Socialist, not a Communist, but I don't have any illusions that I can
change the system, although I think I can improve it.'"
THE EVENING STAR (WASHINGTON, D.C.), JULY 21, 1967, P. B-1:
Hobson saw the Newark riot of 1967 as "'the beginning of the new "Civil War"
in the United States.'"
JULIUS HOBSON, THE WASHINGTON POST, NOVEMBER 6, 1966, P. A-27:
"'We know what colonialism is right here at home,' he said. 'We don't have to go to
Vietnam to impose the kind of freedom I've enjoyed here...'"
NAHAZ ROGERS, THE MILITANT, APRIL 27, 1964, P. 1:
"'The old line of making the Negro revolution acceptable by the guidelines of
deportment and graciousness that are acceptable to the white community is gone. ACT will
not function in a manner that is acceptable to white people. It will do things that are
accaptable [sic] to Negroes.'"
ORGANIZATION FOR BLACK POWER
Origin: May 1965 at a conference in Washington, D.C.
Purpose: To serve as a political action arm for ACT leaders. "Its
aim is to gain political control of major U.S. cities through mobilization and control of
the Negro residents." According to its literature, it "'is part of the
revolutionary struggle of people all over the world to liberate themselves from the
determination of the United States to impose its way of life on the whole world and to
build a new world free from exploitation.'"
Organization: "Individuals connected with its founding represent
various facets of the militant Negro extremist community. The chairman of the organization
is Jesse Gray. He is a former Harlem organizer for the Communist Party, U.S.A."
"'Membership in the Organization for Black Power shall be of organizations and
individuals who accept the perspective of Black Power and the discipline of the organization
in the struggle for this power.'" (J. Edgar Hoover, Testimony before Appropriations
Subcommittee, February 10, 1966, pp. 256, 257.)
Key Leaders: Jesse Gray – chairman
Lawrence Landry – Chicago chairman
Julius Hobson – member of steering committee
Activities: At a meeting in Chicago in July 1965 a program was adopted
which included the following points:
(1) Dissemination of information on "fraudulent nature" of the poverty program;
(2) Institute a drive in every ghetto to stop all cooperation by the poor with poverty programs;
(3) Campaign to drive the "social work lobby" and their "Negro lackeys"
from the ghettos;
(4) Refuse to continue discussions about poverty, civil rights, etc., with Government
social workers;
(5) Create immediate programs to deal with Negro "Uncle Toms";
(6) "Train the poor for a nationwide campaign designed to obstruct the status quo
and to force the hand of those seeking to exploit... black people";
(7) "Resolve that militant organizations will cooperate and work with any and all
persons to achieve these goals and objectives."
FREEDOM NOW PARTY
81 E. 125th STREET, SUITE 207, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10035
TEL. MO 2-0681
Origin: August 28, 1963 (Call for a Freedom Now Party distributed in
Washington, D.C.)
Purpose: Formed by former Communist Party member Conrad Lynn and Red
China travel-ban violator William Worthy for the purpose of running an all-Negro slate
of electors in the 1964 elections.
Organization: Believed very small.
Key Leaders: Conrad Lynn – national chairman
Mrs. Pernella V. Wattley – corresponding secretary
Rev. Albert Cleage – Michigan State chairman
Peter Pierre – chairman, Brooklyn Freedom Now Party
Publications: None
Activities: The Freedom Now Party –
(1) ran a small slate of candidates for State and local offices in 1964 in Michigan and
New York, including Paul Boutelle, vice-presidential candidate of the Trotskyist Communists,
as candidate for State Senator from Harlem;
(2) ran a total of 39 Negro candidates in 1964 for offices ranging from U.S. Senator to
Wayne County drain commissioner. Single candidates were offered in New York, Connecticut,
and California. Greatest strength was in Michigan. However, all Freedom Now Party
candidates were soundly defeated.
CONGRESS OF RACIAL EQUALITY (CORE)
NATIONAL OFFICE, 135th STREET AND SEVENTH AVENUE (HARLEM), NEW YORK CITY, N.Y.
Origin: Spring 1942
Originally formed as the Committee of Racial Equality by James Farmer and Jim Robinson
after they were reluctantly served in a white restaurant in Chicago. Farmer and Robinson,
then working for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), drew support from FOR members and
picketed the restaurant until full integration was achieved.
Purpose: Originally considered one of the more "moderate" civil
rights organizations, CORE, since the early 1960's, has gradually increased in militancy
and has become increasingly separatist, black supremacist, and ideologically aligned with
the so-called new left.
Organization: CORE claims 80,000 members in 200 chapters.
The organizational structure of CORE consists of a large advisory board and a slate of
five officers under which an administrative staff, field staff, field secretaries, and
task force workers function. In addition a national action committee oversees the regional
operations of the chapters and individual members.
Key Leaders: Wilfred Ussery – national chairman
Floyd B. McKissick – national director (1966-to date)
Lincoln O. Lynch – assoc. national director (1966-to date)
James L. Farmer – national director (1960-1966) (Farmer is currently chairman
of CORE's advisory board.)
Activities: In addition to organizing and sponsoring numerous civil
rights rallies, demonstrations, and picket lines, CORE, its national leaders and its
chapters, have –
(1) exhorted Negroes to be ready to "kill for freedom;" (Lincoln O. Lynch)
(2) taken a "Get out of Vietnam" war protest stand nationally and has
participated at the chapter level in nearly every major anti-Vietnam war demonstration;
(3) attempted to unlawfully black traffic leading to the World's Fair in New York City
in 1964;
(4) attempted to make a "citizen's arrest" of N.Y. Mayor Robert Wagner
immediately before the Harlem riot of 1964.
Statements:
FLOYD McKISSICK, THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, OCTOBER 1, 1967, P. 101:
"'As long as the white man has all the power and money, nothing will happen because
we have nothing. The only way to achieve meaningful change is to take power.'"
[Emphasis added.]
ROBERT CARSON (CHAIRMAN, BROOKLYN CORE), THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, OCTOBER 1,
1967, P. 104:
"'We will work on our land by day and plan at night for that day when the Negroes and
the black people will call us from our forced exile to lead the vanguard, to structure
the change which must come about, if we members of the black race are to survive in this
country.'"
WILLARD D. DIXON, JR., EDITOR, THE BLACK DISPATCH, A CORE PUBLICATION FOR THE
BALTIMORE TARGET CITY PROJECT, AS QUOTED IN THE BALTIMORE SUN, NOVEMBER 30,
1967, P. C-6:
"'The police will be barred completely from the ghetto or else suffer the
ultimate penalty.'
"'The vigilantes will become the legitimate law enforcement agency in the
black community'..."
NATION OF ISLAM
(ALSO KNOWN AS MUSLIM MOSQUE, INC., AND BLACK MUSLIMS)
National headquarters of the Nation of Islam is located at the Central Mosque in
Chicago, Ill. (5335 Greenwood Avenue, Chicago, Ill.), and is the home of Elijah Muhammad
(Poole), the "Messenger of Allah."
Origin: 1931 in Detroit, Michigan
An ex-convict, W. D. Fard (also known as Ford) actually organized the sect with the help
of Elijah Poole, a Georgia farm worker. Fard had been released from San Quentin Federal
Prison after serving out the term of a narcotics conviction. Fard left Detroit after
his followers offered a human sacrifice in 1933. His whereabouts have been unknown
since that time. Poole then began teaching that he was the messenger of Allah and that
Fard was Allah who had come and gone. Poole served a prison term as a WWII draft evader.
Purpose: Elijah Muhammad Poole claims to have discovered the lost
Nation of Islam at the time Allah (Fard) instructed him to rescue the American Negro
from his "enslavement" by Christianity and Western culture. The Black
Muslims believe that the white man is the devil incarnate and integration with the white
man is refused on this basis.
In testimony before the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations on February
16, 1967, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover stated that the Nation of Islam (NOI) was an
"all-Negro, violently antigovernment and antiwhite organization." Mr. Hoover
characterized the NOI as "a very real threat to the internal security of the
Nation."
Organization: About 70 mosques in as many cities with "an active
membership of about 5,500."
Key Leaders: Elijah Muhammad Poole – messenger of Allah
Raymond X Sharrieff (real name Raymond Hatchett) – national commander of the Fruit
of Islam and son-in-law of Elijah Muhammad
Publication: Muhammad Speaks (published twice monthly)
Published by Muhammad's Mosque #2
634 E. 79th Street, Chicago, Ill. 600619
Alternate address: 5335 S. Greenwood Avenue, Chicago, Ill.
Activities: The Nation of Islam (NOI), through its leadership and
newspaper, consistently urged Negroes to refuse to be drafted into the armed services
of the U.S. on grounds NOI members do not consider themselves U.S. citizens in the sense
of the word.
Statements:
ELIJAH MUHAMMAD, "BEWARE OF FALSE PROMISES, SEPARATION OR DEATH!" MUHAMMAD
SPEAKS, JULY 5, 1963, P. 9:
"You send armies of heavily-armed policemen to slay the unarmed so-called Negores [sic].
Does this act of murder of unarmed people show that you are brave or cowards?
You, like your fathers, hate and despise your slaves, and you beat and murder them daily.
And after such inhuman treatment you want them to love you so that you may carry out your
evil doings on them without resistance."
EDITORIAL, "CAPTIVE NATIONS WEEK," MUHAMMAD SPEAKS, AUGUST 2, 1963, P. 9:
"Perhaps some sort of Nobel Prize for 'Hypocrisy' should go to those lily-white
souls who have the effrontery to conduct 'Captive Nation's Week,' a memorial dedicated
to concern for the eventual 'freeing' of other white souls said to be 'enslaved' behind
the Iron Curtain in the midst of the current race crisis."
ELIJAH MUHAMMAD, "THE MUSLIM PROGRAM," MUHAMMAD SPEAKS, JUNE 4, 1965,
PP. 23, 24:
"We want the government of the United States to exempt our people from ALL taxation
as long as we are deprived of equal justice under the laws of the land."
"We believe that we who declared ourselves to be righteous Muslims, should not
participate in wars which takes the lives of humans. We do not believe this nation should
force us to take part in such wars, for we have nothing to gain from it unless America
agrees to give us the necessary territory wherein we may have something to fight for."
ELIJAH MUHAMMAD, MUHAMMAD SPEAKS, JULY 9, 1965, P. 1:
"I have warned you that the Catholic religion, which means the whole of Christianity,
is one of the worst enemies of the so-called Negro in the world.
"These people and their religion are so terrible and evil that the Bible (Revelations
of John) gave them the name, while prophesying of them, as the 'beast.' The head of the
church (Pope) is referred to as the 'dragon' who aided the 'beast,' the ruler, (President
of the United States) and gave him the knowledge of how to destroy the people.
Rev. 13:4."
ELIJAH MUHAMMAD, MUHAMMAD SPEAKS, JULY 30, 1965, P. 1:
"Don't be deceived because you saw President Johnson, at his inaugural ball, dancing
with a black woman, a descendant of his great grandparents' slaves. Why didn't we see
her husband dancing with the President's white wife?"
ELIJAH MUHAMMAD, MESSAGE TO THE BLACKMAN, P. 313:
"Arthur R. Gottschalk, state senator, 8th district, Park Forest (Ill.), wrote our
National Secretary, John Ali, asking him and my followers to disavow and repudiate
publicly the truth Allah has revealed to me of the Caucasian race, the truth of them
being real devils and our (the Black Nation's) open enemies."
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