Research Catalog

Documents from the Comintern Archives on African Americans

Title: Documents from the Comintern Archives on African Americans, 1919-1929.
Author: Communist International. Negro Commission.

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Status	Container	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	r. 2	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc Micro R-6762 r. 2	Schomburg Center - Research & Reference
Request for On-site Use Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	r. 1	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc Micro R-6762 r. 1	Schomburg Center - Research & Reference

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Additional Authors

Description

2 microfilm reels

Summary

Selection of documents from the archives of the Communist International (Comintern) pertaining to its Negro Commission, the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), and to "Negro work" in the United States. The collection reflects the evolution of Comintern policy toward African Americans, from racial equality and integration to self-determination and possible separation from the United States. Reel 1 (1919-1928) includes a sampling of ABB documents; working papers of the Negro Commission and the American Negro Labor Congress; minutes of the 1924 All-Race Assembly or Negro Sanhedrin in Chicago; various communications by Claude McKay and Lovett Fort-Whiteman to Comintern officials; a detailed discussion on race and nationality, self-determination and the Black peasantry at a 1928 joint meeting of the American delegation and the Negro Commission; and selected papers of the Comintern Executive Committee and the Workers Party of America.
Reel 2 (1928-1929) continues with the Sixth Comintern Congress debates over the direction of communist policy in the U.S. toward African-Americans. Issues and individuals represented include Harry Haywood and the self-determination thesis; Comintern criticism of the Workers Party of America on the "Negro Question;" Comintern views on African American intellectual life and on such leading black organizations as the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Pan-African Congress Movement; conditions of black workers and peasants in the U.S.; factionalism within the U.S. communist movement; and black communists Cyril V. Briggs, James W. Ford, Otto Hall, Otto Huiswood, Richard B. Moore and George Padmore.

Subjects

Note

Documents selected by historian Marika Sherwood and microfilmed for the Schomburg Center in 1993

Reproduction (note)

Microfilm.

Original Location (note)

the Comintern Archives

Source (note)

Marika Sherwood

Biography (note)

At the Fourth Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow in 1922, the Jamaican-born poet Claude McKay called for an "international organization of the Negro" based in the United States, with its own weekly newspaper, defense clubs and cooperative enterprises, to assume the leadership of the anti-colonial struggle worldwide. An international Negro Commission was formed, and a call for a World Negro Congress was put forth. Meanwhile six leading African American civil rights organizations, including the African Blood Brotherhood and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, formed a united front for defense, with a call for an All-Race Conference or Negro Sanhedrin set for February 1924.
Prompted by the Comintern, the U.S. communist party, the Workers Party of America, launched the American Negro Labor Congress in 1925, with a weekly organ, "The Negro Champion," edited by Lovett Fort-Whiteman, to organize the "Negro masses." At the 6th Congress of the Comintern in 1928, the Negro Commission put forward a resolution calling for self-determination for Blacks in the U.S. "Black Belt." Developed by Harry Haywood, an African-American student at the Lenin School in Moscow, and initially opposed by the American delegation, the Black Belt thesis would remain the official communist policy on the "Negro question" in the United States until the late 1950s.

Call Number

Sc Micro R-6762

OCLC

144682716

Author

Communist International. Negro Commission.

Title

Documents from the Comintern Archives on African Americans, 1919-1929.

Reproduction

Microfilm. Moscow, Russia : Rossiĭskiĭ ︠t︡sentr khraneni︠i︡a i izucheni︠i︡a dokumentov noveĭsheĭ istorii (Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Recent History), 19--. fond 495, opis 155.

Original Location

Originals in: the Comintern Archives, Moscow, Russia.

Biography

At the Fourth Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow in 1922, the Jamaican-born poet Claude McKay called for an "international organization of the Negro" based in the United States, with its own weekly newspaper, defense clubs and cooperative enterprises, to assume the leadership of the anti-colonial struggle worldwide. An international Negro Commission was formed, and a call for a World Negro Congress was put forth. Meanwhile six leading African American civil rights organizations, including the African Blood Brotherhood and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, formed a united front for defense, with a call for an All-Race Conference or Negro Sanhedrin set for February 1924.

Prompted by the Comintern, the U.S. communist party, the Workers Party of America, launched the American Negro Labor Congress in 1925, with a weekly organ, "The Negro Champion," edited by Lovett Fort-Whiteman, to organize the "Negro masses." At the 6th Congress of the Comintern in 1928, the Negro Commission put forward a resolution calling for self-determination for Blacks in the U.S. "Black Belt." Developed by Harry Haywood, an African-American student at the Lenin School in Moscow, and initially opposed by the American delegation, the Black Belt thesis would remain the official communist policy on the "Negro question" in the United States until the late 1950s.

Added Author

Ford, James W., 1893-1957.

McKay, Claude, 1890-1948.

Communist International. Executive Committee.

African Blood Brotherhood.

Research Call Number

Sc Micro R-6762

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