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Hello and welcome to African Elements. In this episode, Unity In Diversity? We saw in
Episode 10 two approaches to the problems facing African Americans as a result of the
failures of Reconstruction. The integrationist and the Black Nationalist approaches were
fundamentally in opposition to one another and the conflict between WEB DuBois and Booker
T. Washington was simply built in to their philosophical ideologies. In part two, we
will explore other ideological approaches. Just like integration and Black Nationalism,
the approach to problems in the 1920s and 1930s are each going to have their own set
of strength and weaknesses. As we also see, they carry with them their own built in conflicts
with other philosophical approaches. Can there be unity in diversity? All that, coming up
next.
As new immigrants arrive from Eastern Europe,
largely as a result of the chaos brought on by World War I, many African Americans are
going to find a good deal of value in some of their insights and philosophies that these
new arrivals brought with them. Because many of the Eastern European rivals have faced
similar exploitation and oppression in their own countries, perhaps they will make affective
partners in fighting oppression and the United States. Perhaps the class based solutions
built into the philosophies of socialism and communism will offer a way of getting around
the limitations of race. Perhaps, but along with their limitations, there are also built
in conflicts between the class based philosophy and the philosophies of integration and racial
separatism. From 1910-1920, African Americans were on
the move. In what historians call, ì The Great Migration,î an estimated half a million
African Americans flocked to northern cities. In my view, the reasons for the migration
are often oversimplified. I want to make it clear that this is just my perception here.
I'm not going to directly contradict your text in that the commonly held perceptions
of the causes of the migration are accurate; first, African Americans left to escape southern
discrimination and racial oppression; Second, the boll weevil infestation of Southern cotton
fields in the late 1910s forced many sharecroppers and laborers to search for alternative employment
opportunities; Third, the enormous expansion of war industries created job openings for
blacks mostly in service jobs vacated by new factory workers.
There's one cause, however that has been critical to some other themes that we've
discussed earlier, but is also often overlooked ñ that is, the overproduction of cotton.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, two things started to happen. First, new machinery
greatly increased planters' capacity to harvest cotton crops. Second, they were very few viable
economic options available in the south. Many platters tried their hand at wheat, figs,
and various other crops, but cotton as it turned out proved to be the only sure bet.
There were many African Americans who, after emancipation, vowed that they never again
wanted to see another cotton ball in their lifetimes - even if they returned to cotton.
Better capacity to harvest cotton along with the fact that everybody and their cat trying
to harvest it, caused cotton to flood U.S. markets. The result is typical supply and
demand economics: supply goes up beyond the demand, the price plummets.
The reason this is important is that I believe it is no accident that at this particular
moment in our history, the United States for the very first time begins to build an empire
abroad, both in the Caribbean and in the Philippines. From its vantage point in the Philippines,
US venture capitalists gained access to new markets and a place to offload excess goods,
in this case, cotton creating new demand and thereby stabilizing the price. So clearly,
there is a link the forces that are drawing African Americans into the military ventures
in the Philippines and the circumstances drawing African Americans northward -- that is economic
depression in the south and need to expand economically.
While a few went west, many blacks made their way northward to take advantage of labor opportunities
made available during World War I. Most went to the northern cities of Chicago, Detroit,
Saint Louis, and Harlem. The cultural renaissance that took place in these cities will be discussed
in the next lecture, but what's important to note here is that the segregation and discrimination
they experienced in the north was usually less overt, but many northern cities did embrace
Jim Crow segregation. As we saw in Part 1 of this lecture, racism and racial violence
was far from unheard of in northern cities. Another aspect of the north that they encountered
with a large numbers of ethnic Europeans were also flocking to U.S. shores. That is the
reason why when the Ku Klux *** resurfaced it expanded its focus to include ethnic Europeans,
as we saw in Part 1 of this lecture. The Great Migration changed the composition
of the Northern workforce. For a brief time, African Americans were able to find an abundance
of good paying jobs. In addition, women -- both black and white -- also filled the labor vacuum
as many of the men were off to war. Interestingly, the change in composition also brought changes
in the sociology of work. For example, before World War I it was practically unheard of
to have a female secretary. As women filled secretarial positions during the wartime labor
shortage it was coincidentally at this time that the job of a secretary became a predominantly
female occupation. Also coincidentally the status and compensation for that job, while
relatively high for jobs that were available to women, was lower than it had been when
it was a male occupation. The same thing happened after World War II with telephone operators
for example when women began to fill those positions. When the men returned from war
the occupation continued to be associated as "women's work" and the status of the occupation
was also lowered. After the war, however, when white men found
African Americans, ethnic Europeans, and women occupying the positions that they had left
I'm sure you can imagine there would be a great deal of labor unrest. That is the reason
why in 1919, in addition to the racial tension that was discussed in part 1 of this lecture,
class tensions also erupted in the form of 3600 labor strikes. As many groups began to
see other ethnic groups as competitors for jobs, there was a great deal of pressure on
labor unions that were often ethnically exclusive. Again, I mentioned this before, but I'm sure
you can imagine the complete foolishness of racial exclusion in labor unions because it
made it easy for employers to pay ethnic groups against one another by using them as strikebreakers.
Class unity presented a major threat to the elite because unity meant that the employers
could not play the divide and conquer game, the political and economic establishment did
little to stem the tide of ethnic backlash, and in many ways deliberately stirred it up
by using a 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia to steer up fear and hatred for Eastern Europeans
and Russians fleeing the civil conflict. The ideals of the revolution brought workers party
unity that cut across ethnic lines. The extent of the hostility can be seen in the following
excerpt of Democracy Now! that aired on August 22, 2007.
Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian-American anarchists who were arrested and accused of *** at
the height of the post-Bolshevik Revolution Red Scare and debates over immigration quotas.
After a notoriously prejudiced trial in 1920, they were sentenced to death by a judge who
called them "anarchistic ***." Their execution is infamous around the world and
came to symbolize the intolerance and injustice of the American establishment towards immigrants
and radical dissenters. Protests against their execution rocked every major city around the
world in the days leading up to their execution. Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders,
and the Judgment of Mankind is a new book that explores the lives and ideas of these
two men and the enduring relevance of their trial. Bruce Watson is author of the new book.
I spoke to him yesterday from Boston, where Sacco and Vanzetti were executed eighty years
ago, and asked him to talk about the context of the United States in 1920.
It was a very jittery time. It was supposed to be a time of peace, but, in fact, 1919
was a year of tumultuous strikes. There had just been a plague flu epidemic that had just
ended. Of course, 100,000 soldiers, American soldiers, had died. And it was a very tumultuous
year ... And so, at midnight on June 2, 1919, eight
bombs in eight cities went off all up and down the East Coast, in churches, in homes.
In fact, one man blew himself up on the steps of the attorney general's home, the attorney
general of the United States, right across the street from where FDR was living at the
time. Well, this set in motion a huge crackdown
that later became known as the Palmer Raids. And hundreds of radicals were rounded up and
deported. And right after that, as that was waning, Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested.
It was right on the edge of that hysteria. And they were tried a year later, when some
of that was still going on. ... And both of them, however, began to labor
in the American system that was very unfair to Italians at the time. They were on the
very bottom of the ladder. They were doing the most menial jobs ó Vanzetti, in particular.
He worked as a dishwasher in a totally slimy kitchen at a very rich restaurant. He worked
loading bricks and building dams and just the absolute most menial labor, spent a lot
of time homeless living on the street. Sacco had a little bit better life. He worked as
a shoe trimmer. He took a course and learned ó an apprenticeship and learned to be an
apprentice shoe trimmer in the Boston area, where there are a lot of shoe factories, and
he actually made pretty good money. But Vanzetti was not in that situation at all.
Both men came to anarchism in around 1912 or '13. And anarchism was a creed at that
time, widespread among Italian immigrants. You have to remember these are people who
came over and had an American dream. They felt that this was going to be the land of
plenty, and they saw quite the opposite. They were discriminated against. They were beaten
down. They were denied jobs. Cops often arrested them. And they were drawn to this creed of
Italian anarchism. Italian anarchists in those days would tour the country to speak to Italian
immigrants, and they would sing. Some of them would sing songs, and they accompanied themselves
on the mandolin. They were dodging police. They cut a very romantic figure that appealed
to Sacco and Vanzetti and many other immigrants. Anarchism is basically the belief that someday
humanity will come to the point where they won't need a government. Italians, of course,
had had nothing but an oppressive government, as far as they could remember, and they couldn't
imagine a government of the people, by the people, for the people that would actually
work for the people. All they knew was a government that oppressed and hounded and spied on people,
etc. So they hoped, they dreamed that someday there would be no government, no need for
a government. ... And seated at the trial is ó seated at
the bench is a man named Judge Webster Thayer, an absolute devout hater of anarchists. He's
a super patriot. He has sworn ó he said many times he's desperately afraid of the anarchist
doctrine, of the Red Scare, the Red Doctrine. He's sworn that he's going to do anything
he can to stop anarchism from taking over. ... And so, it went ahead just after midnight
on this night. First Sacco and then Vanzetti were led to the chair and given 2,000 volts
and carried out. ... And the response around the world?
... And around the world, there were protests, there were riots. The people threw ó uprooted
lampposts in Paris, threw them through plate-glass windows. They attacked embassies. The Moulin
Rouge was damaged. In Geneva, people took it out on American targets. They targeted
stores selling Lucky Strike cigarettes and theaters showing Douglas Fairbanks films.
There were strikes all over South America, shut down transportation. The American flag
was burned on the steps of the American embassy in Johannesburg. The riots went on. Three
people were killed in riots in Germany. The riots went on for a few days, and then finally
they stopped. And Sacco and Vanzetti ó the funeral in Boston
attracted 200,000 people that marched through the streets of Boston to the cemetery where
they were cremated. It's on this stage that A. Philip Randolph
stepped onto the scene. In a clear departure with WEB Du Bois and the NAACP, Randolph opposed
involvement in World War I. He also clearly recognized that it was in the interest of
the economic elite to stir up racial and ethnic tension so that one group can be played against
the other. He wrote, "When no profits are to be made from race friction no one will
longer be interested in stirring up race prejudice." To that end he began an uphill battle to gain
recognition for the Brotherhood Of Sleeping Car Porters union in the American Federation
of Labor. The Pullman Palace car Company was the largest
single employer of black people. It catered to affluent whites who were accustomed to
seeing African Americans as servants and serving in menial roles.
While the $67 average monthly pay which amounted to up to $300 with tips was relatively high
compared to other types of employment open to African Americans, it did come at a price.
African American porters were constantly deluged with insults and racial epithets from their
white patrons. Like house servants, they were on call 24 hours a day. Time spent preparing
the car and assisting passengers, which could take anywhere from one to five hours was considered
off the clock and uncompensated. Additionally, porters had to pay out of pocket for shoe
polish and other work related materials. They had to buy their own meals, pay for their
own lodging at stopovers, and buy two uniforms a year-expenses that ate up nearly half of
their monthly salary. Although many African Americans enjoyed a middle-class income, they
were still paid less than white workers who were doing the same job.
Here again, here it's easy to see the threat to white workers. Having a labor force that
was willing to do the same job for less money should have made clear to white workers that
an interracial union organizing for equal pay and benefits would improve conditions
for African Americans while at the same time protecting white workers from being undercut
by cheaper African American labor. Nevertheless, it took a decade for the AFL to pull it's
head out and issue a charter to the Brotherhood Of Sleeping Car Porters formally granting
it recognition as a union in 1935. Like socialism, communists sought to set aside
racial differences in favor of a class-based solution to economic exploitation. The Communist
Party recognized that African Americans, women, and poor whites shared a similar condition
as exploited members of the working class and that racism and ethnic division were the
primary barriers addressing that exploitation. That is the reason why from the outset, the
Communist Party sought to eliminate racial chauvinism from its ranks. They did so by
elevating African Americans like Cyril Briggs to key leadership positions within the party
who openly advocated alliance with working class whites. Both Briggs and the Communist
Party recognized that racism had to be rooted out of the white working class so that an
alliance could be forged based on common interest. To address the primary barrier to working
class unity, racism, the Communist Party was vigorous in eliminating racist members from
its ranks -- almost to a fault. At one point the expulsion of antiracist members began
to resemble a witchhunt in which if a party member wanted another member expelled all
they had to do is accuse them of racism. The Communist Party leadership would hold hearings
putting the accused racist in the difficult position of proving that they are not racist.
What does one say to that? I have friends who are black?
The main difference between the communists and the socialists was that socialists like
A. Philip Randolph sought to work within United States institutions such as the American Federation
of Labor, and as a result, he was bound by the constructs of race relations in the United
States. The Communist Party was an international organization headquartered in the Soviet Union.
The differences between the Communist Party and the socialists may seem subtle but they
were enough to keep the two groups from effectively working together. A. Philip Randolph didn't
particularly like the idea of giving up control to an international organization -- he believed
that control and leadership should be from within the United States. Obviously, the limitations
on working within US institutions are similar to those at the NAACP faced in that they were
often hostile to issues of racial and social justice. Many African Americans who joined
the Communist Party did so recognizing that central weakness, but many more who are sympathetic
to the left-wing ideals of the Communist Party did not join -- why? To many African Americans
the Communist Party was too stigmatized to be associated with. After all, African Americans
were already the targets of racism, discrimination, and violence. Why associate with an organization
that would place another target on your back. Therefore, along with plain racism which was
a formidable obstacle to class unity, both communism and socialism carried the stigma
of being considered un-American, and those are the primary limitations of both approaches.
Ethnic and racial backlash as well as Xenaphobia in the United States after World War I embodied
by the Ku Klux ***, the Palmer Raids and the Sacco and Vanzetti trial had clearly identified
socialism and communism as "un-American." Just as integration and black nationalism
have inherent built-in approaches that are in conflict with one another, it's easy to
see the built-in conflict that communism and socialism have with the NAACP which is an
integrationist oriented organization. That is, how can an organization whose focus is
integration with America possibly associate with a group or party that is considered un-American?
Also, as was the case with the NAACP and Booker T. Washington, the conflict between the NAACP
and the Communist Party was openly hostile and, at times, ugly. It's also a conflict
that ultimately played a large role in sowing dissension within the NAACP itself.
Communist agitators held protests, marches, and dove headlong in the fiercest battlegrounds.
In 1931, the Communist Party began organizing black and white sharecroppers in Camp Hill,
Alabama. The potential black and white union provoked a violent response in this "Jim Crow"
stronghold of the deep South. On the night of July 15, Tallapoosa County sheriff Kyle
Young and deputized vigilantes who had been tipped off by an informant raided the meeting
house of the organizers, beating men and women indiscriminately. Police reinforcements murdered
the union organizer, and four black sharecroppers who had fled into the woods were lynched.
The reaction of the NAACP leadership is somewhat reminiscent of Booker T. Washington's initial
response to the NAACP. The NAACP denounced the Communist Party for recklessly putting
African American lives at risk by agitating and organizing in the most hostile settings.
But WEB Du Bois wrote an article in The Crisis which, while critical of the goals of the
Communist Party, praised their sincerity and their willingness to put themselves on the
line on behalf of poor African Americans. That was the beginning of the end of Du Bois's
involvement with the NAACP. He was soon after forced to resign from his position as editor
of The Crisis, and, as tensions mounted, he left the organization entirely.
Likewise, the goals of the Communist Party and the socialists were inherently in conflict
with those of black nationalists like Marcus Garvey. Garvey rejected class unity in favor
of racial unity. Class unity between blacks and poor whites would never work because he
believed that racial prejudice was congenital and could never be purged from whites. So
the central inherent conflict between the two was on of class unity versus racial unity.
While Marcus Garvey sought a pan-African approach -- a viewpoint which placed blacks in the
United States in common cause with blacks throughout the world and on the continent
of Africa -- the communists sought a broader international coalition not confined by race
or pan-Africanism. Once again, there was open hostility between
the organizations and it often got ugly. A. Philip Randolph referred to Marcus Garvey
as "the supreme *** Jamaican ***," an "unquestioned fool and ignoramus," and he
launched a campaign "to drive Garvey and Garveyism in all its sinister viciousness from the American
soil." Cyril Briggs's open hostility and attacks against Marcus Garvey ultimately provided
the ammunition that the United States government used to marginalize and ultimately convict
Garvey on charges of mail fraud, which led to his exile from the United States.
For his part, Marcus Garvey relentlessly attacked both the Communists and the NAACP, calling
WEB Du Bois a "lazy, dependent mulatto.î Ironically, his attacks against the NAACP
mirrored those of the Communist Party. Noting the class bias, and the NAACP's apparent lack
of concern for poor blacks, he referred to the NAACP as the National Association For
The Advancement Of Certain People. For example, the NAACP was quick to distance itself from
the case of the Scottsboro 9 -- 9 vagrant, unemployed black hobos who had been accused
of raping two white women. Two decades later, a 15-year-old named Claudette Colvin was arrested
in Montgomery Alabama for refusing to give up her seat to a white man. But the NAACP
ultimately dropped her like a hot potato because of her subsequent pregnancy and the prospect
of putting an *** teen mother at the center of the case that could potentially gain national
attention. Ultimately, they calculated that NAACP secretary, Rosa Parks would be better
suited as a national symbol against segregation and initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott after
her arrest a few months later in 1955. The Communist Party was not nearly so skittish,
in fact, as we'll see, they welcomed the opportunity to build alliances with poor and
working-class African-Americans. That's all for this episode. You can see
everything you've seen here as well as the entire archive of episodes at my website www.africanelements.org.
You can also join the discussion on our Facebook Group African Elements. I'm Darius Spearman.
Thank you for watching.