The African Blood Brotherhood (ABB) was a radical black liberation organization which developed ties to the Communist Party. The group was a propaganda organization built on the model of the secret fraternity, organized in "posts" with a centralized national organization based in New York City. The group's size has been variously estimated between 1,000 and 50,000 members at its peak.

"The Crusader"

Journalist Cyril Briggs left the Amsterdam News to start the monthly magazine "The Crusader" in 1918. The first issue possessed African Nationalist politics, but within a Progressive context. Editorials endorsed independent African economic development within the free market and called for the national independence articles in President Wilson's Fourteen Points proposal to be extended to African colonies. The same issue also endorsed A. Philip Randolph's campaign for New York State Assembly on the Socialist Party ticket. This article is about historical Crusades . ... Nationalism is an ideology that creates and sustains a nation as a concept of a common identity for groups of humans. ... Progressive Movement is the term used to refer collectively to several various movements around the world that adhere to progressivism. ... Dr. Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924) was the 28th President of the United States (1913–1921). ... United States President Woodrow Wilson delivered a speech to Congress on January 8, 1918, outlining Fourteen Points for reconstructing a new Europe following World War I. While many of the points were specific, others were more general, including freedom of the seas, abolishing secret treaties, disarmament, restored sovereignty of some... Asa Philip Randolph (April 15, 1889 – May 16, 1979) was a socialist who was active in the labor movement and the US civil rights movement. ... The Socialist Party of America is a socialist political party in the United States. ...

At the same time, the magazine called for the right of African Americans to defend themselves against lynching and racist attacks. Racially motivated violence against African-Americans was endemic in the Jim Crow era and large scale attacks by white vigilantes on African-American neighborhoods were not uncommon. Historian Charles Crowe found that between 1898 and 1908 there were 40 major race riots in the South. Large scale attacks occurred in Atlanta in 1906, Springfield, Illinois in 1908, East St. Louis in 1917, Chicago, Phillips County, Arkansas and Omaha in 1919 and Tulsa in 1921. A depiction of T.D. Rices Jim Crow In the United States, the so-called Jim Crow laws were made to enforce racial segregation, and included laws that would prevent African Americans from doing things that a white person could do. ... A race riot is any riot which occurs due to real or perceived inequality or oppression between members of different races. ... This article is about the state capital of Georgia. ... Location in Illinois Founded  -Incorporated 1819 {{{incorporated}}}  County Sangamon County Mayor Timothy Davlin Area  - Total  - Water 156. ... The East St. ... From July 27 to August 2, 1919, a race riot broke out in Chicago after Eugene Williams, a black youth, paddled his raft into white territory at the 29th Street beach, and drowned after being hit by a volley of rocks. ... The Elaine Race Riot was a deadly 1919 race riot in the town of Elaine in Phillips County, Arkansas which gained national attention and spurred a major U.S. Supreme Court ruling. ... This article needs cleanup. ... Buildings burning during the Tulsa race riot of 1921. ...

The African Blood Brotherhood

In response to these attacks, The Crusader advocated armed self-defense. Politically, Briggs drew comparisons between government attacks on white and black radicals. He identified captalism as the underlying cause of oppression of poor people of all races. While endorsing a Marxist analysis, The Crusader advocated a separate organization of African-Americans to defend against racist attacks in the United States, much as Africans were combating colonialism abroad. Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ...

In September of 1919, The Crusader announced the formation of the African Blood Brotherhood, which would serve as a self-defense organization for Blacks threatened by race riots and lynchings. The ABB also organized inside the UNIA-ACL and advocated a policy of critical support for Marcus Garvey. ABB leaders Briggs and Claude McKay participated in the UNIA's 1920 and 1921 international conferences in New York. At the second conference, McKay arranged for Rose Pastor Stokes, a white leader of the Communist Party, to address the assembly. The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA) is, according to its 1929 constitution, a social, friendly, humanitarian, charitable, educational, institutional, constructive and expansive society, and is founded by persons desiring to the utmost to work for the general uplift of the people of African ancestry of the... Marcus Garvey (far right) in parade Marcus Mosiah Garvey (August 17, 1887 – June 10, 1940) was a publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, crusader for black nationalism and founder of the UNIA-ACL. He was born in Jamaica. ... Claude McKay. ... Rose Pastor Stokes was a Socialist Party leader and feminist. ... The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) is one of several Marxist-Leninist groups in the United States. ...

The ABB became highly critical of Garvey following the apparent failure of the Black Star Line and Garvey's July 1921 Atlanta meeting with Grand Kleagle Clarke of the Ku Klux Klan. In June of 1921, The Crusader announced that it had become the official organ of the African Blood Brotherhood. Arguing that the UNIA was doomed unless it developed new leadership, the magazine sought to win the UNIA's membership to the ABB. In seeking to replace the UNIA, the ABB competed with Randolph's socialist publication The Messenger, which had called for Garvey's expulsion from the United States. In return, Garvey called for his followers to disrupt meetings of these oppositional groups. The Black Star Line was a shipping line incorporated by Marcus Garvey, who organized the UNIA (United Negro Improvement Association); the Black Star Line existed from 1919 to 1922. ... Members of the second Ku Klux Klan at a rally during the 1920s. ...

Conflicts with Garvey and the FBI

Although the disputes with Garvey were real, the conflict was worsened by secret interference by police and government intelligence agencies. Historian Theodore Kornweibel reports that the government began manipulating radical organizations in conjunction with legal prosecution under the pretence of disrupting opposition to World War I. Following the end of the war, the government's campaign continued under the direction of Attorney General Palmer in what is called the first Red Scare. Prefiguring COINTELPRO by fifty years, government agents were secretly planted in the UNIA, ABB and The Messenger. These agents provided intelligence to the incipient FBI while spreading misunderstandings, sabotaging meetings, and acting as agents provocateurs. World War I was primarily a European conflict with many facets: immense human sacrifice, stalemate trench warfare, and the use of new, devastating weapons - tanks, aircraft, machineguns, and poison gas. ... The Palmer Raids were a number of attacks on Radicals in the United States from 1918 to 1921. ... This article contains information that has not been verified. ... COINTELPRO is an acronym (COunter INTELligence PROgram) for a program of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. ... The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is a Federal police force which is the principal investigative arm of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). ... Agent Provocateur is a concept album, their sixth by American/British rock band Foreigner, released in 1984 (see 1984 in music). ...

The ABB enjoyed a period of notoriety following the Tulsa Riot of 1921. Tulsa had an ABB chapter and news reports credited the organization with inspiring resistance to racist attacks. Buildings burning during the Tulsa race riot of 1921. ...

Fusion with the CPUSA

The Crusader ceased publication in February 1922, following Garvey's indictment for mail fraud. Briggs continued to operate the Crusader News Service, providing news material to affiliated publications of the American black press. As cooperation with the Communist Party increased, the ABB ceased to recruit separately.

The leadership of the Communist International, which while largely ignorant about the particulars of the situation of blacks in the United States, did understand the importance of ethnic and other non-class forms of oppression, and pushed the early CP to pay more attention to blacks in the U.S. Before this intervention by the Comintern, the party had largely ignored blacks, and thus was not particularly attractive to black radicals like Briggs. Instead, it was the Bolshevik Revolution that attraced their attention.

Poet and ABB member Claude McKay visited the Soviet Union several times in the mid-1920's, writing about conferences of the Communist International for African-American audiences. McKay's book, The Negroes in America (published in Russian in 1924 but not in the U.S. until 1979) argued, against the official Communist position of the time, that the oppression of black people in the U.S. was not just reducible to economic oppression but was unique. He argued against the color blindness that the Communists had inherited from the Socialist Party. McKay made significant contributions to the debate on national self-determination in support of national independence for oppressed peoples, if the peoples themselves desire it. Subsequently, in the aftermath of the Sixth Comintern Congress in 1928, the CPUSA adopted a policy of national self-determination for African-Americans living in the "Black Belt" of the American South. The policy was neglected after the Popular Front period began in 1935, but was not formally replaced until 1959. The first edition of Communist International, journal of the Comintern published in Moscow and Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) in May 1919. ... Self-determination is a principle in international law that a people ought to be able to determine their own governmental forms and structure free from outside influence. ... Popular Fronts comprise broad coalitions of political and other groups, often made up of oppositioners or left wingers, and often united against particularly stringent circumstances. ...

As the Communist Party developed, it regularized its structure along the lines called for by the Communist International. Semi-independent organizations such as the African Blood Brotherhood were no longer supported. Sometime during the early 1920s the African Black Brotherhood was dissolved, with its members merged into the regular Workers Party of America and later into the National Negro Labor Congress. Many early ABB members, however, went on to be key CP cadre for decades.

ABB Publications

• "The Crusader". Edited by Cyril V. Briggs. August 1918 - February 1922. 1395 pages. Reprinted by Tuttle Publishing (August 1, 1987). ISBN 0824037669.

• African Blood Brotherhood documents PDF format on Marxist Internet Archive. Retrieved April 10, 2005.

External links

• African Americans, Culture and Communism (Part 1): National Liberation and Socialism by Alan Wald. Against The Current. Retrieved April 10, 2005.

• The Tulsa Race War of 1921 and the African Blood Brotherhood brief article abstract. Retrieved April 10, 2005.

• A new book on blacks and the CPUSA Review of The Cry was Unity by Louis Proyect. Retrieved April 10, 2005.

• Black and Red: A Journey Through Communism in the Black Community website. Retrieved April 10, 2005.

• Enter the New Negro: State Violence and Black Resistance during World War I and the 1920s, by Shannon King, Binghamton University. Retrieved April 10, 2005.

• The New Negro: Explorations in Identity and Social Conciousness PDF document from 1915: The Cultural Moment. eds. Adele Heller and Lois Rudnick. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991. 48-68. Retrieved April 10, 2005.

Further reading

Archives

• Research files on African-Americans and communism 1919-1993, (Bulk 1919-1939). Created by Mark Solomon. Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. 4.25 linear feet (4 boxes). Call Phrase: Tamiment 218. online guide to the archive retrieved April 10, 2005.

• Theodore Kornweibel Research Papers, 1910-1960. Research materials assembled by Theodore Kornweibel, a professor of African American studies at San Diego State University, used in the writing of monographs about federal surveillance of and campaigns against African Americans, 1917-1925, and federal efforts to compel Black loyalty during World War I. The collection consists of copies of FBI and other federal agency records, including case files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, detailed notecards, printed federal documents, and Kornweibel's correspondence with federal agencies. 30 cubic ft. Call Number: Midwest MS Kornweibel. Held at Newberry Library, Chicago.

Articles

• Bair, Barbara. "The Crusader" pp. 170-171 in Buhle et al. (eds), Encyclopedia of the American Left. 988 pages. Oxford University Press; 2nd edition (November 1, 1998). ISBN 0195120884.

• Crowe, Charles. Racial Violence and Social Reform: Origins of the Atlanta Riot of 1906. Journal of Negro History Vol. 53. July 1968. p 254.

• Crowe, Charles. Racial Massacre in Atlanta September 22, 1906. Journal of Negro History. Vol 54. April 1969.

• Hill, Robert A. "Racial and Radical: Cyril V. Briggs, The Crusader Magazine, and the African Blood Brotherhood, 1918-1922." Introductory Essay to The Crusader. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987

• Kuykendall, Ronald A. The African Blood Brotherhood, Independent Marxist During the Harlem Renaissance. The Western Journal of Black Studies. 2002. 26(1): 16-21.

• Wald, Alan. African Americans, Culture and Communism (Part 1): National Liberation and Socialism' Against the Current Vol.XIV no.6, #84, January/February 2000

Books

• Arnesen, Eric. Black Protest and the Great Migration : A Brief History with Documents The Bedford Series in History and Culture. 226 pages. Bedford/St. Martin's (November 6, 2002). ISBN 0312391293.

• Dawahare, Anthony. Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature Between the Wars: A New Pandora's Box Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies. 208 pages. University Press of Mississippi (December 1, 2002). ISBN 1578065070.

• Dawson, Michael C. Black Visions : The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies. 352 pages. University Of Chicago Press (March 1, 2003). ISBN 0226138615.

• Draper, Theodore. American Communism and Soviet Russia. New York: Vintage Books. 1986

• Hill, Robert A. Compiler and Editor, The FBI's RACON: Racial Conditions in the United States during World War I. Ithaca, N. Y.: Northeastern University Press. 1995.

• James, Winston. Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth Century America'. London: Verso Books. 1998

• Kornweibel, Theodore, Jr. "Investigate Everything": Federal Efforts to Compel Black Loyalty During World War I. 416 pages. Indiana University Press (May 1, 2002). ISBN 0253340098.

• Kornweibel, Theodore, Jr. Seeing Red: Federal Campaigns Against Black Militancy, 1919-1925 Blacks in the Diaspora Series. 248 pages. Indiana University Press (December 1, 1999). ISBN 0253213541.

• Solomon, Mark I. The Cry Was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917-36. 400 pages. University Press of Mississippi (October 1, 1998). ISBN 1578060958.

• Tyson, Timothy and David S. Cecelski (Editors). Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy. 352 pages. University of North Carolina Press (November 1, 1998). ISBN 0807847550.

Theses

• Solomon, Mark I. Red and Black: Communism and Afro-Americans : 1929-1935. 633 pages. Harvard Dissertations in American History and Political Science. Garland Pub (February 1, 1989). ISBN 0824051483.

• Warren, Maurie I. Moses and the Messenger: The Crisis of Black Radicalism 1921 - 1922. Harvard University Bachelor's Thesis. 1974.

• Zumoff, Jacob A´. The Communist Party of the United States and the Communist International, 1919-1929. Chapter 9, The American Communist Party, the Comintern and The 'Negro Question'. University of London Ph.D. Thesis. 2003