revolutionary action movement (ram) - Michael Schwartz Library

19
explains his impressions as a student in the Soviet Union and the struggles
against white chauvinism which took place in the early 1930's inside the
Communist Party . He goes on to explain his work as an organizer for the
CP . Haywood's strength is his longevity and his ability to recall events .
Throughout Black Bolshevik he writes about the internal policy of the CP
in doing "Negro" work .
Black Bolshevik deals with, for the most part, the
struggle over the black belt thesis inside the Communist Party .
This
struggle had effects on the black liberation struggle . It was in the sixties
that the black belt thesis was again picked up by several
black
organiza .tions . 17
In Retreat to the Ghetto , Thomas Blair gives a historical background
to the black nationalist movement tracing the
contradiction over goals for
the black liberation movement back to debates between Frederick Douglass
and Martin R . Delaney in 1847 . He then discusses Bishop Henry M . Turner
of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and
the rise of emigration
(migration) movements such as "Pap" Singleton's in the 1870's . Blair also
discusses the Booker T . Washington, W . E . B . DuBois debates, the rise of
the Garvey movement, nationalist movements in the 30's and 40's, and the
role the Communist Party played from 1930 to 1945 in
the black liberation,
movement . The author deals briefly with the civil rights movement in the
late 1950's . Blair attempts to give a comprehensive history of Malcolm X .
He then gives an overview of the civil
rights and black power movements in
the 1960's . Blair, in his chapter on "Revolutionary Black Nationalism"
gives one of the few comprehensive overviews on the Revolutionary
17 Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik : Autobiography of an Afro-American
Communist (Chicago, Illinois : Liberator Press, 1978) .