St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1939-06-02

all these black followers of Lenin
could have been crowded into a
corner drug store with no discom-
fort. A few Negro leaders"
sought vainly to justify occasional
handouts from the Party by scar
ing up followers, but they were
loud-mouthed, unkempt comrades
who aroused the same antagonism
in most American Negroes that
they did in most whites. Capable
Negroes during that period were
busy in the fields of insurance, real
estate, education, journalism, re-
Egion, agriculture, social work, and
the professions, acquiring automo-
biles, property, and college training
for their children, so there was
little first-rate material from which
Moscow emissaries could draw an
able leadership.
The greatest growth OF Party
work among Negroes paralleled
the expansion of the New Deal.
Here was hope where there had
been hopelessness. Negroes played
a prominent part in the organiza-
ton of the unemployed who were
later incorporated into the Work
ers' Alliance, and a number of po-
tential working-class leaders were
uncovered. Some of. them later
rendered distinguished service in
the great CLIO organizational drive
in 1867. But the activity was
short-lived. Negroes in charge of
many of these organizations and
unions were ousted in the old
familiar manner. Then the secur-
ity of the WPA has caused many
to cease listening to Moscow.
Stalin's stopping of funds for Afri-
can revolutionary work, along with
his opportunistic sale of oil to
Italy during the Ethiopian aggres-
sion, have been hard pills for the
colored comrades to swallow.
Negro communists once terror
lied by Party discipline are today
singing the blues. One of the dis
gruntled is Charles White, Negro
organizer, who was ousted from
the Party, after having spent some
time in Russia, and having been ac-
tive in America. He charges that
the Party has been replacing all of
its Negro organizers with white
ones; that in New York, where the
Party controls over $1,5OO,0OO in
activities of one kind and another,
it employs less than fifty Negroes,
most of these in mental jobs. Har-
old Williams, an organizer since
1928, charges that the Communist
Party, treats Negroes exactly like
the COP, subordinating their prob
lens to broader" interests, and
that Negro membership has de-
clined 70 per cent in the New York
area in the past year. The late DR..
Reuben Young, an ardent Negro
communist, who had returned from
Ethiopia and Russia, was booted
out of the Party because he criti-
cized its neglect of African work
and the sale of oil to Italy.
There seems to be a complete
unanimity among thinking Negroes
as to the effectiveness of COM
munist work among Negroes. It
is nil. The writer has gathered
opinions of Negro observers in
Dallas, Philadelphia, Chicago, Mil
waukee, Cleveland, Birmingham,
and other centers of communist eff
fort among the blacks. They all
sound the same. This report from
Detroit more or less sums them
up:
The effort put forth to hook
the Negro has been sporadic and
Ineffective . the Party has gen.
orally passed the peak of its effec-
tiveness among the Negroes. All
that remains of the vigorous
breast-beating, tub-thumping era
of 1902 is sort of alluvial de-
post or residue of terms, and the
techniques of mass organization