revolutionary action movement (ram) - Michael Schwartz Library

39
and French imperialism . Randolph and others felt domestic issues were more
important than issues of foreign policy and
in protest Randolph resigned
as president of the NNC denouncing the Communists .
Blacks at this time were generally anti-war in that they saw
little reason to fight for a country that was not prepared to
grant them even basic human rights . The Communist Party, for
its part, sought within the NNC to shift the entire emphasis of
the programme from domestic issues to foreign aid . Randolph
had no truck with such an opportunistic approach to the concerns
of black people . 3 0
Most other community-based organizations, independent of the CP,
soon left
the NNC .
The battles between the Communitist Party in
its attempts to seize
control of the black liberation movement and independent black organizing
during the 20's, 30's and early 40's would reoccur in the 1960's . 31
As America prepared for World War 11,
black leaders turned their concerns
to segregation in the armed services . When a White House conference
in 1940 failed to bring any results, A . Phillip Randolph called for a
black March on Washington .
Through the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters,
of which he was president, A .
Phillip Randolph began mobilizing in New York
most of the black civil rights organizations into the March on Washington
Movement (MOWM) . Randolph had called for a March on Washington of 50,000
blacks to demand the federal government provide blacks with jobs in the war
industries . MOWM branches were formed all across the country and at
Randolph's insistence MOWM was kept all black .
The Communist Party came out against the MOWM .
30 Jeff Henderson, "A . Phillip Randolph and the Dilemmas of Socialism
and Black Nationalism in the United States, 1917-1941," Race and Class ,
20 :3 (1978), p . 156 .
31 Robert H . Brisbane,
1970), p . 155 .
The Black Vanguard (Valley Forge : Judson Press,