COMMUNISTS AND THE NEGRO AMERICAN

...Transportation is more difficult, especially in those farming anas where the large proportion of our Southern Negro population lives...

...That such faith is geneiallv maintained is entliely due to the courageous and often sell sacrificing support which the Negri, group has received from white Americans of demo ciatie conviction and libeial impulse...

...In the usual sense of the word, the Urban League is nonpolitical But every American social agency . . . must be political to the point of subscribing unreservedly to the principles that musf govern a vibrant and growing democracy...

...Far-Fetched, some might say...

...In Yoimgstown, a local newspaper and some city authorities haw heavily advertised charges that "left-wing" leadership has sought to exploit the local swimming pool situation for their own purposes...

...BUT WHEN THE KU KLUX KLAN in Alabama or Georgia or Florida indulges in Housings, lynching or other forms of intimidation of Negroes, and the Klan's atrocities are tolerated with out protest, or are even tacitly approved by representative leaders of their communities, the Negro is provided with an additional grievance and communist zeal for proselyting is corespondingly accelerated...

...These accusations play directly into the hands of Red leadership, here and throughout the world...

...Consider, for instance, the hysterical shouts and headlines that followed Paul Robeson's Paris address to a communist-sponsored conference...

...Those white leaders of stature who exert widespread influence in government, industry, business and politics, will be very badly advised if they seek to increase the difficulties of reputable Negro leadership as it stands precariously on defense against these two enemies...

...The reason for this kind of response by Negro spokesmen is cleaily understandable, * * t AUTHENTIC NEGRO LEADERS find themselves confronted by two enemies on opposite sides...

...Executive Secretary of the National Urban League, special wartime advisor to the Secretary of the Navy, Mr...

...And yet Chicago and New York are tintwo large cities which have been constantly referred to as centers of communist influence among Negroes...

...The answer to the mystery reveals that there is no mystery at all...

...There is no trace of communist ideology contained therein...

...By LESTER B. GRANGER LET ME MAKE IT CLEAR from the outset that the extent of Com* munist influence among our Negro population has been grossly exaggerated, not only by spokesmen for the Communist party, but also by gullible and fearful defenders of the status quo in polities...

...Objective reference to a few basic figures will prove my point...

...In sections which are overwhelmingly Republican, for instance, the great majority of Negroes are apt to be Republicans...

...And on the other hand, that illusion might persuade the unsuspecting among the general public that the Communist party is making progress in recruiting among the disadvantaged of the world's greatest power...

...Hut they serve the strategy of the Communist party...

...There are...

...Granger is also acting president of the National Conference of Social Work and a member of President Truman's Committee On Hq.ial Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Forces...

...The following account by Mr...

...Governor Dewey 34,076...

...This country stands shamed before the world because our racial practices do not accord with our professions of democratic idealism...

...as we aid the racial group to secure better housing and a full shaio in use of public facilities as we accomplish gains in this direction, we are culting away the ground upon which the communists attempt to establish their position with Negroes...

...Now, Negroes are ten per cent of our national population, and if this same consistency in adherence to prevailing political thinking holds good with respect to communist belief and persuasion, then ten per cent of the members of the Communist party and possibly ten per cent of the "fellowtravelers"-- would be colored Amereans...

...Granger, based upon testimony he delivered recently before the House Un-American Activities Committee, constitutes, we think, a definitive answer to the misguided and misinformed who erroneously believe that communism has made real headway among the Negro people...

...Where they are distinctly Democratic, the great majority of Negroes are Democratic...

...This same man, just a year previously, was predicting the election of Henry Wallace with the overwhelming support of that same Negro public...

...WHY, THEN, all the shouting about communist influence among Negroes'' Why the blatant claims by spokesmen for the Communist party, and why the hysterical charges by the defenders of an entrenched conservatism...

...In other words, there would be, according to this method of figuring, approximately 10,000 Negro members of the Communist party and another 100,000 inclined to support the party in its political objectives and policies...

...An analysis of the returns shows that the number of votes corralled by Henry Wallace approximately equalled the maximum estimate of the number of "fellow-travelers" consistently supporting communist purposes...

...The highest figure that I have heard quoted from any authority is 2,000...

...Even if this were true, these members would not be numerous enough to justify the wild speculations that have been indulged in about communist infiltration in Negro leadership groups, or communist capture of the political power of Negroes...

...Henry Wallace's candidacy for the Presidency, if not originally conceived, was at least warmly supported by the Comunist party...

...That furore would have been ludicrous if it had not been so tragic...

...Of the National Urban League, Mr, Granger writes: "The League is a social service agency which seeks to improve the socio-economic conditions under which Negroes live in American cities...

...The press headlines stretched across the country...

...Consider this...

...New York's Harlem, that tremendous Negro neighborhood, is frequently represented by its detractors as a "vast, seething, hotbed of communism...

...For the most part they merely pointed to the record, and suggested that the record be brought into evidence...

...The Democratic candidate rolled up 98,204 votes...

...American Negroes have traditionally reflected with a fair degree of consistency the political thinking of their neighbors and their neighborhoods...

...and Henry Wallace only 28,903, 14 per cent of the total...

...The honest alliance is increasingly being established with Americans who may be liberal or conservative in their political affiliation, but who are agreed that race, color and creed must not be allowed to condition a person's chances of happiness, health and success in the American community To seek U> check this alliance, or to disregard the principles upon which it is based, would be to encourage Negro Americans to seek support fi out other sources...

...On the one hand, that illusion, if foisted upon the public, might tend to intimidate truly democratic Negro leadership in their opposition to the Communist party, for fear of losing their influence with their own racial group...

...Such an impression, skillfully established, would support communist prophesies of the coining collapse of capitalism, and would therefore obviously strengthen the hand of Moscow m power politics the world over...

...Of course, these numbers do not represent all of the influence generated by the Communist party, for so-called ¦fellow-travelers" have been estimated at between one and two million...

...The press has recently been full of accounts of racial clashes in Washington, St...

...In Brooklyn, where another large concentration of Negroes is to be found, the figures show a ratio lower than the ratio of white support for the Progressive candidate...

...The other enemy is that American racist who perverts and corrupts the democratic concept into a debased philosophy of life...

...They have not forged the weapon they now use against us...

...Defenders of the status quo may hope to intimidate reputable Negro spokesmen, or may seek to discredit a justifiable protest by affixing the red label...

...And communist spokesmen and political hacks did their utmost to convince American minorities — and especially our Negroes that their best chance of impioving their social and economic position lay in rolling up a large protest vote for Henry Wallace, even if he could not be victorious...

...In opposing the one, Negro leadership must be careful not to give aid and comjorl to the other...

...According to such practice, if communists were to come into a city selling Bibles, the Christian church would be suspected of inclining toward communism...

...The chief exception to this general rule is to be found in those Southern states where, through manipulation of election laws for a great many generations, Negroes have been prevented from voting as Democrats in the primaries of an overwhelmingly Democratic arejh...

...There are, of course, some few exceptions, in the ease of the blind, the -.hoi t-sighled and the careless...

...The prescription is less worry about Robeson and more concern for Democracy, The House Committee on Un-American Activities can make an unparalleled contribution to such an effort bi/ iti.s-f ilatixo and vigorously prosecuting mi inquiry into the activities of such organizations as the...

...It is this stubborn straying from our national ideal that the Communist party has been able to use effectively thoi ughout the world...

...Even under the best of conditions it is sometimes hard for the socalled "average" person of color to letain faith that in the pie datable future his racial disabilities will be removed...

...Red spokesmen got their first soap box position in Negro neighborhoods with the notorious Scottsboro rase .hiiiciow practices by labor unions, di nial of free employment opportunity by employers, racial segregation enforced by law in by covenants or com muliity custom these are situations which have nothing whatever to do with Marxism...

...But did the American press refer to this prophet's batting average before advertising his current performance...

...Everyone will remember the grandiose claims of coming victory that were made by "Wallaceites " It will be remembered, also, that at the Wallace meetings there was invariably a generous turnout, and whenever the Presidential candidate spoke in such cities as New York or Chicago, a large number of Negroes were sure to be included among his audience...

...Wallace rolled up around 2,000,000 votes...

...It must not only reject the dishonest appeals of those who would substitute a state-controlled existence for the democratic relationships involved in group cooperation and personal freedom . . . but at the same time it must strongly fight against the native-born proponents of a brutal racism...

...A nation wide, nine day sensation was manufactured...

...One enemy is the communist who seeks to destroy the democratic ideal and practice which constitute the Negro's sole hope of eventual victory in his fight for equal citizenship...

...We have placed it in their hands...

...Ku Klux Khrn, and similar "black shirt" and "white sheet" groups wherever they may be found...

...It is still not too late to recover it...

...In five election districts of that area, President Truman received 108,643 votes...

...The American population will never accept or willingly endure any social philosophy or political practice that enforces upon persons, merely lie cause of their color, an inferior status in their citizen-community...

...the Republican 43.(i20...

...Hut any effort to indict a whole leadership group because of the attitudes of a few persons may easily lead to a revulsion of feeling among the Negro population which would be ideally suited to the purposes of the Communist patty...

...And yet what happened in the election...

...It must be opposed to communism and fascism...

...By implication, anti-communist Negroes are daubed with the red brush...

...Prominent colored men and women were importuned by the white press to disavow th>.' Robeson statement, and to assure white America that the traditional loyalties of American Negroes would be continued, "world without end, Amen...

...We have never been afraid of communist infiltration, for there is no room for anti-democratic influences in a movement wholly and continuously engaged with the business of building demoi - lacy...

...Where, then, is this vast out-turning of Negro following in response to in assumed leadership of our Nemo population...

...But actually they are supporting the very position that communists are hoping to establish...

...In Chicago, three Negroes sought to represent the Negro Southside in Congress...

...The number of Communists in the United States who are officially members of the party has been variously estimated during the last ten years at between 100.000 and 200,000...

...The number of Negroes in this country who ere members of the Communist party tails considerably below even that 10.000 mark which would be established by the usual population proportions...

...And as everyone knows, media of communication are more limited in the South than in other parts of the country...

...Here is a position which is defensible in law as well as in democratic theory...

...As long as there is one Negro left who can be identified as such, and wlio is subjected to restrictions and abuses because of his race, that one Negro will continue courageously and stubbornly to resist racism in American life...

...Actually, however, the ratid is a great deal less than one-tenth, as is admitted by Communists themselves in their infrequent moments of frankness...

...One man, Paul Robeson, expressing his personal opinion, recklessly predicted what 15,000,000 Negroes in the United States, all different individuals, would do in the event of war with the Soviet Union...

...Yet charges have been freely made that ¦ these incidents have been created by communists...

...Yet in Negro Harlem, Henry Wallace consistently ran a poor third to President Truman and Governor Dewey...

...Yes, possibly...

...In that resistance, the Negro has to choose between two allies—one honest and the other dishonest...

...Negro leadership in America needs no defense against the charge of being communistled...

...it is true, only a small number of Negroes who have joined or who sympathize with the Communist party, but even that small number stands, not as a testimonial to the recruiting skill of Communist leadership, but rather as a sjf;n of our failure to make good on our democratic professions...

...And so becau#e*tf these basic difficulties of communication, the chances are slight that there has been any important recruitment of Negroes in that v*ry part of the country where considerably more than half of the Negroes live...

...The obvious way to block such strategy is for the anti-communists to deprive our enemies of their propaganda weapon by moving with equal vigor and more honesty to eliminate these fester-spots I mm our national life...

...But not if we keep in mind the close-knit relationships of communist strategy in its various worldwide aspects...

...but if the figures available from such cities as New York and Chicago are to be taken as evidence of what happened, considerably less than ten per cent of those 2,000,000 voters were Negroes...

...Fifteen million Negroes live in these United States, but of that number approximately sixty-five per centclose to 10,000.000 still live in the South...

...THIS LATTER FIGURE is further supported by the experience of the Progressive party in the recent Presidential election...

...Louis and Youngtown, Ohio, arising out of insistence of Negro citizens that they be given full access to public recreational facilities—swimming pools especially—which are built and maintained through taxpayers' money...

...The party has been (lever at adopting, as if they were their very own, causes which any self respecting Negro must necessarily support...

...The Communist party seeks to establish among Negroes and the rest of the world the illusion of an influence they actually never hope to attain...

...Such efforts can reassure Negro leadership that while it is fighting against one enemy of this country, communism, our Government is helping to fight off the other, racism...

...Not by namecalling or empty baiting of the enemy, but rather through the simple device of seeking to make democratic advances for our Negro population...

...The radio blared in suburban homes and farm houses and city apartments...

...As for the anti-communist reactionaries, they too arc engaged in trying to fool the public by shouting "communist" at every Negro spokesmen who protests against the injustices perpetrated upon his people, or by exaggerating the extent of actual communist influence among the Negro public...

...As we lift employment barriers, one by one, and open the way to fuller employment of the skills of Negro workers...

...We in the Urban League movement have for years been fighting against communist objectives...

...I say that there was no sin li lurnout because no such following ever existed creep...

...the Progressive Party candidate 5,188...

...To the credit of our racial common sense, most Negro spokesmen did not fall into the error of responding to such requests...

...In Harlem again, the Negro candidate for I he State Senate running under the banner of tb<' American Labor party- a Progressive party affiliate—received only 12,719 votes against the vote of 5.5.874 for the regular Democratic candidate, who was white...

...And because of limited transportation and communication facilities it is difficult for any undercover movement to spread in the South, unless it be a movement which suits the purposes oj the dominant majority...

...in the imagination "t the defenders oj I lie status quo 'iud the spokesmen for the Communist parly...

...Such acceptance would be a betrayal of the Negro's responsibility to build democracy in the country he has helped found, protect and .support...

...I believe analysis of the claims and charges will show that they emanate mainly from either of these quarters...

...When on the floor of Congress, duly elected representatives of the people express obscenely racist sentiments regarding the legitimate as piratlons of Negro citizens, aid and comfort is given the communist cause...

...The Ku Klux Klan, for instance, was at one time able to spread very rapidly because it fitted ideally into the plans of the political and economic overlords of the Southern region...