Even before the the Russian
Revolution, or W.W. 1, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were distinguished from
all other tendencies in the international socialist and labor movement
by their concern with the problems of oppressed nations and national
minorities, and affirmative support of their struggles for freedom,
independence and the right of self-determination. The Bolsheviks gave
this support to all “people without equal rights” sincerely and
earnestly, but there was nothing “philanthropic” about it. They also
recognized the great revolutionary potential in the situation of
oppressed peoples and nations, and saw them as important allies of the
international working class in the revolutionary struggle against
capitalism.
After November 1917 this new doctrine—with special emphasis on the
Negroes—began to be transmitted to the American communist movement with
the authority of the Russian Revolution behind it. The Russians in the
Comintern started on the American communists with the harsh, insistent
demand that they shake off their own unspoken prejudices, pay attention
to the special problems and grievances of the American Negroes, go to
work among them, and champion their cause in the white community.
It took time for the Americans, raised in a different tradition, to
assimilate the new Leninist doctrine. But the Russians followed up year
after year, piling up the arguments and increasing the pressure on the
American communists until they finally learned and changed, and went to
work in earnest. And the change in the attitude of the American
communists, gradually effected in the ’20s, was to exert a profound
influence in far wider circles in the later years.
By the 1930's, Communist Party influence and action were not restricted
to the issue of “civil rights” in general. They also operated powerfully
to reshape the labor movement and help the Black workers gain a place
in it which had previously been denied. The Black workers themselves,
who had done their share in the great struggles to create the new
unions, were pressing their own claims more aggressively than ever
before. But they needed help, they needed allies. The Communist Party
militants stepped into this role at the critical point in the formative
days of the new unions. The policy and agitation of the Communist Party
at that time did more, 10 times over, than any other to help the Black
workers to rise to a new status of at least semi-citizenship in the new
labour movement created in the ’30s under the banner of the CIO.
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