revolutionary action movement (ram) - Michael Schwartz Library

3 5
1928 . The commission concluded that Blacks in the North were an unassimilable
minority and a captive nation within a
nation in the Black Belt
South .
The Sixty World Congress of the Cominternmetin Moscow in
July and
August of 1928 . After much debate, the black belt thesis was approved
as an official policy of the Comintern and American CP .
Probably more than any other integrated group the Communist Party
U .S .A ., organized in 1921, played a significant role in influencing the
black movement in the 1960's . In the early 1920's, the CP was not able to
win mass recruits from the Garvey movement .
The CP had about twenty-four
black members in 1927 . 21 Failing to seize control of the Garvey movement
the CP organized the American Negro Labor Congress (ANLC) in Chicago in
October, 1925 . The ANLC never proved to be much of a success, not having
more than 500 members .
In the 1930's, the CP decided to champion the cause of Negro rights .
Its willingness to fight racism won many black recruits .
The CP began to
clash with the NAACP and other traditional Negro organizations . The Comintern,
meeting again in 1930, saw the Negro Question as a central part of
organizing a socialist revolution in the United States . It issued a resolution
again calling for a Black Belt Soviety Republic in the South .
But the success of winning black people to the ranks of the CP was
based on its
comming to the defense of black people, helping them with
everyday situations, and dealing with economic issues . One celebrated case
was that of Angelo Herndon .
21 Theodore Vincent, Black Power and the Garve Movement (San
Francisco : Ramparts Press, 1971 , p . 234