sakaisettlersocr
sakaisettlersocr
sakaisettlersocr
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
The support movement took many forms. Clearly<br />
the leading group in the mass mobilization was the Garvey<br />
Movement's United Negro Improvement Association<br />
(U.N.I.A.). This was, we should recall, the same nationalist<br />
organization that prominent academic historians<br />
now assure us was abandoned and unimportant at that<br />
time.<br />
Captain A.L. King, head of the U.N.I.A. in New<br />
York, was the chairman of the united Afrikan support<br />
committee. J.A. Rogers, the leading intellectual of the<br />
Garvey movement in the U.S., was the main propagandist<br />
and educator for the support movement. The Afrikan<br />
united front committee involved not only the UNIA and<br />
other nationalist organizations, but the CPUSA, church<br />
leaders, Afrikan college groupings, and so on. Within<br />
several months after the invasion the Friends of Ethiopia<br />
had 106 local branches both North and South. There were<br />
mass church meetings, rallies, marches of thousands and<br />
picket lines outside Italian government offices.<br />
The national character of the movement was<br />
underlined by the fact that virtually to the last person<br />
Afrikans boycotted the well-funded and Euro-Amerikanrun<br />
international relief efforts. The American Red Cross<br />
admitted that Afrikans refused to join its Ethiopian aid<br />
campaign; Afrikans insisted on their own all-Afrikan campaign<br />
that was highly political. The political counterattack<br />
by U.S. imperialism struck at this point. Somehow the<br />
rumor kept spreading that the Ethiopians thought of<br />
themselves as "Caucasian" and that they allegedly viewed<br />
Afrikans (most especially in the U.S. Empire) with contempt.<br />
There was a demoralizing confusion from this<br />
rumor.<br />
The "Volunteer Movement" arose spontaneously<br />
throughout the Nation. Thousands upon thousands of<br />
Afrikans volunteered to go fight in Ethiopia. The Black<br />
Legion established a military training camp in rural New<br />
York, and its leaders urged Afrikans to prepare to renounce<br />
U.S. citizenship. While the "Volunteer<br />
Movement" was blocked by U.S. imperialism, its popular<br />
nature shows how powerful were the potential forces being<br />
expressed through the Ethiopian support issue. The<br />
two Afrikans from the U.S. Empire who did fight in<br />
Ethiopia (both fighter pilots) were heroes back home,<br />
whose adventures were widely followed by the Afrikan<br />
press.<br />
The conflict was fought out in miniature on the<br />
streets of Jersey City, Brooklyn and Harlem between<br />
Afrikans and pro-fascist Italian immigrants. The night of<br />
August 11, 1935 over a thousand Afrikans and Italians<br />
fought with baseball bats and rocks on the streets of Jersey<br />
City. On October 4, 1935 (the day after the main invasion<br />
began) thousands of Afrikans attacked Italian shops in<br />
Harlem and Brooklyn. On the streets the masses of ordinary<br />
Afrikans viewed their fight and the fight in Ethiopia<br />
as very close.<br />
It's indicative that in 1936 a late-night street corner<br />
rally of the African Patriotic League, called to protest<br />
Italian mass executions of Ethiopian patriots, rapidly turned<br />
into an attack on the police. Smashing Italian store windows,<br />
the crowd of 400 Afrikans marched down I.enox<br />
Ave. in Harlem looking for a particular policeman who<br />
made a point of arresting nationalists.) In the mass<br />
fighting with police that followed, the New York police<br />
started shooting after the determined crowd charged them<br />
to successfully free one of their number who had been arrested.<br />
(29) Ethiopia was close to home.<br />
To expose this lie representatives of the Ethiopian<br />
came to the U.S. At a packed Harlem meeting<br />
The great outpouring of nationalist sentiment that<br />
Of 3'000 at Rev. Adam Jr.'s<br />
accompanied the Ethiopian war was, we must emphasize,<br />
Baptist Church, Ethiopian envoy Tasfaye widespread throughout the U.S. Empire. One<br />
invoked the "lidarity<br />
Afrikan<br />
New orleans resident wrote to the Courier that the Ethiopeoples:<br />
"It ,is said that we despise Negroes. In [he first pian crisis proved that 'I.. . the time is here for the Negro to<br />
place, You are not Negroes. Who told you that you were begin to look for the higher things in life - a flag 0 ~- his<br />
Negroes? You are the sons and daughters of Africa, your own, a government of his own and complete liberty. " This<br />
motherland, which calls YOU now to aid her /as/ surviving was the developing consciousness that so threatened U.S.<br />
free black people. "<br />
imperialism.<br />
r<br />
nornvt<br />
BUY From lta~~ans<br />
iw'"Y<br />
WHITF. World is trying to C ~ V Y out Et hio\11;1<br />
supremilc- 11s trying to ckStn'v<br />
of White empire in Arc. 'rherr 'Y<br />
*or"' Ih"<br />
from the black pt?Clpks of<br />
md amd read!' deCnd Eth'<br />
;I(t a ck.-l must<br />
~nylr~ld Ffiknw- "aly '"('<br />
iopia,<br />
other white nations haye to S;l\ The cOiOr<br />
their forre5<br />
108 - -1.8 m,,~t<br />
~t)ml)in~