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"(5) The U.N.I.A. is chiefly composed of the most primitive and ignorant element of West Indian and American Negroes.. . ************** "(25) For the above reasons we advocate that the Attorney General use his full influence completely to disband and extirpate this vicious movement, and that he vigorously and speedily push the government's case against Marcus Garvey for using the mails to defraud ... its future meetings should be carefully watched by officers of the law and infractions promptly and severely punished." (47) The eight who signed this slavish appeal (Randolph dishonestly professed to know nothing about it) were: Chandler Owen - Co-editor of the Messenger and Randolph's closest political associate William Pickens - Field Secretary of the NAACP Robert Bagnall - NAACP Director of Branches Robert Abbott - Publisher of the Chicago Defender Julia Coleman - "Hair-Vim" cosmetics company John Nail - Real estate broker George W. Harris - N.Y. City Councilman, editor of the newspaper New York News Harry Pace - Pace Phonograph Company It is useful to examine this move. In practice it turned out that Randolph's grouping of moderate "socialists" - supposedly dedicated to overthrowing capitalism - were blocked with the liberal, pro-capitalist petit-bourgeois elements of the NAACP, and with the marginal Afrikan business interests who fed off the degradation of colonial oppression. And that in practice all these elenzents looked upon the U.S. Empire as their ultimate protector - against their own people. While it was obviously true that Randolph was an agent of U.S. imperialism, it wasn't true that he was a simple tool just following orders, such as a police informer might be. To understand neo-colonialism we have to see that Randolph represented a certain class viewpoirit - the viewpoint of a Munoz Marin in Puerto Rico or the young Mike Masaoka in the Japanese-American national minority. This is a viewpoint of the section of the petit-bourgeois that sees advancement and progress not from leaving the struggle, but from coopting it and using it as a bargaining tool in winning concessions from the Empire in return for loyal submission. It is only a seeming paradox that these activist petit-bourgeois elements encouraged - and needed - both democratic struggles and violent repression. They are the leaders that U.S. imperialism promotes to ensure that even Third-World protest and organization is ultimately loyal to it. A. Philip Randolph's career makes us recall Cabral's warning that: "imperialism is quite prepared to change both its men and its tactics in order to perpetuate itself.. .it will kill its own puppets when they no longer serve its purposes. If need be, it will even create a kind of socialism, which people may soon start calling 'neosocialism.' " (48) Randolph became a leading advocate of all- Afrikan unionism and political organizations. He publicly argued against integrated Civil Rights organizations, such as the NAACP, on the grounds that only Afrikans should decide how their struggle was conducted. But his goal was only to weld Afrikans together as a bloc so that he and his fellow pro-imperialist leaders could demand a price from the U.S. Empire in return for Afrikan submission. Randolph's integrationistic "socialism" was used to fill a void, to ideologically portray a far-off, glittering social vision to Afrikan workers that didn't relate to national liberation or breaking away from the U.S. Empire. Randolph had been indoctrinated in Euro- Amerikan social-democracy and settler unionism. That is, he shared the Euro-Amerikan reformist view on how social betterment for Afrikans should take place. Randolph argued that Afrikans could be protected by unionism and Civil Rights if they carefully convinced settlers of their nonviolent submissiveness and their desire to be ruled by Euro-Amerikans. While the Messenger abused both communism and nationalism in print in the most vulgar and crude ways, towards A.F.L. President Samuel Gompers. - who was a segregationist, an open advocate of white supremacy and a public spokesman of the doctrine of the "racial" inferiority of Afrikans - Randolph was never less than humble and praising. In 1924, when Gompers died, the Messenger cxcused him as a "diplomatically silent" friend. Randolph feared and hated the Garvey Movement, not because of its faults, but because of its virtues. All this is made abundantly clear by Randolph's relationship to Gomper's successor, A.F.L. President I STRIKE I To All Pullman Porters and Maids - -- - -- - . . - On account of the refusal of the Pullman Company to settle the dispute on Recognition of Wages and Kules governing Working Conditions with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porten, a strike has been declared and shall be enforced on all Pullman Cars effective [ FRIDAY, JUNE 8th 12 O'clock Noon I For further information call Glendale / 6373. You are requested to attend the 1 ! meetings to be held each evening from 4 / until 6 o'clock at 2382 18th street. 1 BENNIE SMITH Fkld oraimin? BSCP strike notice. Detroit, June 7, 1928. Original in 116 Chicago Historical Society.
Midd &Ff- IT YW r*0 A INSTEAD THUMe ff ANY- THE ONLY THl- MR. MIT- CHELL WILL R U V 1 14 CARD INTHE mOTUERU000 OF SLEEPING CAa FMTLR!?4 William Green. Morehouse College Professor Brailsford Brazeal admitted in his laudatory 1946 book on the Porter's Union: "Randolph, although a socialist, had by this time convinced Green that pullman porters were anxious to demonstrate that the Negro would help to further the program of American workers through conventional channels. Randolph had condemned the Communists and their tactics in the Messenger.. .AN this niust have reaffirmed Green's convictions that here were the man and the organization that could serve as an instrument for rallying Negro workers under the hegemony of the Federation. " (49) <strong>Bay</strong>ard Rustin, Randolph's leading disciple, has said of him: "...he realized that separatism, whether espoused by Marcus Garvey or latter day nationalists, is grounded in fantasy and myth despite its emotional appeal to an oppressed people ... Black people, he realized, could never advanced without the good feelings and assistance of many whites." (50) And now we can see the answer to the question that Dr. King raised. There was only one A. Philip Randolph because U.S. imperialism only wanted one. Randolph was pushed forward and made a big leader by his Euro-Amerikan mentors. When we look at his magazine, the Messenger, during the years when it was fighting Garveyism, we see in issue after issue large "solidarity" advertisement; paid for by the Euro-Amerikan radicals who ran the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union. Social-democratic settler labor was indirectly subsidizing Randolph to attack nationalism from within the Afrikan Nation - to be their agent and do what they from the outside could not. His whole career was similarly aided and arranged. Imperialism needed its own militant-sounding Afrikan leaders. A. Philip Randolph's actual record as President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters is instructive. He BSCP cartoon, Messenger (0ct.-Nov., 1925), 35 1. and Chandler Owen were approached by a committee of porters, who were looking for an Afrikan intellectual who could help them to organize a union. The porters' previous attempts had been clumsy. Several efforts had been smashed by the company in a series of firings. Randolph took up the opportunity, and in 1925 the union was formed. The Messenger became the official journal of the Brotherhood. In terms of leading labor struggles, Randolph was a peculiar "success." After years of difficult building, the new 7,000 member union had called for a coast-to-coast Pullman strike in 1928. A mood of tense anticipation was prevalent among the porters. Knowing that the settler train crews wouldn't honor their strike and would try to roll the 117 trains anyway, large groups of Afrikan workers began ar-
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The minority puts a dogmatic view i
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U.S. imperialism would rather that
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The final point we must make is tha
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carpenter would earn in a day. When
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while the evil planter and the Lond
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society of settlers. The large majo
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11. STRUGGLES & ALLIANCES The popul
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, . , in short what wee did in that
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more nearly fascistic. Bacon was th
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"democracy" through wresting their
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111. THE CONTRADICTIONS OF NATION &
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The Charleston conspiracy of 1822,
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IV. SETTLER TRADE- UNIONISM 1. The
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Cherokee Nation on "Trail of Tears
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taxation and other measures to give
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gospel truth by most settlers that
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their places as barbers and servant
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is a historic engineering achieveme
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Chinaman always have something to e
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While marching through a region, th
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off the former plantations at bayon
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hostility, can be expected of two-t
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the early 1830's, continued and gat
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dustries, trades, and nationalities
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Irish, (2) German, and (3) many sma
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On the other hand, there is the ten
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ed bribery: "The truth is this: dur
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narionally-disrincf strata (literal
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2. Settler Opposition To Imperialis
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His political thought was that wher
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fine and resumed his post as U.S. c
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workers from Southern and Eastern E
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and "Break up the narionalisric, ra
Page 68 and 69: While the I.W.W. was backward in ma
Page 70 and 71: As the Great Powers were drawn into
Page 72 and 73: The I.W.W. publicly criticised thos
Page 74 and 75: Magon once angrily wrote his brothe
Page 76 and 77: The authorities did not move to "re
Page 78 and 79: VII. BREAKTHROUGH OF THE C.I.O. It
Page 80 and 81: danger, because alcohol was needed
Page 82 and 83: Millions of settlers believed that
Page 84 and 85: President Roosvelt privately said i
Page 86 and 87: importantly, to break up the rising
Page 88 and 89: colored men whom they could guarant
Page 90 and 91: practiced segregation on a broad sc
Page 92 and 93: VIII. IMPERIALIST WAR & THE NEW AME
Page 94 and 95: This remarkable editorial was accur
Page 96 and 97: Japan would be forced into a "fairl
Page 98 and 99: tler reunification. The stormy conf
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Page 102 and 103: strategy to its limits, the U.S. Em
Page 104 and 105: I t I In 1921 the African Blood Bro
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Page 108 and 109: Negro is the goat of the STFU. " Al
Page 110 and 111: The support movement took many form
Page 112 and 113: These agricultural workers paid $8.
Page 114 and 115: the whole Afrikan population within
Page 116 and 117: with a Negro World was five years a
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Page 122 and 123: workers would have to wear an arm b
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Page 128 and 129: and resisters. But this popular cur
Page 130 and 131: who had once started it. In the ear
Page 132 and 133: activists, former Communist members
Page 134 and 135: Campos. Afterwards, Foster wrote a
Page 136 and 137: Toure related this to the fact that
Page 138 and 139: XII. THE GLOBAL PLANTATION 1. The P
Page 140 and 141: presidents..five secretaries did th
Page 142 and 143: The maquilas do not constitute any
Page 144 and 145: The shortfall only exists because a
Page 146 and 147: For Every Party, There's a Morning
Page 148 and 149: While there are numbers of Euro-Ame
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Page 152 and 153: estricted crafts rose at a rate 3 t
Page 154 and 155: collection, swimming pools, better
Page 156 and 157: children. For them the flavor is so
Page 158 and 159: XIV. TACTICAL & STRATEGIC The settl
Page 160 and 161: Since Afrikan miners were perhaps 2
Page 162 and 163: man, would ask of you to dispel1 ai
Page 164 and 165: Coal From South Africa Apartheid in
Page 166 and 167: Besides, he continued, to be overly
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INTRODUCTION 1. AU references to di
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26. ROGER W. SHUGG. Origins of Clas
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162-166. 16. FRANCIS PERKINS. The R
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6. New York Times. September 18, 19
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BALTIMORE, APRIL, 1968 - I'm not go
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