African Blood Brotherhood
Encyclopedia
The African Blood Brotherhood for African Liberation and Redemption (ABB) was a radical 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 the model of the secret society
. The group's socialist orientation caught the attention of the fledgling American communist
movement and soon evolved into a propaganda arm of the Communist Party of America. The group was terminated in the early 1920s.
section of New York City
. The movement included a substantial number of immigrants from the British West Indies
and other islands from the Caribbean
region, who, having been raised and educated as part of a racial majority population in their homelands, had found themselves thrust into the position of an oppressed racial minority
in America. As products of the unequal system of colonialism
, many of these newcomers to America were predisposed to hostility towards capitalism
and the notion of empire-building
.
One of these transplants from the Caribbean was Cyril Briggs
, born in 1888 on the island of Nevis
and an immigrant to Harlem from the summer of 1905. In 1912, Briggs was hired as a journalist
by one of he black community's leading newspapers, the New York Amsterdam News, where he remained throughout the years of the First World War
. Inspired by the rhetoric of "self-determination
" espoused by President Woodrow Wilson
, in September 1918 Briggs launched a monthly publication of his own called The Crusader as a means to promote the idea of the repatriation of blacks to a decolonized Africa
, an idea akin to the contemporary notion of Zionism
.
The Crusader initially was the official organ of a group called the Hamitic League of the World
, established by a businessman from Omaha, Nebraska
named George Wells Parker
. Parker published articles in the journal proclaiming that Africa was the cradle of civilization and arguing the superiority of the black race, contributing financially to the publication that was the vehicle for his views.
In February 1919, the orientation of Briggs and the Crusader began to shift, however, as parallels were drawn between the plight of black workers and impoverished working class
whites who had immigrated to America from Europe
. Over ensuing months Briggs began to see capitalism
itself as the villain, arguing in favor of a common cause and common action by workers of all races.
The Crusader would eventually reach a total readership of 36,000 persons, mostly in Harlem.
." Returning soldiers from European battlefields, including blacks with heightened expectations of freedom and equality and whites seeking a return to civilian employment and the status quo ante bellum
, and new immigrant black workers from the rural South formed a volatile mixture which erupted in mob violence in Chicago
, Omaha, and cities throughout the Midwest and South.
In response to these attacks, The Crusader advocated armed self-defense. Politically, Briggs drew comparisons between government attacks on white and black radicals. He identified capitalism as the underlying cause of oppression of poor people of all races. While endorsing a Marxist analysis, The Crusader advocated a separate organization of African-Americans to defend against racist attacks in the United States, and likened this to Africans' combating colonialism abroad.
In September 1919, The Crusader announced the formation of a new organization called the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), to serve as a self-defense organization for blacks threatened by race riots
and lynchings
.
Not long afterwards, Briggs began to forge connections with pioneer black American Communists like the Surinam-born Otto Huiswoud
and Jamaican poet and writer Claude McKay
. These in turn connected Briggs and his publication with native-born white Communists like Robert Minor
and Rose Pastor Stokes
, who took a strong interest in the so-called "Negro Question." Briggs would join the Communist Party himself in 1921.
. ABB leaders Briggs and Claude McKay
participated in the UNIA's 1920 and 1921 international conferences in New York. At the second conference, McKay arranged for Rose Pastor Stokes
, a white leader of the Communist Party
, to address the assembly.
The ABB became highly critical of Garvey following the apparent failure of the Black Star Line
and Garvey's July 1921 Atlanta meeting with Grand Kleagle Clarke of the Ku Klux Klan
. In June 1921, The Crusader announced that it had become the official organ of the African Blood Brotherhood. Arguing that the UNIA was doomed unless it developed new leadership, the magazine sought to convert the UNIA's membership to the ABB. In seeking to replace the UNIA, the ABB competed with Randolph's socialist publication The Messenger
, which had called for Garvey's expulsion from the United States. In return, Garvey called for his followers to disrupt meetings of these oppositional groups.
In addition to the dispute with Garvey, Briggs and the ABB were targeted for investigation by police and federal law enforcement agencies. Historian Theodore Kornweibel reports that the government began manipulating radical organizations in conjunction with legal prosecution under the pretence of disrupting opposition to World War I
. Following the end of the war, a government campaign against communists, anarchists, and other radicals was instituted at the direction of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer (himself the victim of two anarchist bomb attacks) in what came to be called the First Red Scare
. Government agents were secretly planted in the UNIA, ABB and The Messenger
. These agents provided intelligence to the Bureau of Investigation while in some case sabotaging meetings, and acting as agents provocateurs
.
The ABB enjoyed a period of notoriety following the Tulsa Riot
of 1921. Tulsa had an ABB chapter and news reports credited the organization with inspiring resistance to racist attacks.
The leadership of the Communist International, while largely ignorant about the particulars of the situation of blacks in the United States, did understand the importance of ethnic and other non-class forms of oppression, and pushed the early CP to pay more attention to blacks in the U.S. Before this intervention by the Comintern, the party had largely ignored blacks, and thus was not particularly attractive to black radicals like Briggs. Instead, it was the Bolshevik Revolution that attraced their attention.
Poet and ABB member Claude McKay has previously been active in the Left Communist Workers Socialist Federation
in London
and subsequently visited the Soviet Union
several times in the mid-1920s, writing about conferences of the Communist International for African-American audiences. McKay's book, The Negroes in America (published in Russian in 1924 but not in the U.S. until 1979) argued, against the official Communist position of the time, that the oppression of black people in the U.S. was not reducible to economic oppression, but was unique. He argued against the color blindness that the Communists had inherited from the Socialist Party.
McKay made argued vociferously for national self-determination in support of national independence for oppressed peoples, which to him meant an independent African-American government separate and apart from that of the United States. Subsequently, in the aftermath of the Sixth Comintern Congress in 1928, the CPUSA adopted a policy of national self-determination for African-Americans living in the Black Belt
of the American South. The policy was neglected after the Popular Front
period began in 1935, but was not formally replaced until 1959.
As the Communist Party developed, it regularized its structure along the lines called for by the Communist International (Comintern). Semi-independent organizations such as the African Blood Brotherhood with its divergent Afro-Marxist political theories were anathema to the Comintern and its Soviet leaders, who believed all communist and Marxist-Leninist organizations should be unified in a single communist party and platform in each nation under Moscow's overall direction and control. In the early 1920s the African Black Brotherhood was dissolved, with its members merged into the Workers Party of America
and later into the American Negro Labor Congress
. Many early ABB members, however, went on to be key CP cadres for decades.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
black liberation organization established in 1919 in New York City by journalist Cyril Briggs
Cyril Briggs
Cyril Valentine Briggs was an African Caribbean and African-American writer and communist political activist born in the West Indies. He was influenced by political ideas which emerged during and after the First World War.Briggs was born in 1888 in Nevis, a Caribbean island of the West Indies...
. The group was established as a propaganda organization built on the model of the secret society
Secret society
A secret society is a club or organization whose activities and inner functioning are concealed from non-members. The society may or may not attempt to conceal its existence. The term usually excludes covert groups, such as intelligence agencies or guerrilla insurgencies, which hide their...
. The group's socialist orientation caught the attention of the fledgling American communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
movement and soon evolved into a propaganda arm of the Communist Party of America. The group was terminated in the early 1920s.
Background
During the second decade of the 20th Century a socialist movement for the liberation of American blacks began to emerge in the HarlemHarlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
section of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. The movement included a substantial number of immigrants from the British West Indies
British West Indies
The British West Indies was a term used to describe the islands in and around the Caribbean that were part of the British Empire The term was sometimes used to include British Honduras and British Guiana, even though these territories are not geographically part of the Caribbean...
and other islands from the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
region, who, having been raised and educated as part of a racial majority population in their homelands, had found themselves thrust into the position of an oppressed racial minority
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
in America. As products of the unequal system of colonialism
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
, many of these newcomers to America were predisposed to hostility towards capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
and the notion of empire-building
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
.
One of these transplants from the Caribbean was Cyril Briggs
Cyril Briggs
Cyril Valentine Briggs was an African Caribbean and African-American writer and communist political activist born in the West Indies. He was influenced by political ideas which emerged during and after the First World War.Briggs was born in 1888 in Nevis, a Caribbean island of the West Indies...
, born in 1888 on the island of Nevis
Nevis
Nevis is an island in the Caribbean Sea, located near the northern end of the Lesser Antilles archipelago, about 350 km east-southeast of Puerto Rico and 80 km west of Antigua. The 93 km² island is part of the inner arc of the Leeward Islands chain of the West Indies...
and an immigrant to Harlem from the summer of 1905. In 1912, Briggs was hired as a journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
by one of he black community's leading newspapers, the New York Amsterdam News, where he remained throughout the years of the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. Inspired by the rhetoric of "self-determination
Self-determination
Self-determination is the principle in international law that nations have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or external interference...
" espoused by President Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
, in September 1918 Briggs launched a monthly publication of his own called The Crusader as a means to promote the idea of the repatriation of blacks to a decolonized Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
, an idea akin to the contemporary notion of Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
.
The Crusader initially was the official organ of a group called the Hamitic League of the World
Hamitic League of the World
Hamitic League of the World was an African American nationalist organization. Its declared aims were:The word Hamitic derives from Ham the son of Noah in the Old Testament. The organisation was founded in 1917 by George Wells Parker. In 1918 it published his pamphlet Children of the Sun...
, established by a businessman from Omaha, Nebraska
Omaha, Nebraska
Omaha is the largest city in the state of Nebraska, United States, and is the county seat of Douglas County. It is located in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about 20 miles north of the mouth of the Platte River...
named George Wells Parker
George Wells Parker
George Wells Parker was an African American political activist and writer who co-founded the Hamitic League of the World....
. Parker published articles in the journal proclaiming that Africa was the cradle of civilization and arguing the superiority of the black race, contributing financially to the publication that was the vehicle for his views.
In February 1919, the orientation of Briggs and the Crusader began to shift, however, as parallels were drawn between the plight of black workers and impoverished working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
whites who had immigrated to America from Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. Over ensuing months Briggs began to see capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
itself as the villain, arguing in favor of a common cause and common action by workers of all races.
The Crusader would eventually reach a total readership of 36,000 persons, mostly in Harlem.
Establishment of the organization
The summer of 1919 in America was a time of racial rioting and violence, remembered retrospectively by historians as the "Red SummerRed Summer of 1919
Red Summer describes the race riots that occurred in more than three dozen cities in the United States during the summer and early autumn of 1919. In most instances, whites attacked African Americans. In some cases groups of blacks fought back, notably in Chicago, where, along with Washington, D.C....
." Returning soldiers from European battlefields, including blacks with heightened expectations of freedom and equality and whites seeking a return to civilian employment and the status quo ante bellum
Status quo ante bellum
The term status quo ante bellum is Latin, meaning literally "the state in which things were before the war".The term was originally used in treaties to refer to the withdrawal of enemy troops and the restoration of prewar leadership. When used as such, it means that no side gains or loses...
, and new immigrant black workers from the rural South formed a volatile mixture which erupted in mob violence in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Omaha, and cities throughout the Midwest and South.
In response to these attacks, The Crusader advocated armed self-defense. Politically, Briggs drew comparisons between government attacks on white and black radicals. He identified capitalism as the underlying cause of oppression of poor people of all races. While endorsing a Marxist analysis, The Crusader advocated a separate organization of African-Americans to defend against racist attacks in the United States, and likened this to Africans' combating colonialism abroad.
In September 1919, The Crusader announced the formation of a new organization called the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), to serve as a self-defense organization for blacks threatened by race riots
Race riot
A race riot or racial riot is an outbreak of violent civil disorder in which race is a key factor. A phenomenon frequently confused with the concept of 'race riot' is sectarian violence, which involves public mass violence or conflict over non-racial factors.-United States:The term had entered the...
and lynchings
Lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
.
Not long afterwards, Briggs began to forge connections with pioneer black American Communists like the Surinam-born Otto Huiswoud
Otto Huiswoud
Otto Eduard Geradus Majelia Huiswoud was a Suriname-born political activist who was a charter member of the Communist Party of America. Huiswoud is regarded as the first black member of the American communist movement...
and Jamaican poet and writer Claude McKay
Claude McKay
Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance and wrote three novels: Home to Harlem , a best-seller which won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, Banjo , and Banana Bottom...
. These in turn connected Briggs and his publication with native-born white Communists like Robert Minor
Robert Minor
Robert Berkeley "Bob" Minor was political cartoonist, a radical journalist, and a leading member of the American Communist Party.-Early life:...
and Rose Pastor Stokes
Rose Pastor Stokes
Rose Harriet Pastor Stokes was a Jewish-American socialist activist, writer, birth control advocate, and feminist. She was active in labor politics and women's issues, and was a founding member of the Communist Party of America in 1919. She was a figure of some public notoriety for having married...
, who took a strong interest in the so-called "Negro Question." Briggs would join the Communist Party himself in 1921.
Conflicts with Marcus Garvey and the Bureau of Investigation
The ABB attempted to organize from inside the UNIA-ACL and advocated a policy of critical support for its leader, Marcus GarveyMarcus Garvey
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., ONH was a Jamaican publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League...
. ABB leaders Briggs and Claude McKay
Claude McKay
Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance and wrote three novels: Home to Harlem , a best-seller which won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, Banjo , and Banana Bottom...
participated in the UNIA's 1920 and 1921 international conferences in New York. At the second conference, McKay arranged for Rose Pastor Stokes
Rose Pastor Stokes
Rose Harriet Pastor Stokes was a Jewish-American socialist activist, writer, birth control advocate, and feminist. She was active in labor politics and women's issues, and was a founding member of the Communist Party of America in 1919. She was a figure of some public notoriety for having married...
, a white leader of the Communist Party
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
, to address the assembly.
The ABB became highly critical of Garvey following the apparent failure of the Black Star Line
Black Star Line
The Black Star Line was a shipping line incorporated by Marcus Garvey, organizer of the Universal Negro Improvement Association . The shipping line was supposed to facilitate the transportation of goods and eventually African Americans throughout the African global economy...
and Garvey's July 1921 Atlanta meeting with Grand Kleagle Clarke of the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
. In June 1921, The Crusader announced that it had become the official organ of the African Blood Brotherhood. Arguing that the UNIA was doomed unless it developed new leadership, the magazine sought to convert the UNIA's membership to the ABB. In seeking to replace the UNIA, the ABB competed with Randolph's socialist publication The Messenger
The Messenger Magazine
The Messenger was a political and literary magazine by and for African-American people in the early 20th century that was important in the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance. The Messenger was co-founded in New York City by Chandler Owen and A...
, which had called for Garvey's expulsion from the United States. In return, Garvey called for his followers to disrupt meetings of these oppositional groups.
In addition to the dispute with Garvey, Briggs and the ABB were targeted for investigation by police and federal law enforcement agencies. Historian Theodore Kornweibel reports that the government began manipulating radical organizations in conjunction with legal prosecution under the pretence of disrupting opposition to World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. Following the end of the war, a government campaign against communists, anarchists, and other radicals was instituted at the direction of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer (himself the victim of two anarchist bomb attacks) in what came to be called the First Red Scare
First Red Scare
In American history, the First Red Scare of 1919–1920 was marked by a widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism. Concerns over the effects of radical political agitation in American society and alleged spread in the American labor movement fueled the paranoia that defined the period.The First Red...
. Government agents were secretly planted in the UNIA, ABB and The Messenger
The Messenger Magazine
The Messenger was a political and literary magazine by and for African-American people in the early 20th century that was important in the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance. The Messenger was co-founded in New York City by Chandler Owen and A...
. These agents provided intelligence to the Bureau of Investigation while in some case sabotaging meetings, and acting as agents provocateurs
Agent provocateur
Traditionally, an agent provocateur is a person employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act...
.
The ABB enjoyed a period of notoriety following the Tulsa Riot
Tulsa Race Riot
The Tulsa race riot was a large-scale racially motivated conflict, May 31 - June 1st 1921, between the white and black communities of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in which the wealthiest African-American community in the United States, the Greenwood District also known as 'The Negro Wall St' was burned to the...
of 1921. Tulsa had an ABB chapter and news reports credited the organization with inspiring resistance to racist attacks.
Fusion with the Communist Party
The Crusader ceased publication in February 1922, following Garvey's indictment for mail fraud. Briggs continued to operate the Crusader News Service, providing news material to affiliated publications of the American black press. As cooperation with the Communist Party increased, the ABB ceased to recruit separately.The leadership of the Communist International, while largely ignorant about the particulars of the situation of blacks in the United States, did understand the importance of ethnic and other non-class forms of oppression, and pushed the early CP to pay more attention to blacks in the U.S. Before this intervention by the Comintern, the party had largely ignored blacks, and thus was not particularly attractive to black radicals like Briggs. Instead, it was the Bolshevik Revolution that attraced their attention.
Poet and ABB member Claude McKay has previously been active in the Left Communist Workers Socialist Federation
Workers Socialist Federation
The Workers' Socialist Federation was a socialist political party in the United Kingdom, led by Sylvia Pankhurst. Under many different names, it gradually broadened its politics from a focus on women's suffrage to eventually become a left communist grouping....
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and subsequently visited the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
several times in the mid-1920s, writing about conferences of the Communist International for African-American audiences. McKay's book, The Negroes in America (published in Russian in 1924 but not in the U.S. until 1979) argued, against the official Communist position of the time, that the oppression of black people in the U.S. was not reducible to economic oppression, but was unique. He argued against the color blindness that the Communists had inherited from the Socialist Party.
McKay made argued vociferously for national self-determination in support of national independence for oppressed peoples, which to him meant an independent African-American government separate and apart from that of the United States. Subsequently, in the aftermath of the Sixth Comintern Congress in 1928, the CPUSA adopted a policy of national self-determination for African-Americans living in the Black Belt
Black Belt (U.S. region)
The Black Belt is a region of the Southern United States. Although the term originally described the prairies and dark soil of central Alabama and northeast Mississippi, it has long been used to describe a broad agricultural region in the American South characterized by a history of plantation...
of the American South. The policy was neglected after the Popular Front
Popular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
period began in 1935, but was not formally replaced until 1959.
As the Communist Party developed, it regularized its structure along the lines called for by the Communist International (Comintern). Semi-independent organizations such as the African Blood Brotherhood with its divergent Afro-Marxist political theories were anathema to the Comintern and its Soviet leaders, who believed all communist and Marxist-Leninist organizations should be unified in a single communist party and platform in each nation under Moscow's overall direction and control. In the early 1920s the African Black Brotherhood was dissolved, with its members merged into the Workers Party of America
Workers Party of America
The Workers Party of America was the name of the legal party organization used by the Communist Party USA from the last days of 1921 until the middle of 1929. As a legal political party the Workers Party accepted affiliation from independent socialist groups such as the African Blood Brotherhood,...
and later into the American Negro Labor Congress
American Negro Labor Congress
The American Negro Labor Congress was established in 1925 by the Communist Party as a vehicle for advancing the rights of African-Americans, propagandizing for communism within the black community and recruiting African-American members for the party...
. Many early ABB members, however, went on to be key CP cadres for decades.
Membership
The ABB had a total membership of less than 3,000 members at its peak and it likely had only a few dozen truly active members.ABB Publications
- Cyril V. Briggs (ed.), The Crusader. August 1918-February 1922. Reprinted by Tuttle Publishing, 1987.
- "Programme of the African Blood Brotherhood," The Communist Review, vol. 2, no. 6 (April 1922).
Published material
- Eric Arnesen, Black Protest and the Great Migration : A Brief History with Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2002.
- Anthony Dawahare, Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature Between the Wars: A New Pandora's Box. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002.
- Michael C. Dawson, Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2003.
- Theodore Draper, The Roots of American Communism. New York: Viking Press, 1957.
- Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist. Chicago: Liberator Press, 1978.
- Robert A. Hill (ed.), The FBI's RACON: Racial Conditions in the United States during World War I. Ithaca, NY: Northeastern University Press, 1995.
- Robert A. Hill, "Racial and Radical: Cyril V. Briggs, The Crusader Magazine, and the African Blood Brotherhood, 1918-1922." Introductory essay to The Crusader. New York: Garland Publishing, 1987.
- Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth Century America. London: Verso Books, 1998.
- Shannon King, "Enter the New Negro: State Violence and Black Resistance during World War I and the 1920s," Binghamton Journal of History, Spring 2004.
- Theodore Kornweibel, Jr. "Investigate Everything": Federal Efforts to Compel Black Loyalty During World War I. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
- Theodore Kornweibel, Jr. Seeing Red: Federal Campaigns Against Black Militancy, 1919-1925. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.
- Ronald A. Kuykendall, "The African Blood Brotherhood, Independent Marxist During the Harlem Renaissance." The Western Journal of Black Studies, vol. 26, no. 1 (2002), pp. 16-21.
- Mark I. Solomon, The Cry Was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917-36. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998.
- Alan Wald, "African Americans, Culture and Communism (Part 1): National Liberation and Socialism," Against the CurrentAgainst the CurrentAgainst the Current could refer to:* Against the Current, the journal of the socialist group Solidarity * Against the Current, a 2009 film starring Joseph Fiennes, Elizabeth Reaser, and Justin Kirk...
, vol. 14, no.6, whole no. 84 (January/February 2000).
Unpublished material
- Maria Gertrudis van Enckevort, The Life and Work of Otto Huiswoud: Professional Revolutionary and Internationalist (1893–1961). Mona, Jamaica: University of the West Indies, 2000. PhD dissertation.
- Maurie I. Warren, Moses and the Messenger: The Crisis of Black Radicalism, 1921-1922. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1974. Bachelor's thesis.
- Jacob A. Zumoff, The Communist Party of the United States and the Communist International, 1919-1929. London: University of London, 2003. PhD dissertation.
- Research files on African-Americans and communism, 1919-1993, (Bulk 1919-1939). Created by Mark Solomon. Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. 4.25 linear feet (4 boxes).
- Theodore Kornweibel Research Papers, 1910-1960. Research materials assembled by Theodore Kornweibel. The collection consists of copies of FBI and other federal agency records, including case files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, detailed notecards, printed federal documents, and Kornweibel's correspondence with federal agencies. Newberry Library, Chicago.
External links
- African Blood Brotherhood documents, Early American Marxism website, www.marxisthistory.org/
- "Black and Red: A Journey Through Communism in the Black Community," www.tcnj.edu/
See also
- The Communist Party and African-AmericansThe Communist Party and African-AmericansThe Communist Party USA, historically and currently committed to complete racial equality in the United States, played a significant role in defending the rights of African-Americans during its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s....
- American Civil Rights Movement (1896-1954)American Civil Rights Movement (1896-1954)The Civil Rights Movement in the United States was a long, primarily nonviolent struggle to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans...
- Black Belt (U.S. region)Black Belt (U.S. region)The Black Belt is a region of the Southern United States. Although the term originally described the prairies and dark soil of central Alabama and northeast Mississippi, it has long been used to describe a broad agricultural region in the American South characterized by a history of plantation...
- Harry HaywoodHarry HaywoodHarry Haywood was a leading figure in both the Communist Party of the United States and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . He contributed major theory to Marxist thinking on the national question of African Americans in the United States...
- Alternative press (U.S. political left)Alternative press (U.S. political left)Under the broad heading of the alternative press are several subcategories including periodicals published by groups, movements, or individuals affiliated with the U.S. political left...
- Black separatismBlack separatismBlack separatism is a movement to create separate institutions for people of African descent in societies historically dominated by whites, particularly in the United States. Black separatists also often seek a separate homeland...
- Black nationalismBlack nationalismBlack nationalism advocates a racial definition of indigenous national identity, as opposed to multiculturalism. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all African nationalist ideologies are unity, and self-determination or independence from European society...