revolutionary action movement (ram) - Michael Schwartz Library

York City, Garveyites attacked white men at random . 7
3 0
Such an incident occurred on June 20, 1920, when two hundred
Garveyites burned two American flags in a bonfire on East
Thirty-fifth Street in Chicago . Two white men were killed
and a Negro policeman was wounded in the uproar that
followed .$
During the same time period, Black members of the left were also
very active .
Among those representing the left wing of the black liberation
movement in the 1920's were Hubert Harrison, Chandler Owen, A .
Phillip Randolph, W . A . Domingo and Cyril P . Briggs . Chandler Owen and
A .
Phillip Randolph, editors of the The Messenger magazine, were close
to the Socialist Party and advocated a democratic transition to socialism
as a solution to the race problem, while W . A . Domingo, who edited The
Emancipator , became a Black bolshevik . 9
During this period, the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), the first
nation-wide revolutionary nationalist organization in
the history of the
black liberation struggle, emerged .
This organization was later to be
the prototype for RAM .
The ABB was a secret organization organized by
Cyril P . Briggs in 1919 . The ABB was tight-knit, semi-clandestine, paramilitary
group which saw itself as the Pan-African Army of a world-wide
federation of black organizations .
ABB membership ranged from three to
five thousand most of whom were ex-servicemen, though a sizeable contingent
was West Indian . The membership was kept small to keep the organization
tight .
Briggs started a monthly magazine titled The Crusader in
7 Interview with Queen Mother Audley Moore, New York, March, 1975,
Queen Mother Audley Moore joined the UNIA, Garvey Movement in New Orleans
in 1919) .
8 Robert H . Brisbane,
Press 1970), p . 97 .
The B lack Vanguard (Valley Forge : Judson
in
9 Jeff Henderson,
the United States,
"A . Phillip Randolph and the Dilemmas of Socialism
1917-1941,' Race and Class , No . 18, 22 August 1966,
p . 143 .