by Shelley
Pinckney
“Not
even the slightest degree of oppression, or the slightest injustice in
respect of a national minority- such are the principles of working class
democracy.”[i]
The Communist Party of Washington State struggled diligently to
fulfill Lenin’s pledge, working to improve conditions for people of
color in the Pacific Northwest. The
CP was one of the first Left groups to take up the issue of racism and
oppression. During the
1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, the CP made great strides in the areas of union
desegregation, public education about racial injustices, and legal
support for civil rights activities.
The Communist Party taught that a racially-divided society and
work force benefited only the elite, since people of color were employed
as strikebreakers during the great strikes before and after World War I,
including the general strike of 1919 in Seattle.
In the 1920s the Party began actively working within the
community to change the conditions of workers of color, and broadened
this activism in the decades that followed.
While Communist did not believe racism could be ended completely
without the end of capitalism, they did believe that changes could occur
that would help move society towards a more egalitarian structure.
Stressing the common struggle
for all workers against an unfair economic system, the Party tried to
break the pattern of white supremacy that had long plagued the American
labor movement. [ii]
The Communist Party’s civil rights activities came at a time of
racial antagonism. Washington
State experienced a rapid growth in its communities of color when many
people came to the Pacific Northwest during World War I for jobs on the
waterfront and in the steel industry.
At that time non-whites were barred from most unions, had
considerably lower pay scales, almost twice the unemployment rate, and
were frequently abused on the job.
With no union protection and a racially hostile environment,
African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, and other Asians, were easily
exploited. [iii]
Racial tensions in the 1920s were coming to a head in the area.
A huge Ku Klux Klan rally was held in Issaquah, Washington, in
1924; reports state that anywhere from 13,000 to 55,000 attended.
All of this activity, backed by federal and state legislation
that was expressly anti-immigrant and anti-person of color, was the
context in which the Communist Party of Washington State began working
on issues of racism.
Although the Communist Party had consistently adopted tenets
intended to be anti-racist, integration
was not necessarily the goal. Initially
the Party had advocated a separate state for African Americans, calling
for complete self-determination in the “Black Belt” region of the
South where African-Americans comprised a near majority of the
population. This proved to
be an unpopular goal for both blacks and whites, and later the CP moved
away from the notion of black self-determination.
Most people of color were understandably wary of the Communist
Party. Shadowed by
the experience of racist unions, the
CP of Washington State had to overcome the racist attitudes of the white
community while struggling to win the trust of the communities of color.
The Party fought these barriers with a program of progressive
action, recruiting leaders of color, as well as rank-and file workers.
The Communist Party’s official platform was to end capitalism
and to eradicate ‘chauvinism’ that was directed at women and people
of color. [iv]
In the 1930s the Party helped publicize the Scottsboro Boys rape
case. In 1931, nine young
African American men were charged with the rape of two white women in
Scottsboro, Alabama. The
men were charged, tried, and sentenced to death for the crimes.
The case was based on false testimony and the men were
essentially convicted because of their race.
The International Labor Defense, the legal organization of the
Communist Party, was involved in the multiple appeals of the case.
The Young Communist League of Seattle (YCL) published and
distributed several pamphlets to raise awareness of the denial of equal
justice to African Americans. The
legal involvement of the Communist Party and the growing national
pressure led to the original verdict being overturned in 1934.
But then the defendants were convicted again. [v]
Communists in Seattle used their newspaper, the Voice of
Action, as a tool to uncover similar cases and publicize the plight
of people of color nationally as well as regionally.
In 1933 the paper published a series of articles about a similar
court case where a black man had been wrongly accused of murdering a
white railroad conductor in Portland, Oregon, and sentenced to death.
This, the Ted Jordan case, attracted regional attention thanks to
the publicity provided by the paper.
The Party’s legal defense organization was responsible for the
appeal processes. Led by
Revels Cayton, an African-American Communist, a delegation of over 200
people marched on the capitol in Salem, Oregon, demanding that Ted
Jordan’s sentence be converted to life in prison.
A month later the governor met their request.
[vi]
The Party also engaged in activities to improve the conditions of
people of color in the Seattle area.
Cayton started the Seattle Chapter of the League for Struggle for
Negro Rights (LSNR) in 1934. This
was a Party sub-group directed at organizing a mass movement among
African Americans to demand equal rights.
While the local chapter was successful in recruiting more African
Americans into the Seattle Communist Party, it had limited success
meeting its other goals and was disbanded in 1936.
Nevertheless, before it dissolved, the LSNR was responsible for
organizing various protests against segregation and discrimination and
generally increasing the public’s awareness about the issues.
[vii]
In 1934 Revels Cayton campaigned for Seattle City Council on the
CP ticket.. His entire
platform, which gained some community support, was based on the issues
of racism and discrimination in Seattle.
The Party stood firmly behind Cayton by organizing several small
marches around the city collecting “Whites Only” signs and removing
them from local businesses. While Cayton was not successful at winning the City Council
seat, the Party did raise
the racial consciousness of the general public.
[viii]
The Party persisted in its resolve to publicize conditions.
For example, in the 1940s members acted to uncover businesses
that were discriminating in hiring practices.
Lonnie
Nelson, a current member of the CP, recalls testing businesses by
being paired with an African-American to jointly apply for work.
The Party also continued the legal battle for equal rights.
John Daschbach, a lawyer and an active member of the Communist
Party, founded the Washington Civil Rights Congress in 1946 to stand in
the “defense of constitutional rights and civil liberties of the
American people, including Communists and Negroes.” The organization
was active in the courts until 1956 when it dissolved after being
investigated by the Subversive Activities Control Board as a
Communist-front group. [ix]
While the Party was involved in community, legal, and political
actions around the issue of race, the vast majority of its work occurred
in the labor sector. Because
unions had exclusionary practices and were frequent initiators of racist
actions, most people of color did not feel any loyal to unions and
justifiably resisted attempts to enforce closed shops in traditional
industries. A closed shop
would establish a union as the only hiring system and would often
exclude non-whites. This
combination of class exploitation and racism made for a volatile
situation as people of color from outside the community were brought in
to break strike lines. The
Party, seeing how a racially divided workforce was weakening the
workers’ movement, became involved in desegregating unions. [x]
The Communists’ greatest success was influencing integration of
the International Longshoremen’s Association, one of the more
progressive unions. This
union had been instrumental in organizing the general strike of 1919;
and, after the strike, because of extreme pressure from Communists and
members of the IWW, actively began recruiting people of color. Frank
Jenkins, an African-American Communist, became a leader in the
Longshoremen’s Union, joining when membership was opened African
Americans. He helped design
what he called a “truly democratic union” that allowed the general
membership to make the decisions. Jenkins,
with the help of other Communists and labor leaders, pushed include
anti-discrimination language in the Longshoremen’s constitution.
As a result of his efforts the Longshoremen adopted a policy that
banned discrimination based on a person’s race or political
affiliations. [xi]
Earl George,
another African-American Communist who was a leader in the
Longshoremen’s Union, fought tirelessly for the rights of workers
regardless of race or political affiliation.
In the late 1930s he was elected president of the then ILWU,
Local 9, becoming the first African American to be president of a local
union in Washington State. George
actively worked in the labor community to raise awareness and promote
change in other unions around issues of race.
[xii]
The ILWU
leadership was becoming increasingly radical and Communist.
Under leaders like Earl George and Frank Jenkins, the communist
factions within the ILWU continued to work on issues of equality within
the union. Despite the
non-discrimination language in the constitution, seniority for people of
color was often denied and
preferential job placements for white workers continued.
The Communist faction within the ILWU addressed these inequities
within the union system, although success was marginal. Nevertheless, some of the greatest changes made in the ILWU,
on a local level, occurred when the majority of the Local’s leadership
was Communist.
During
the Red Scare of the late 1940s and early 1950s, the ILWU was
investigated for un-American activities and for harboring Communists. The president, Harry Bridges, arrested multiple times for
suspected Communist membership, was later found not guilty after
several investigations. The
ILWU was eventually disaffiliated with the Congress of Industrial
Organizations based on the CIO’s opinion that ILWU was full of
Communists. According to
Frank Jenkins, the CIO action was less due to Communist-Party status
than to the ILWU’s history as a radical, democratically-run union.
During
the ILWU’s struggle with radicalization and integration the
Longshoreman became increasing aware of the conditions that workers
endured in the canneries of Alaska.
Cannery plants at the time essentially worked on a slave-labor
system. Young, primarily
Filipino, men were taken to
Alaska, usually to pay off their passage from the Philippines or other
inflated debts. They
endured terrible conditions to work off a ‘debt’ that was greater
then the amount they would ever be able to pay.
In an attempt to improve the working conditions of all maritime
employees, a massive organizing campaign took place, and in 1933 the
Cannery Workers and Farm Laborers Union (CWFLU) was formed.
This was the first Filipino-dominated union, and one whose
membership was primarily people of color.
The union later affiliated with the ILWU becoming ILWU, Local 7
in 1950.
The
majority of the CWFLU leadership was Communist.
They struggled with the working conditions in the plants and with
persecution based on race and political affiliation. CWFLU was successful in changing the working conditions of
the plant workers while also building
a solidarity movement along the Pacific Coast.
In 1949 all the officers of CWFLU were arrested for being
Communist, and, being foreign born, were set to be deported. The CP successfully protected these leaders from deportation.
In 1950 the arrested leaders of then ILWU, Local 7, were released
because the Philippines was a United States territory and, therefore,
citizens of the Philippines were United States nationals.
The release was based on the landmark United States Supreme Court
Decision, Mangaoang v. United States, which was won by Party
lawyers paid with Communist-Party funds.
[xiii]
The
Communists of Washington State were also instrumental in the integration
of the local chapter of the Steelworkers of America.
Like the Longshoremen, the Steelworkers had encountered problems
when trying to build a solidarity that was limited to white workers
only.. Pushed by Communist
members to be more inclusive, the Steelworkers acted to open membership
to all workers. Eugene
Dennett, one of the known Communists in the Steelworkers union,
encouraged African-American workers to join the Party, and, at the same
time, focused on eliminating discriminatory practices of his union.
[xiv]
The
foregoing is an incomplete list of Communist Party efforts to integrate
unions. The Party was also
very involved in racial struggles within the Communication Workers of
America, the International Woodworkers of America, and the Musicians
Union. In fact, Party members, both individually and collectively,
were actively involved in the racism issue in most of the Pacific
Northwest unions.
But,
while the Party struggled on issues of racism and discrimination and
contributed positively to the civil rights struggle, it appears that its
involvement was at times more about strengthening the workers’
movement than from a genuine interest in improving the lives of people
of color. Even after the Party began working on integration within the
unions and the community, it continued to advocate separate
organizations within the Party for people of color, rationalizing that
these would provide an outlet for empowerment through
self-determination; However, these sub-groups were not well supported
and eventually faded away, as was the case with the League for Struggle
for Negro Rights. The
Party, concerning itself with the ending of capitalism, used issues of
discrimination as a catalyst for inciting larger support for its
original goal, opportunistically using racism to highlight the wrongs of
the economic system. The
Party never adopted a different framework for analysis of racism that
addressed issues outside of economics, as, for instance, when the Party
did not contest the internment camps for Japanese Americans during World
War II. This discrepancy between adopted tenet and practice led to
the disillusionment of those several Party members who were working on
issues of racism. Revels
Cayton, one of the best-known advocates against racism, left the Party
after realizing it was only interested in talking about race when that
issue applied to Party strategy.
Although
the Communist Party of the Northwest in the decades of the 1930s through
the 1950s did significantly contribute to the improvement of the lives
of people of color, its legacy should not be uncritically assessed.
While the Party was one of the first primarily-white
organizations to become involved in the issue, it did so from the
standpoint of bettering the struggle for workers. Its narrow focus on issues that related directly to Marxian
theory and Party platform caused it to ignore issues it should have
addressed, while claiming to support principles on which it actually had
not taken a stand.
© 2002 Shelley Pinckney
Next:
War
and Red Scare: 1940-1960
Notes:
[i] Lenin, Collected Works,
Vol XIX, p 92
[ii] Gus Hall, Fighting
Racism: Selected Writings (New York: International Publishers,
1985), 37.
[iii] Robert Pitts,
Organized Labor and the Negro in Seattle (University of
Washington, 1941)
[iv] Gus Hall, Fighting
Racism: Selected Writings (New York: International Publishers,
1985)
[v] Richard Hobbs, The
Cayton Family Legacy: Two Generations of a Black Family, 1859-1976
(University of Washington, 1989)
[ix] John S. Daschenbach
personal papers, University of Washington
[x] Robert Pitts, Organized
Labor and the Negro in Seattle
[xi] Frank Jenkins, interview
in personal papers, University of Washington
[xii] A Tribute to Earl
George: 90 Years of Struggle (2001) available on www.cpusa.org/article/articleprint/239/
[xiii] Introduction to the
Cannery Workers and Farm Laborers’ Union, Local 7- CWFLU papers
University of Washington
[xiv] Eugene V. Dennett,
Agitprpop: The Life of an American Working-Class Radical (New
York: State University of New York Press, 1990)
