The Emergence of the Communist Perspective on the “Negro Question” in America

1919-1931 Part Two

Bibliographic Data

ID10489190
AuthorsOscar Berland (3005 Carlson Blvd. El Cerrito, CA 945390, corresponding author)
Year2000
Volume64
Issue2
Pages194-217
Publication date2000-04-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0036-8237 • E-ISSN: 1943-2801
PublisherGuilford Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/003682370006400204
OpenAlexW4413736206
LanguageEN
References cited10

For nearly a decade American Communists generally ignored the problems of African Americans, much as Socialists had done. The Comintern's involvement with national liberation movements and the activism of some “new Negro” militants put some pressure on the American Party to move into this area. But this did not challenge the Party's basic focus on the working class, against which all else was seen as a diversion. In 1928 the 6th Congress of the Comintern resolved that the Negro population of the “black belt” was a subject nation, thus capable of engen-dering a “national revolutionary movement,” and ordered the American Party to give work on the Negro question high priority. The Party eventually found in the “Scottsboro Case” an issue that made the situation of African Americans a matter of international concern for the first time since the Civil War, and locked it into the American radical/liberal political agenda. The first part of this article ( S & S , Winter 1999-2000) dealt with the situation before the 6th Congress; the present part ex-amines the Resolution and its consequences

Art · Communism · Perspective (graphical · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Law · Political Economy and Marxism · Race, History, and American Society

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