American Negro Labor Congress
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The American Negro Labor Congress was established in 1925 by the Communist Party as a vehicle for advancing the rights of
African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...
s, propagandizing for
communism Communism () is a political sociology, sociopolitical, political philosophy, philosophical, and economic ideology, economic ideology within the history of socialism, socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a ...
within the black community and recruiting African American members for the party. The organization attacked the
segregationist Racial segregation is the separation of people into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life. Segregation can involve the spatial separation of the races, and mandatory use of different institutions, such as schools and hospitals by peopl ...
practices of many of the unions affiliated with the
American Federation of Labor The American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L.) was a national federation of labor unions in the United States that continues today as the AFL-CIO. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions eager to provide mutual ...
; it also campaigned against
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, the disfranchisement of black Americans, and
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were U.S. state, state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, "Jim Crow (character), Ji ...
. The group was renamed the League of Struggle for Negro Rights in 1930.


Organizational history


Background

The first
mass organization A communist front (or a mass organization in communist parlance) is a political organization identified as a front organization, allied with or under the effective control of a communist party, the Communist International or other communist organi ...
of the American Communist Party dedicated to advancing issues of importance to American blacks and building a party presence within the black community was the
African Blood Brotherhood The African Blood Brotherhood for African Liberation and Redemption (ABB) was a U.S. black liberation organization established in 1919 in New York City by journalist Cyril Briggs. The group was established as a propaganda organization built on t ...
(ABB). The ABB was established independently of the nascent Communist movement but had been formally brought under party auspices as a byproduct of its need for funding. In 1923 the tiny New York City-based organization was formally integrated into the structure of the Workers Party of America, as the party was then known.Mark Solomon, ''The Cry Was Unity: Communists and African-Americans, 1917–36.'' Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 1998; p. 29. The group's handful of activists had proven insufficient to maintain critical mass, however, and by 1924 the ABB had been virtually dissolved. American Communists had been ineffectual in its efforts to build a significant mass organization among American blacks during the first half decade of the movement's existence and the
Communist International The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internationa ...
prodded the Workers Party to begin a new initiative to establish a group able to mobilize black workers. The result of this push was the establishment of a new organization called the American Negro Labor Congress. According to historian Maria Gertrudis van Enckevort, archival evidence indicates that the idea for the new mass organization directed to American blacks came from Lovett Fort-Whiteman, a national organizer for the ABB who had been sent to Moscow by the summer of 1924 for
ideological An ideology is a set of beliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certain knowledge, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones". Form ...
and technical training. Fort-Whiteman complained in an October 1924 letter to head of the Comintern
Gregory Zinoviev Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev (born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky; – 25 August 1936) was a Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician. A prominent Old Bolshevik, Zinoviev was a close associate of Vladimir Lenin prior to 1917 and a leadi ...
about the lack of work being conducted by the American Communist and repeated a call to act on a plan he had submitted to the Far Eastern Section of the Comintern seeking convocation of an "American Negro Labor Congress." This idea found support among Comintern decision-makers and in December 1924 a communication was passed on to the Workers Party of America, current name of the Communist Party, stating "it has been proposed to call an American Negro Labour Congress at Chicago, to be held sometime during the summer" and seeking the American party's advice.


Convention call

The call for the American Negro Labor Congress was issued late in the spring of 1925 with the proposal emanating from the Workers (Communist) Party.Philip S. Foner and James S. Allen (eds), ''American Communism and Black Americans: A Documentary History, 1919–1929.'' Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987; p. 109. Although the convention call vaguely established "some time in the summer" for the time of the gathering, in actuality the founding convention did not take place in Chicago until October 25, 1925. There were 17 signatories of the convention call, of whom six were members of the Workers Party.Earl Ofari Hutchinson, ''Blacks and Reds: Race and Class in Conflict, 1919–1990.'' East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1995; p. 29. The communists sought to use front tactics by downplaying their own presence and casting the ANLC as a multi-tendency organization, thereby reducing the chance of the group's ability to challenge the
NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American civil rights organization formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du&nbs ...
and the Marcus Garvey's UNIA as the paramount voice of the black working class. The convention call indicated that delegates must represent black or interracial trade unions, farm workers, or unorganized factory workers — although provision was made for participation by "individual advocates" engaged in promoting "the cause of the working class." The man most directly responsible for the idea of the new group, Lovett Fort-Whiteman was named its national organizer.Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, 78th Congress, 2nd Session, ''Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States: Appendix — Part IX, Communist Front Organizations.'' Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1944; pp. 1282–1283. Fort-Whiteman had been a delegate to the
5th World Congress of the Comintern Fifth is the ordinal form of the number five. Fifth or The Fifth may refer to: * Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as in the expression "pleading the Fifth" * Fifth Avenue * Fifth column, a political term * Fifth disease, a conta ...
in 1924 and the recipient of a crash course in party organization at the
International Lenin School The International Lenin School (ILS) () was an official training school operated in Moscow, Soviet Union, by the Communist International from May 1926 to 1938. It was resumed after the Second World War and run by the Communist Party of the Soviet ...
in
Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...
and was regarded as one of the party's leading black cadres. American-born and educated at the
Tuskegee Institute Tuskegee University (Tuskegee or TU; formerly known as the Tuskegee Institute) is a Private university, private, Historically black colleges and universities, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama, United States. It was f ...
, the veteran former member of the
Socialist Party of America The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was a socialist political party in the United States formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party of America ...
Fort-Whiteman had been selected to lead the new group over other top black Communists, including
Cyril Briggs Cyril Valentine Briggs (May 28, 1888 – October 18, 1966) was an African-Caribbean American writer and communist political activist. Briggs founded the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), a small but historically important radical organization de ...
, Richard B. Moore, and
Otto Huiswoud Otto Eduard Gerardus Majella Huiswoud (October 28, 1893 – February 20, 1961) was a Surinamese political activist who was a charter member of the Communist Party of America. Huiswoud is regarded as the first black member of the American co ...
. Fort-Whiteman, who sometimes wrote under the
pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's o ...
"James Jackson," was the advocate of the idea of convening an "American-Negro Labor Congress" at Chicago to bring together black workers from around the country and had written to Moscow in an attempt to win support for the idea from the Far-Eastern Section of the Comintern. Fort-Whiteman sought "to approach the negro on his own mental grounds" by concentrating activity on fighting
racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race or ethnicity over another. It may also me ...
in American society, the prevalence of which Fort-Whiteman believed dulled black Americans' sense of
class consciousness In Marxism, class consciousness is the set of beliefs that persons hold regarding their social class or economic rank in society, the structure of their class, and their common class interests. According to Karl Marx, class consciousness is an awa ...
and immunized them to calls for
class struggle In political science, the term class conflict, class struggle, or class war refers to the economic antagonism and political tension that exist among social classes because of clashing interests, competition for limited resources, and inequali ...
. The call for the founding convention consequently touched upon not only matters of importance to labor in general but also spoke to specifically racial interests such as the "abolition of Jim Crowism," an end to electoral restrictions disfranchising blacks, enforcement of "the right of the Negro to equal accommodations with whites in all theaters, restaurants, hotels, etc.," an end to discrimination in education, and Congressional action to make
lynching Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged or convicted transgressor or to intimidate others. It can also be an extreme form of i ...
a federal crime.


Establishment

The founding convention of the American Negro Labor Congress opened on the evening of Sunday, October 25, 1925, with a mass meeting which heard the reports of national organizer Fort-Whitman and national secretary H.V. Williams. Fort-Whitman's
keynote speech A keynote in public speaking is a talk that establishes a main underlying theme. In corporate or commercial settings, greater importance is attached to the delivery of a keynote speech or keynote address. The keynote establishes the framework fo ...
declared that the new organization was established "to gather, to mobilize, and to coordinate into a fighting machine the most enlightened and militant and class-conscious workers of the race" in support of concrete objectives. Approximately 40 delegates attended the founding congress of the ANLC, which was organized around the
slogan A slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a clan or a political, commercial, religious, or other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose, with the goal of persuading members of the public or a more defined target group ...
"Organization is the first step to freedom.""Proceedings of the American Negro Labor Congress," ''Daily Worker,'' October 28, 1925. Reprinted in Foner and Allen (eds), ''American Communism and Black Americans: A Documentary History, 1919–1929,'' pp. 112–114. Delegate Otto Huiswood, a prominent black Communist party activist from New York, emphasized the need to bring black workers into the
trade union A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...
s of the
American Federation of Labor The American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L.) was a national federation of labor unions in the United States that continues today as the AFL-CIO. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions eager to provide mutual ...
, declaring that if the established unions could not be
racially integrated Racial integration, or simply integration, includes desegregation (the process of ending systematic racial segregation), leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportunity regardless of Race (classification of human beings), race, and t ...
, it would fall to black workers to establish parallel unions of their own. The October 1925 founding convention passed resolutions demanding "the full equality of the Negro people in the social system of the United States, and everywhere.""Full Equality," ''Daily Worker,'' October 28, 1925. Reprinted in Foner and Allen (eds), ''American Communism and Black Americans: A Documentary History, 1919–1929,'' pp. 118–119. An end to Jim Crow laws, segregation, electoral discrimination, and discrimination in public education was demanded and discrimination in housing and public accommodation duly noted as part of a demand for "full social equality for the Negro people. The
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to KKK or Klan, is an American Protestant-led Christian terrorism, Christian extremist, white supremacist, Right-wing terrorism, far-right hate group. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction era, ...
was condemned and the exclusion of black jurors from the juries picked for the trials of black defendants was sharply criticized, as was continued segregation in the United States military. At the founding convention was announced that 10 American blacks were already in Moscow enrolled at the University of the Toilers of the East, where they were ostensibly being trained for work in the Soviet "diplomatic service."Hutchinson, ''Blacks and Reds,'' p. 31. The delegates also heard an enthusiastic speech delivered by "Bad Bishop" William Montgomery Brown, who hammered the capitalist class and declared that "the Christian church was started by workers and you workers must take it back." Behind the scenes the governing National Executive Committee of the ANLC was instructed by the Comintern to convene a "World Race Conference," in an effort to internationalize the black liberation movement — a repetition of an unsuccessful effort by the Comintern to hold an international race conference made in 1922. Such a congress was to be held with a view to establishing a world organization of black workers and farmers which would unite exploited colonial populations to overthrow
imperialism Imperialism is the maintaining and extending of Power (international relations), power over foreign nations, particularly through expansionism, employing both hard power (military and economic power) and soft power (diplomatic power and cultura ...
, the Comintern indicated. The Comintern also participated in the ANLC financially, budgeting $2,500 for organizers' salaries, travel expenses, and the production of pamphlets and leaflets.Minkah Makalani, ''In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917–1939.'' Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011; p. 120. This was no great change in previous practice, as from the perspective of the Comintern and the American Communist Party the ANLC merely replaced the moribund African Blood Brotherhood, an entity which was a previous recipient of financial support.


Reaction of white labor movement

The officialdom of the American Federation of Labor was hostile to the new ANLC, with AFL President William Green cautioning black unionists that they were "being led into a trap."Foner and Allen (eds), ''American Communism and Black Americans: A Documentary History, 1919–1929,'' p. 116. Green charged that the Communists were attempting to foster "race hatred into the lives" of African Americans and to trick blacks into believing that the revolutionary overthrow of the American government and its replacement with a Soviet republic was the sole solution to their social ills. Green's attitude drew return fire from the ANLC, which called the AFL chief's position "clearly erroneous, harmful, and prejudicial to the best interests of the American labor movement.""William Green's Attack on ANLC: Statement of American Negro Labor Congress,"' ''Daily Worker,'' October 29, 1925. Reprinted in Foner and Allen (eds), ''American Communism and Black Americans: A Documentary History, 1919–1929,'' pp. 116–117. Despite such protestations, the mainstream press of America echoed Green's hostile sentiments, with the ''Chicago Tribune'' accusing the Communists of attempting to "stir up race hatred and disorder" and the ''Philadelphia Record'' rejecting the entire idea that American blacks could be "bolshevized" as "ridiculously childish."


Discord within ANLC

In addition to external hostility, a spirit of factionalism and personal strife existed within the ranks of the ANLC. The selection of Fort-Whiteman as leader by the Comintern had proven controversial, as he seemed to leapfrog long-time party activists with impeccable bona fides, including Moore, Huiswoud, and Briggs. This situation was exacerbated by Fort-Whiteman's own growing sense of self-importance, his tendency to make decisions by fiat, and his propensity to wear grandiose Russian garb.Makalani, ''In the Cause of Freedom,'' p. 122. A steady stream of complaints about Fort-Whiteman to the Negro Commission of the Workers (Communist) Party followed, sidetracking the organization's work. The Workers (Communist) Party also mishandled the ANLC's operations, moving the group's headquarters from the black
Chicago South Side The South Side is one of the three major sections of the city of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Geographically, it is the largest of the sections of the city, with the other two being the North and West Sides. It radiates and lies south o ...
to an all-white neighborhood, failing to issue the group's newspaper in a timely manner, and making overly clear in the group's literature its connection to the widely distrusted national communist organization. The result was a very nearly stillborn ANLC, with only seven functioning branches by the summer of 1926.


Activities

The official organ of the American Negro Labor Congress was a newspaper called ''The Negro Champion,'' published in New York. In 1929 this was succeeded by a new publication, a magazine called ''The Liberator.''World Cat title search
.


Dissolution

In 1930 the American Negro Labor Congress was terminated through the initiative of the Communist Party and replaced by a new organization called the League of Struggle for Negro Rights.


See also

*
African Blood Brotherhood The African Blood Brotherhood for African Liberation and Redemption (ABB) was a U.S. black liberation organization established in 1919 in New York City by journalist Cyril Briggs. The group was established as a propaganda organization built on t ...
*
Colored Conventions Movement The Colored Conventions Movement, or Black Conventions Movement, was a series of national, regional, and state conventions held irregularly during the decades preceding and following the American Civil War. The delegates who attended these conve ...


Footnotes


Publications

* ''Constitution and Program of the American Negro Labor Congress: Adopted at its First Annual Convention, Chicago, Ill., October 25–31, 1925.'' Chicago, IL: American Negro Labor Congress, 1925. {{Authority control Organizations established in 1925 1930 disestablishments in the United States African-American history between emancipation and the civil rights movement African Americans' rights organizations Communist Party USA mass organizations 1925 establishments in the United States African-American trade unions