When the effects of the Depression reached Russia, it created a very bleak and hopeless situation for most of that nation because it depended greatly on imports from Europe who in turn relied heavily on the United States. The combination of little food, lost wars, and a leader (Nicholas II–represented by Mr. Jones in the story) who was unable to change the economic situation of his country partly because of bureaucracy created a situation that was ripe for revolution. Like all other revolutions, very few stopped to ask the question “WHO is leading the revolution?”

It had become the common belief amongst the poor citizens of Russia that all forms of capitalism was evil and only benefited a certain few in society.

What many historians fail to do these days is to point out the fact that the movement of the people (Communism) turned out to be just as bad for the people because once again the poor found themselves still poor while those in leadership reaped the benefits of their labor (as illustrated in the book “Animal Farm).

While all of this was happening in Russia, blacks here in the United States found themselves in a similar situation where government continued to profit from our labor while not giving us the same rights as other citizens. Even Lenin (who was at this point drunk on his own power to influence a nation on his ideologies) noticed what blacks were going through here in the US.

Yes, Communism had found a way to overthrow the capitalist system of America–through the plight of black folks.

Journalist and author Alan Stang did a very interesting piece that discusses how the communist movement infiltrated the civil rights movement here in America. His piece is entitled: “It’s Very Simple: The True Story of Civil Rights” (clicking on the title will take you to the series complete with footnotes for your own reference). For the remainder of this post, I will let his research into this issue do the talking. In order to get the full picture of these historical events, you need to read the rest of this article on your own time. As always, I will give you just an excerpt, but please take the time in the near future to read the rest. I’ll add just a few comments at the end of this excerpt.

Chapter Three: The Communist Position on the Negro Question

As we have seen, the Communists really put themselves out to plan the future of every individual on the face of the earth. And so the question arises: What did they plan for us?

For more than a decade after the Russian revolution, the comrades floundered on the subject of the “Negro problem” in the United States. They discussed it, they studied it, but they were absolutely unable to form a revolutionary theory to guide the activities of their American members. And comrades were complaining that these ungrateful American Negroes simply didn’t go for communism.

At the Communist sixth world congress, in 1928, the problem was solved. For the American Negroes, the comrades had developed an amazing new theory. They called it “self-determination.”

It is important to record how and why the Communists decided to apply this theory to Negro Americans.

But there was no mystery at all about the American comrades’ opinion of this theory. Benjamin Gitlow, who was in the South campaigning as a Communist for the vice presidency of the United States in 1928 when the word came through about self-determination, reports his own hostility and shock. William A. Nolan writes that

The reason all this is so important is to show that the Communist notion that American Negroes might need, and want, “self-determination”–secession–just because they happened to be black, was so ludicrous, so alien to the facts, that even American comrades themselves, not noted for an excess of individualism, found it difficult to accept. It is important to show that the idea of “self-determination” was not an idea that would readily spring to mind after even a mildly rational examination of the facts.

Indeed, Earl Browder later explained as head of the American Communist Party:

Are you beginning to see the parallels with the story Animal Farm? The move by communist to get involved in our struggle had nothing to do with their desire to see us seen as equals under the existing capitalist system in America. It had everything to do with opportunity for those who wanted to overthrow the system altogether.

Hopefully tomorrow (depending on my schedule), I will provide more specific examples of how Communism infiltrated the black civil rights movement.