Module #3
Claude McKay
(1889-1948)
Readings
1) "Black
Americans and
the
Early Communist Party"
2) Impact
of 19th c. Russian
philosophers
on black American intellectuals
In the 1920s and 30s blacks, particularly from the Americas, viewed Russia (the Soviet Union) as a kind of "new society." The bright ideals of Soviet communism attracted blacks seeking a society where they would not be persecuted because of their color. The Soviet Union became a gathering place for human rights activists and for those who sought to escape the Great Depression. By the early 1930s perhaps as many as several hundred blacks had visited the Soviet Union. We will read some of the autobiographical accounts of these encounters and this migration. Another source of information on this will come from American and Soviet newspaper and journal articles.
In the 1920s several blacks were among the first foreigners invited to attend special schools established to train Communist party leaders for various parts of the world. In 1921 the comintern founded the Communist University for the Toilers of the East (sometimes called the Far East University), intended mainly for students from the Soviet East and from colonial countries. Communist students represented only a small minority of the blacks who traveled to the Soviet Union. Most were neither pro- nor anti-communist; their only definite objective was to find a society where a person’s worth was not defined by skin color.
The most well documented visit of this type was that of Claude McKay (1889-1948). Originally from Jamaica, where he established himself as an author/poet, McKay left Jamaica to widen his audience and to complete his education in the US. After achieving some success in the US, he was invited to Russia in 1920 by John Reed (1887-1920), after Lenin had raised the issue of the Negro Question at the second comintern congress. In 1922 he sold autographed copies of his works and photos to raise the money to journey to the Soviet Union in 1922 to 1923. While there, McKay gave brief remarks on the situation of the black man in America. He became something of a literary celebrity and was paid quite handsomely by Russian standards for his work. McKay’s writings show that he had few illusions about the Soviet Union at this time. He dreamed of its great potential as an alternative to existing social systems. Despite his sympathies he was not a member of the American Communist Party.
Otto Huiswood (b. in Dutch Guiana) was part of American delegation to the Soviet Comintern. Under the name J. Billings, he was the only black among the founders of the American Communist Party.
During his university years, William L Patterson (1891?-1980) moved from race consciousness to class consciousness. He took several pilgrimages to escape racism, but decided to fight it in his own country rather than to flee from it. He moved to NY’s Harlem, started a successful law practice and became involved with the Communist party. Among his close friends during this period was Paul Robeson, who at the time was a law student at Columbia University. In 1927 Patterson was sent to the Soviet Union by the Communist Party Worker’s School he had been attending. Enrolled in the Far East University, he, along with other black students he met there, influenced the Sixth Comintern Congress to place more emphasis on the toll of Afro-Americans in the anti-colonial movement. He traveled the Soviet republics studying remedies for racism, married a Russian woman, and in 1930 returned to the US. Patterson believed that he had found in the Societ Union all that he had hoped for.
George Padmore (1903-1959), born Malcolm Ivan Meredith
Nurse in Trinidad, moved to the US in the early 1920s. He studied at various
universities and became involved in the Communist Party. He assumed the
name George Padamore by 1928 as a cover for his political activities
and traveled extensively for the party within the US. His work on the presidential
campaign of William Z. Foster in 1928 led to his trip to Moscow, where
Foster was to give a report. To take this trip, Padmore interrupted his
final year at Howard University. When he received his tickets, he noticed
that they were only for one-way passage. His wife refusing to go with him,
Padmore left the US without receiving a re-entry permit. He was never to
return to the states. He became quite involved in the Comintern’s trade
union component and contributed articles to its journals and newspapers.
He lectured at the Far East University, had an office in the Kremlin and
was elected to the Moscow Soviet. He was sent on various recruitment trips
in an attempt to bring other blacks into the party. In the turmoil of the
1930s, Padamore was expelled from the Party while working abroad, but continued
his work on his own until his death in 1959.
| Richard Wright (1908-1960) left a sensitive testimony regarding his personal attempt to be a loyal Communist party member without sacrificing his own integrity and individuality in the process. He joined the Party in 1933 through his membership in a John Reed Club in Chicago. What appealed to him about the party was quite simple: |  |
It was not the economics of Communism, nor the great power of trade unions, nor the excitement of underground politics that claimed me, my attention was caught by the similarity of the experiences of workers in other lands, by the possibility of uniting scattered but kindred peoples into a while. It seemed to me that here at last, in the realm of revolutionary expression, Negro experience could find a home, a functioning value and role" -- American Hunger, p 63.By 1936, Wright had become disillusioned with the party. First, he discovered that even there his color made a difference. And while he was a symbol of an oppressed minority, that distinction did not prevent his encountering great difficulty in finding housing when he was sent to NY as a delegate to a communist writers' congress. White communists apparently welcomed him into the party more readily than into their homes. He was shocked that some blacks ridiculed his bookish manner of speaking and considered him strange and intellectual despite the fact that he was self-taught. He also found blacks to be timid in challenging the established order in even the most basic, simple fashion. Wright also learned that the party was suspicious of intellectuals. It did not welcome individual initiative and would not tolerate independent thinking on issues. Wright wanted to make his contribution in his own way and even declined a visit to the Soviet Union to work on a manuscript. Unable to reconcile himself to what the party asked of him, he was ostracized from the communist party against his will.
Other African-Americans
who saw promise in communism in the US and the emerging Soviet State:
| Langston
Hughes (1902-1967), a prominent poet/writer, served as a consultant
on the Comintern’s 1932 film project Black and White, which described
America's race problem. The project did not lead to the expected movie
production, but did give Hughes
a year abroad living in the Soviet Union. Langston spoke of his affection for the Russian people and praised the advances of this new Soviet government, lending his support to many socialist and communist causes in the United States. |
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W.E.B. Dubois (1868-1963). Born in Great Barrinton, Massachusetts in 1868, Dubois was a prominent American sociologist, poet and writer and one of the founders of the NCAACP. A lifelong critic of American society, he had close associations with Russia, which he thought offered great promise in the area of civil rights and racial equality. |
Robert Robinson, an auto worker in Detroit, left the United States in 1930 to go to Soviet Russia. His account of his experiences in Russia were written in his book, Black on Red.
| Paul Robeson
(1898-1976), an American concert singer, was enamored with Soviet Union,
and visited there several times between 1934-38. An outspoken critic
of American society, Robeson thought highly of the advances made in the
early years of the Soviet government.
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