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I<br />
t<br />
I<br />
In 1921 the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB),<br />
the first modern Afrikan communist organization in the<br />
U.S. Empire, was formed in New York City. Defining<br />
itself as a "revolutionary secret order, " the ABB raised the<br />
goal of liberating and bringing socialism to the Afrikan<br />
Nation in the Black Belt South. The Brotherhood soon<br />
claimed 2,500 members in fifty-six "pqsts" throughout<br />
the Empire. Most of these members were proletarians (as<br />
were most of the Garvey movement activists) - miners in<br />
Virginia, railroad workers in Chicago, garment workers in<br />
New York, etc. These Afrikan communists focused heavily<br />
on education work and on "immediate protection purposes,"<br />
organizing armed self-defense units against the<br />
KKK revival that was sweeping the Empire. Soon the<br />
police and press spotlighted the Brotherhood as the supposed<br />
secret organizers of Afrikan armed activity during<br />
the Tulsa, Oklahoma "riots." (9)<br />
The birth of modern Afrikan communism within<br />
the U.S. Empire was the most clear-cut and irrefutable<br />
evidence that the Afrikan Nation was starting to rise. It<br />
was significant that this new organization of Afrikan communists<br />
without hesitation proclaimed the goal of<br />
socialism through national liberation and independence.<br />
The existence of a socialist-minded vanguard naturally implied<br />
that at the base of that peak the masses of Afrikans<br />
were pushing upwards, awakening politically, creating new<br />
possibilities.<br />
Tenants, 1925<br />
% of all farmers who<br />
were tenants<br />
I<br />
more than 90%<br />
I less than30%<br />
Mississippi<br />
Mav have odd jobs<br />
Cycle of Debt<br />
Much of the present written accounts of Afrikan<br />
politics in this period centers around events in the refugee<br />
communities of the North - the "Harlem Renaissance,"<br />
tenants' organizations fighting evictions in the Chicago<br />
ghetto, Afrikan participation in union drives in Cleveland<br />
and Detroit, and so on. All these struggles and events were<br />
indeed important parts of the developing political<br />
awareness. But they were not the whole of what was happening.<br />
The intensity and full scope of the Afrikan struggle<br />
can only be accurately seen when we also see the southern<br />
region of the U.S. Empire, and particularly the National<br />
Territory itself. There, under the terroristic armed rule of<br />
the settler occupation, the Afrikan Revolution started to<br />
develop despite the most bitterly difficult conditions.<br />
While Euro-Amerikan trade-unionism has always<br />
tried to restrict Afrikan labor's political role, no propaganda<br />
could change the basic fact that in the South, Afrikan<br />
labor was the primary factor in labor struggles. Notice that<br />
we say that Afrikan labor was the "primary factor" - not<br />
"minority" partners, not passive "students" awaiting the<br />
lead of Euro-Amerikan trade-unionism, and certainly not<br />
just "supporters" of white trade-unionism. In the South,<br />
Afrikan labor was the leading force for class struggle. But<br />
that class struggle was part of the New Afrikan liberation<br />
struggle.<br />
Starting in the early 1920s Afrikan labor in the<br />
South struck out in a remarkable series of union organizing<br />
struggles. This was part of the same explosion of<br />
Afrikan consciousness that also produced the Garvey<br />
movement, the great breakthroughs in Afrikan culture and<br />
the Afrikan communist movement. These things were not<br />
completely separate, but linked expressions of the same<br />
historic political upheaval of the whole oppressed Afrikan<br />
Nation.<br />
When we think about the early organizing strug-<br />
loz<br />
Sharecropping Causes Dependence<br />
gles of the United Mine Workers Union in the Southern<br />
Appalachian coal fields, we are led to picture in our minds<br />
"poor white" hillbilly miners walking picket lines with<br />
rifles in hands. This is just more settleristic propaganda.<br />
The fact is that modern unionism in the Southern Appalachian<br />
coal fields came from a "Black thing" - manned,<br />
launched and led by Afrikan workers in their 1920s<br />
political explosion. In both the initial 1908 strike and the<br />
great 1920-1921 strikes in the Alabama coal fields the majority<br />
of strikers were Afrikan. In fact, in the main<br />
1920-1921 strikes fully 76% of the striking miners were<br />
Afrikan. Those were Afrikan strikes. Much of the severe<br />
anti-unionism and violent repression of strikes in the 1920s<br />
South was linked by the imperialists to the need to stop the<br />
rising of Afrikans. (10)