revolutionary action movement (ram) - Michael Schwartz Library

33
proposal was defeated . 16
The ABB's early ideological
development of the notion of
an
independ-
ent black republic in
the United States paved the way for its
refinement
in
the Communist Party of the United States of America .
By 1923-24, the Brotherhood had ceased to exist as an autonomous,
organized expression of the national revolutionary trend .
Its leading members became communists or close sympathizers
and its posts served as one of the Party's recruiting grounds
for Blacks . 17
During this period, Marcus Garvey and W . E . B . DuBois engaged in bitter
ideological debate that often degenerated into personal attacks .
Essentially, DuBois was opposed to Garvey's de-emphasis of domestic mass
activity against racial segregation in the United States and his emphasis
on separation of the races and race purity . DuBois believed Garvey's
ideas about capitalism were naive, his business
adventures grandiose, and
his
concepts of building an African empire were
romantic .
Garvey on the
other hand, criticized DuBois for being elitist
and
alienated from the
masses of Africans .
Garvey
built a
mass movement and DuBois worked with
the radical intelligentsia .
Both were staunch Pan-Africanists but varied
i n style and tactics .
The ideological
18
debates between Garvey and DuBois were similar to the
arguments between Frederick Douglass, Martin Delaney and Henry Highland
Garnet in the Colored people's Conventions in the early 1800's .
The
Garvey-DuBois conflicts proved to be haunting legacies in
the ideological
16 1bid ., p . 126 .
17 Theodore Vincent, Black Power and the Garve Movement (San Francisco,
Calif . : Ramparts Press, 1971), p . 34 .
18Martin 0 . Ijere, "W . E . B . DuBois and Marcus Garvey as Pan-Africanists
: A Study in Contrast ." Prescence Af ricaine , No . 89, 1st Quarterly,
(1974), pp . 183-206 .