Harry Haywood
Encyclopedia
Harry Haywood was a leading figure in both the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU). He contributed major theory to Marxist thinking on the national question of African Americans in the United States
. He was also a founder of the Maoist New Communist Movement
.
to former slaves
Harriet and Haywood Hall, from Missouri
and West Tennessee
, respectively. They had migrated to Omaha because of jobs with the railroads and meatpacking industry, as did numerous other southern blacks. South Omaha also attracted White immigrants, and ethnic Irish had established an early neighborhood there. Haywood was the youngest of three sons.
In 1913 after their father was attacked by Whites, the Hall family moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota
. Two years later in 1915 they moved to Chicago
. The younger Hall was radicalized by the bitter Red Summer of 1919, especially the Chicago race riot
, in which mostly ethnic Irish attacked blacks on the South Side.
Hall was influenced by his older brother Otto, who joined the Communist Party in 1921 and invited Hall to enter the secret African Blood Brotherhood
. In 1925 when Hall entered the Communist Party, USA, he adopted "Harry Haywood" as a pseudonym
.
in 1922, followed by the Young Communist League
in 1923. Soon after in 1925, he joined the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA). After joining the CPUSA, Haywood went to Moscow
to study, first to the Communist University of the Toilers of the East
in 1925, then to the International Lenin School
in 1927. He stayed until 1930 as a delegate to the Communist International (Comintern
).
There he worked on commissions dealing with the question of African Americans in the United States, as well as the development of the "Native Republic Thesis" for the South African Communist Party
. Haywood worked to draft the "Comintern Resolutions on the Negro Question" of 1928 and 1930, which stated that African Americans in the Black Belt
of the United States
made up an oppressed nation, with the right to self-determination
up to and including secession
. He would continue to fight for this position throughout his life.
In the CPUSA, Haywood served on the Central Committee
from 1927 to 1938 and on the Politburo
from 1931 until 1938. He also participated in the major factional struggles internal to the CPUSA against Jay Lovestone
and Earl Browder
, regularly siding with William Z. Foster
.
Haywood was General Secretary
of the League of Struggle for Negro Rights
, but he was active in issues involving working class Whites as well. In the early 1930s while head of the CPUSA Negro Department, he led the movement to support the Scottsboro Boys
; organized miners in West Virginia with the National Miners Union; and was a leader in the struggles of the militant Sharecroppers Union in the Deep South
. In 1935 he led the "Hands off Ethiopia
" campaign in Chicago
's Black South Side
to oppose Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. When eleven Communist leaders were tried under the Smith Act
in 1949, Haywood was assigned the task of research for the defense.
, he served with a Black United States regiment. In the Spanish Civil War
, like many Americans there, he fought for the Popular Front
with the Abraham Lincoln Battalion
of the International Brigades
. During World War II
, he served in the Merchant Marines, where he was active with National Maritime Union
.
(1925–1930), Harry Haywood held dual membership in both the CPUSA and the CPSU. As a member of the CPSU, he traveled extensively in the Soviet Union's autonomous republics
, and participated in the struggles against both the Left Opposition
headed by Leon Trotsky
and the Right Opposition
led by Nikolai Bukharin
. In these struggles and in others, Haywood was on the side of Joseph Stalin
.
With the Comintern, Haywood was assigned to work with the newly created Negro Commission. In his major work Negro Liberation, he argued that the root of the oppression of Blacks was the unsolved agrarian question in the South
. He believed that the unfinished bourgeois democratic revolution of Reconstruction had been betrayed in the Hayes
-Tilden
Compromise of 1877
. It abandoned African Americans to plantations as tenant farmers and sharecroppers, faced with the Redeemer
governments, the system of Jim Crow laws
, and the terror of the Ku Klux Klan
and other paramilitary groups. According to Haywood, the rise of imperialism
left Blacks
frozen as "landless, semi-slaves in the South."
He believed that a distinct African-American nation had developed that satisfied the criteria laid out by Stalin in his Marxism and the National Question: a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological makeup manifested in a common culture. Because African Americans in the South constituted such a nation, Haywood believed the correct response was a demand for self-determination, up to and including the right to separate from the United States. Their "national territory" was historically the Black Belt South, and they deserved full equality everywhere else in the United States. Haywood believed that only with genuine political power, which from a Marxist point of view included control of the productive forces
, such as land, could African Americans obtain genuine equality. Their gaining of equality was a prerequisite for broader working class
unity.
Most of those in the CPUSA who disagreed with Haywood considered the question of African-American oppression a matter of racial prejudice with moral roots, rather than an economic and political question of national oppression. They saw it as a problem to be solved under Socialism
and in no need of special attention until after the institution of the revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat
. To this charge, Haywood countered that the category of "race" is a mystification. He believed that relying on race and ignoring economic questions could only alienate African Americans and inhibit working class unity.
Following the Great Migration
of millions of blacks to the North and Midwest, accompanied by their urbanization
, critics attempted to use statistics
to counter the Black Belt theory and show there no longer was a black nation centered in the South. In his 1957 article, "For a Revolutionary Position on the Negro Question", Haywood responded that the question of an oppressed nation in the South was not one of "nose counting."
Harry Haywood's book, Negro Liberation, published first in 1948, was the first major study of the African American national question written by an African American Marxist. According to Haywood in his autobiography, Paul Robeson
subsidized his work on the project by offering $100 a month. It was translated and published in Russian, Polish, German, Czech and Hungarian. It was reprinted in 1976 by Liberator Press, the publishing arm of the October League. According to Haywood, "The position of the book was not new, but a reaffirmation of the revolutionary position developed at the Sixth Comintern Congress in 1928. The heart of this position is that the problem is fundamentally a question of an oppressed nation with full rights of self-determination. It emphasized the revolutionary essence of the struggle for Black equality arising from the fact that the special oppression of Blacks is a main prop of the system of imperialist domination over the entire working class and the masses of exploited American people. Therefore the struggle for Black liberation is a component part of the struggle for proletarian revolution
. It is the historic task of the working class movement, as it advances on the road to socialism, to sove the problem of land and freedom of the Black masses." On the other hand, Haywood went on to write, "What was new in the book was the thorough analysis of the concrete conditions of Black people in the post-war period. I made extensive use of population data; the 1940 census, the 1947 Plantation Count and other sources, in order to show that the present day conditions affirmed the essential correctness of the position we had formulated years before." Because of this and other works, Robert F. Williams
called Harry Haywood "one of the modern pioneers in the Black liberation struggle."
Especially since 1998, leading historians in the USA have had access to Comintern documents about the "Self-Determination in the Black Belt theory." These demonstrate the pioneering role of the Communist Party in the Deep South from 1929 on. The documents show the Party's efforts toward unity among all workers in the South, the international impact of the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, the organization of inter-racial unions in the Deep South, and a unified Black protest movement in the United States culminating in the formation of the National Negro Congress
in 1935 and the Southern Negro Youth Congress
in 1937. Inspired by the self-determination theory
(and other factors), these movements also contributed to heightened activity of the Civil Rights Movement
starting in the 1950s driven by the continuity of what historians are now calling "the long civil rights movement." The pressure of McCarthyism labeled the activity for civil rights as an automatic Communist threat. In the south, even the NAACP was outlawed as a Communist threat.
The Comintern documents are housed at the Tamimment Library at New York University
. Some books published using them as source documents are listed below under General Readings.
's rise to power, the CPUSA followed Krushchev's policy of destalinization and "peaceful coexistence
". Long an admirer of Mao Zedong
, Harry Haywood was one of the pioneers of the anti-revisionist
movement born out of the growing Sino-Soviet split
. He was driven out of the CPUSA in the late 1950s along with many others who took firm anti-revisionist or pro-Stalin positions.
The CPUSA's decision to change its position on the African-American national question was a central factor in Haywood's expulsion. Though the CPUSA had not been as active in the South since the dissolution of the Sharecroppers Union, in 1959 the CPUSA officially dropped its demand for self-determination for African Americans there. (The demand had been dropped earlier when Browder liquidated the party in 1944.) The CPUSA instead held that as American capitalism
developed, so too would Black-White unity.
In 1957 he wrote "For a Revolutionary Position on the Negro Question" (later published by Liberator Press) but was unsuccessful at changing the direction of the Party. In 1959, Haywood, although no longer a functioning party member, attempted to intervene one last time. He wrote "On the Negro Question", which was distributed at the Seventeenth National Convention by and in the name of African Blood Brotherhood
founder Cyril Briggs
. This was not effective, however, as most of Haywood's potential allies had already been expelled from the CPUSA in the name of combatting "left"-sectarianism
and dogmatism.
In Haywood's view, "White chauvinism
" in the party, rather than an accurate analysis of the economic issues, had caused the change in position. He also argued that the change prevented the CPUSA from giving appropriate leadership as the Civil Rights Movement developed. He believed the Party was left behind actions of Dr. Martin Luther King and the NAACP. The Party was even more alienated from the militant Black Power
Movement that was to follow.
were among the founders of the Provisional Organizing Committee for a Communist Party (POC), formed in New York
in August, 1958 by 83 mostly Black and Puerto Rican and White trade unionists, mainly coal miners from Williamsport, PA and maritime workers including Al Lannon, Director of the Maritime Section of the CPUSA for many years, all delegates from the CPUSA. Its membership included Coleman Young
, later elected the first black mayor of Detroit, and Theodore W. Allen, best known later for his "White skin privilege" theory and widely acclaimed historical writings. According to Haywood, the POC rapidly degenerated into an isolated, dogmatic, ultraleft sect, completely removed from any political practice. Nevertheless, the (POC) did release many highly trained organizers from the dead hand of the CPUSA as the civil rights and the black power movement began to hit the streets. In 1964, Haywood worked in Harlem with Jesse Gray, leader of the Harlem Rent Strike and Tenants' Union later elected to the New York State Legislature from Harlem. Haywood worked with Malcolm X in 1964 until his assassination in 1965, and with James Haughton and Josh Lawrence in Harlem Fight-Back, then in Oakland California in 1966, then in Detroit, Michigan with the Detroit Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers
. Haywood then returned to Mexico for a short time and then to the United States permanently in 1970 invited by Vincent Harding, then Director of the Institute for the Black World in Atlanta, GA.
In 1964, Haywood began to become involved with the New Communist Movement, the goal of which was to found a new vanguard
Communist Party on an anti-revisionist basis, believing the CPUSA to have deviated irrevocably from Marxism-Leninism
. He later worked in one of the newly formed Maoist groups of the New Communist Movement, the October League, which became the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)
. In the CP(M-L) Haywood served on the Central Committee. He published his great autobiography
Black Bolshevik although some of his important writings and political life during the 1960s were edited out. For example,the manuscript he wrote with the acknowledged collaboration with Gwendolyn Midlo Hall and was dedicated to Robert F. Williams
was not mentioned. This work circulated in mimeographed form from early 1964 throughout California and the Deep South deeply influenced the armed self-defense movement against the Ku Klux Klan during 1964 and 1965 and projected a slogan widely picked up throughout the Deep South that we must pose our own challenge to order and stability to counter the challenge posed by "massive resistance" by southern politicians and racist terrorists. Black Bolshevik became an important book widely cited by scholars and read by the wider public as well. Through it and his other writings, Haywood provided ideological
leadership far beyond the New Communist Movement. Haywood's theoretical contributions had a substantial impact on the major, and numerous warring factions of the New Communist Movement well beyond his own CP(M-L), including, for example, the League of Revolutionary Struggle (Marxist-Leninist)
, the early Revolutionary Communist Party
, the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters
and the Communist Workers Party
. Nonetheless, lack of experience, sectarianism
, and voluntarism
played a major role in keeping the young Maoist groups from taking a strong leading role. In his last published article, Haywood wrote that the New Communist movement spent too much time and energy seeking the "franchise" of governments and parties outside the United States without validating itself among the people of our own country.
Haywood's theoretical contributions to questions of African-American national oppression and national liberation remain highly valued by the Ray O. Light Group
, which developed out of an anti-revisionist split from the Communist Party USA in 1961, Freedom Road Socialist Organization
, which was originally formed from the mergers of several New Communist Movement groups in the 1980s, and the Maoist Internationalist Movement
as well as by many black revolutionaries and activists today. Haywood's role in the black protest movements during the 1960s through the 1980s can be studied at the Harry Haywood Papers, Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City and Harry Haywood Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
While he was in Los Angeles in the late 1930s or 1940, he married Belle Lewis, whom he had known for years. They divorced in 1955.
In 1956 Haywood married Gwendolyn Midlo
, a White activist from New Orleans, Louisiana
. She has been active in civil rights throughout her life. She also has developed as a prominent historian of slavery in the United States and Latin America, and the African diaspora. She made her academic career at Rutgers University
. They had three children, whom Midlo Hall mostly provided for alone. They are Dr. Haywood Hall (b. 1956), Dr. Rebecca Hall (b. 1963) and a third child from a previous marriage, Leonid A. Yuspeh (b. 1951) who has suffered from chronic mental illness for over 45 years.
Haywood and Midlo Hall remained married until his death in 1985. Between 1953-1964 they collaborated on numerous articles, including some published in Soulbook Magazine, founded in Berkeley, California
in 1964. She did not follow him into the New Communist Movement and they mostly lived apart after late 1964. Shortly before Haywood's expulsion from the Communist Party, he moved with his family to Mexico City
, Mexico
. During these years Midlo Hall earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in history at Mexico City College. She returned with Haywood to the United States in 1964 working as a temporary legal secretary, started teaching in North Carolina in 1965, enrolled in graduate school in 1966 and earned her doctorate in 1970 at University of Michigan
. From there she went to work as an assistant professor at Rutgers University
, where she made her academic career and advanced to full professor. Midlo Hall now teaches Africans in the Atlantic world at Michigan State University as Adjunct Professor of history.
, Ann Arbor, Michigan
and at the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. New York City.
's autobiographical novel Black Boy
(American Hunger), the character of Buddy Nealson is said to represent Haywood.
Howard, Walter T. Black Communists Speak on Scottsboro. A Documentary History. Temple University Press, Philadelphia: 2008. 197 pages.
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
(CPSU). He contributed major theory to Marxist thinking on the national question of African Americans in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. He was also a founder of the Maoist New Communist Movement
New Communist Movement
The New Communist Movement ' was a Marxist-Leninist political movement of the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. The term refers to a specific trend in the U.S. New Left which sought inspiration in the experience of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Chinese Revolution, and the Cuban...
.
Early years
Harry Haywood was born Haywood Hall, Jr., on February 6, 1898 in South Omaha, NebraskaNebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
to former slaves
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
Harriet and Haywood Hall, from Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
and West Tennessee
West Tennessee
West Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of the State of Tennessee. Of the three, it is the one that is most sharply defined geographically. Its boundaries are the Mississippi River on the west and the Tennessee River on the east...
, respectively. They had migrated to Omaha because of jobs with the railroads and meatpacking industry, as did numerous other southern blacks. South Omaha also attracted White immigrants, and ethnic Irish had established an early neighborhood there. Haywood was the youngest of three sons.
In 1913 after their father was attacked by Whites, the Hall family moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...
. Two years later in 1915 they moved to Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. The younger Hall was radicalized by the bitter Red Summer of 1919, especially the Chicago race riot
Chicago Race Riot of 1919
The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 was a major racial conflict that began in Chicago, Illinois on July 27, 1919 and ended on August 3. During the riot, dozens died and hundreds were injured. It is considered the worst of the approximately 25 riots during the Red Summer of 1919, so named because of the...
, in which mostly ethnic Irish attacked blacks on the South Side.
Hall was influenced by his older brother Otto, who joined the Communist Party in 1921 and invited Hall to enter the secret African Blood Brotherhood
African Blood Brotherhood
The African Blood Brotherhood for African Liberation and Redemption was a radical U.S. black liberation organization established in 1919 in New York City by journalist Cyril Briggs. The group was established as a propaganda organization built on the model of the secret society...
. In 1925 when Hall entered the Communist Party, USA, he adopted "Harry Haywood" as a pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
.
Career with the Communist Party USA
Harry Haywood began his revolutionary career by joining the African Blood BrotherhoodAfrican Blood Brotherhood
The African Blood Brotherhood for African Liberation and Redemption was a radical U.S. black liberation organization established in 1919 in New York City by journalist Cyril Briggs. The group was established as a propaganda organization built on the model of the secret society...
in 1922, followed by the Young Communist League
Young Communist League, USA
The Young Communist League USA is the fraternal youth organization of the Communist Party USA. Although the name of the group has changed a number of times over the years, it dates its lineage back to 1920, shortly after the establishment of the first communist parties in America.-Early years:The...
in 1923. Soon after in 1925, he joined the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA). After joining the CPUSA, Haywood went to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
to study, first to the Communist University of the Toilers of the East
Communist University of the Toilers of the East
The Communist University of the Toilers of the East or KUTV was established April 21, 1921, in Moscow by the Communist International as a training college for communist cadres in the colonial world. The school officially opened on October 21, 1921...
in 1925, then to the International Lenin School
International Lenin School
Situated in Moscow and shrouded in secrecy, the International Lenin School was founded in 1926 as an instrument for the "Bolshevisation" of the Communist International and its national sections, following the resolutions of the fifth Congress of the Comintern. Between 1926 and 1938 the school...
in 1927. He stayed until 1930 as a delegate to the Communist International (Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
).
There he worked on commissions dealing with the question of African Americans in the United States, as well as the development of the "Native Republic Thesis" for the South African Communist Party
South African Communist Party
South African Communist Party is a political party in South Africa. It was founded in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa by the joining together of the International Socialist League and others under the leadership of Willam H...
. Haywood worked to draft the "Comintern Resolutions on the Negro Question" of 1928 and 1930, which stated that African Americans in the Black Belt
Black Belt (U.S. region)
The Black Belt is a region of the Southern United States. Although the term originally described the prairies and dark soil of central Alabama and northeast Mississippi, it has long been used to describe a broad agricultural region in the American South characterized by a history of plantation...
of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
made up an oppressed nation, with the right to self-determination
Self-determination
Self-determination is the principle in international law that nations have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or external interference...
up to and including secession
Secession
Secession is the act of withdrawing from an organization, union, or especially a political entity. Threats of secession also can be a strategy for achieving more limited goals.-Secession theory:...
. He would continue to fight for this position throughout his life.
In the CPUSA, Haywood served on the Central Committee
Central Committee
Central Committee was the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, whether ruling or non-ruling in the twentieth century and of the surviving, mostly Trotskyist, states in the early twenty first. In such party organizations the...
from 1927 to 1938 and on the Politburo
Politburo
Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...
from 1931 until 1938. He also participated in the major factional struggles internal to the CPUSA against Jay Lovestone
Jay Lovestone
Jay Lovestone was at various times a member of the Socialist Party of America, a leader of the Communist Party USA, leader of a small oppositionist party, an anti-Communist and Central Intelligence Agency helper, and foreign policy advisor to the leadership of the AFL-CIO and various unions...
and Earl Browder
Earl Browder
Earl Russell Browder was an American communist and General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1934 to 1945. He was expelled from the party in 1946.- Early years :...
, regularly siding with William Z. Foster
William Z. Foster
William Foster was a radical American labor organizer and Marxist politician, whose career included a lengthy stint as General Secretary of the Communist Party USA...
.
Haywood was General Secretary
General Secretary
The office of general secretary is staffed by the chief officer of:*The General Secretariat for Macedonia and Thrace, a government agency for the Greek regions of Macedonia and Thrace...
of the League of Struggle for Negro Rights
League of Struggle for Negro Rights
The League of Struggle for Negro Rights was organized by the Communist Party in 1930 as the successor to the American Negro Labor Congress. The League was particularly active in organizing support for the "Scottsboro Boys", nine black men sentenced to death in 1931 for crimes they had not committed...
, but he was active in issues involving working class Whites as well. In the early 1930s while head of the CPUSA Negro Department, he led the movement to support the Scottsboro Boys
Scottsboro Boys
The Scottsboro Boys were nine black teenage boys accused of rape in Alabama in 1931. The landmark set of legal cases from this incident dealt with racism and the right to a fair trial...
; organized miners in West Virginia with the National Miners Union; and was a leader in the struggles of the militant Sharecroppers Union in the Deep South
Deep South
The Deep South is a descriptive category of the cultural and geographic subregions in the American South. Historically, it is differentiated from the "Upper South" as being the states which were most dependent on plantation type agriculture during the pre-Civil War period...
. In 1935 he led the "Hands off Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
" campaign in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
's Black South Side
Black Belt (region of Chicago)
The history of African Americans in Chicago dates back to Jean Baptiste Point du Sable’s trading activities in the 1780s. Du Sable is the city's founder. Fugitive slaves and freedmen established the city’s first black community in the 1840s...
to oppose Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. When eleven Communist leaders were tried under the Smith Act
Smith Act
The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act of 1940 is a United States federal statute that set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S...
in 1949, Haywood was assigned the task of research for the defense.
Military service
Haywood's military career included service in three wars. During World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, he served with a Black United States regiment. In the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, like many Americans there, he fought for the Popular Front
Popular Front (Spain)
The Popular Front in Spain's Second Republic was an electoral coalition and pact signed in January 1936 by various left-wing political organisations, instigated by Manuel Azaña for the purpose of contesting that year's election....
with the Abraham Lincoln Battalion
Abraham Lincoln Brigade
The Abraham Lincoln Brigade refers to volunteers from the United States who served in the Spanish Civil War in the International Brigades. They fought for Spanish Republican forces against Franco and the Spanish Nationalists....
of the International Brigades
International Brigades
The International Brigades were military units made up of volunteers from different countries, who traveled to Spain to defend the Second Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939....
. During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he served in the Merchant Marines, where he was active with National Maritime Union
National Maritime Union
The National Maritime Union was an American labor union founded in May 1937. It affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations in July 1937...
.
The Comintern and the Black Belt nation
During his four and half year stay in the Soviet UnionSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
(1925–1930), Harry Haywood held dual membership in both the CPUSA and the CPSU. As a member of the CPSU, he traveled extensively in the Soviet Union's autonomous republics
Autonomous republics of the Soviet Union
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union were administrative units created for certain nations. The ASSRs had a status lower than the union republics of the Soviet Union, but higher than the autonomous oblasts and the autonomous okrugs....
, and participated in the struggles against both the Left Opposition
Left Opposition
The Left Opposition was a faction within the Bolshevik Party from 1923 to 1927, headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's illness and intensified with his death in January...
headed by Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
and the Right Opposition
Right Opposition
The Right Opposition was the name given to the tendency made up of Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, Mikhail Tomsky and their supporters within the Soviet Union in the late 1920s...
led by Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin , was a Russian Marxist, Bolshevik revolutionary, and Soviet politician. He was a member of the Politburo and Central Committee , chairman of the Communist International , and the editor in chief of Pravda , the journal Bolshevik , Izvestia , and the Great Soviet...
. In these struggles and in others, Haywood was on the side of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
.
With the Comintern, Haywood was assigned to work with the newly created Negro Commission. In his major work Negro Liberation, he argued that the root of the oppression of Blacks was the unsolved agrarian question in the South
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
. He believed that the unfinished bourgeois democratic revolution of Reconstruction had been betrayed in the Hayes
Rutherford B. Hayes
Rutherford Birchard Hayes was the 19th President of the United States . As president, he oversaw the end of Reconstruction and the United States' entry into the Second Industrial Revolution...
-Tilden
Samuel J. Tilden
Samuel Jones Tilden was the Democratic candidate for the U.S. presidency in the disputed election of 1876, one of the most controversial American elections of the 19th century. He was the 25th Governor of New York...
Compromise of 1877
Compromise of 1877
The Compromise of 1877, also known as the Corrupt Bargain, refers to a purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the disputed 1876 U.S. Presidential election and ended Congressional Reconstruction. Through it, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the White House over Democrat Samuel J...
. It abandoned African Americans to plantations as tenant farmers and sharecroppers, faced with the Redeemer
Redeemers
In United States history, "Redeemers" and "Redemption" were terms used by white Southerners to describe a political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era which followed the American Civil War...
governments, the system of Jim Crow laws
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
, and the terror of the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
and other paramilitary groups. According to Haywood, the rise of imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
left Blacks
Black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
frozen as "landless, semi-slaves in the South."
He believed that a distinct African-American nation had developed that satisfied the criteria laid out by Stalin in his Marxism and the National Question: a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological makeup manifested in a common culture. Because African Americans in the South constituted such a nation, Haywood believed the correct response was a demand for self-determination, up to and including the right to separate from the United States. Their "national territory" was historically the Black Belt South, and they deserved full equality everywhere else in the United States. Haywood believed that only with genuine political power, which from a Marxist point of view included control of the productive forces
Productive forces
Productive forces, "productive powers" or "forces of production" [in German, Produktivkräfte] is a central idea in Marxism and historical materialism....
, such as land, could African Americans obtain genuine equality. Their gaining of equality was a prerequisite for broader working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
unity.
Most of those in the CPUSA who disagreed with Haywood considered the question of African-American oppression a matter of racial prejudice with moral roots, rather than an economic and political question of national oppression. They saw it as a problem to be solved under Socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
and in no need of special attention until after the institution of the revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat
Dictatorship of the proletariat
In Marxist socio-political thought, the dictatorship of the proletariat refers to a socialist state in which the proletariat, or the working class, have control of political power. The term, coined by Joseph Weydemeyer, was adopted by the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in the...
. To this charge, Haywood countered that the category of "race" is a mystification. He believed that relying on race and ignoring economic questions could only alienate African Americans and inhibit working class unity.
Following the Great Migration
Great Migration (African American)
The Great Migration was the movement of 6 million blacks out of the Southern United States to the Northeast, Midwest, and West from 1910 to 1970. Some historians differentiate between a Great Migration , numbering about 1.6 million migrants, and a Second Great Migration , in which 5 million or more...
of millions of blacks to the North and Midwest, accompanied by their urbanization
Urbanization
Urbanization, urbanisation or urban drift is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change. The United Nations projected that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008....
, critics attempted to use statistics
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
to counter the Black Belt theory and show there no longer was a black nation centered in the South. In his 1957 article, "For a Revolutionary Position on the Negro Question", Haywood responded that the question of an oppressed nation in the South was not one of "nose counting."
Harry Haywood's book, Negro Liberation, published first in 1948, was the first major study of the African American national question written by an African American Marxist. According to Haywood in his autobiography, Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
subsidized his work on the project by offering $100 a month. It was translated and published in Russian, Polish, German, Czech and Hungarian. It was reprinted in 1976 by Liberator Press, the publishing arm of the October League. According to Haywood, "The position of the book was not new, but a reaffirmation of the revolutionary position developed at the Sixth Comintern Congress in 1928. The heart of this position is that the problem is fundamentally a question of an oppressed nation with full rights of self-determination. It emphasized the revolutionary essence of the struggle for Black equality arising from the fact that the special oppression of Blacks is a main prop of the system of imperialist domination over the entire working class and the masses of exploited American people. Therefore the struggle for Black liberation is a component part of the struggle for proletarian revolution
Proletarian revolution
A proletarian revolution is a social and/or political revolution in which the working class attempts to overthrow the bourgeoisie. Proletarian revolutions are generally advocated by socialists, communists, and most anarchists....
. It is the historic task of the working class movement, as it advances on the road to socialism, to sove the problem of land and freedom of the Black masses." On the other hand, Haywood went on to write, "What was new in the book was the thorough analysis of the concrete conditions of Black people in the post-war period. I made extensive use of population data; the 1940 census, the 1947 Plantation Count and other sources, in order to show that the present day conditions affirmed the essential correctness of the position we had formulated years before." Because of this and other works, Robert F. Williams
Robert F. Williams
Robert Franklin Williams was a civil rights leader, the president of the Monroe, North Carolina NAACP chapter in the 1950s and early 1960s, and author. At a time when racial tension was high and official abuses were rampant, Williams was a key figure in promoting both integration and armed black...
called Harry Haywood "one of the modern pioneers in the Black liberation struggle."
Especially since 1998, leading historians in the USA have had access to Comintern documents about the "Self-Determination in the Black Belt theory." These demonstrate the pioneering role of the Communist Party in the Deep South from 1929 on. The documents show the Party's efforts toward unity among all workers in the South, the international impact of the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, the organization of inter-racial unions in the Deep South, and a unified Black protest movement in the United States culminating in the formation of the National Negro Congress
National Negro Congress
The National Negro Congress is an organization which was put into place by the Communist Party of the United States of America in 1935 at Howard University. It was a popular front organization created with the goal of fighting for Black liberation and was the successor to the League of Struggle for...
in 1935 and the Southern Negro Youth Congress
Southern Negro Youth Congress
The Southern Negro Youth Congress was established in 1937 at a conference in Richmond, Virginia. The first gathering of the Southern Negro Youth Congress consisted of a wide range of individuals...
in 1937. Inspired by the self-determination theory
Self-Determination Theory
Self-determination theory is a macro theory of human motivation and personality, concerning people's inherent growth tendencies and their innate psychological needs. It is concerned with the motivation behind the choices that people make without any external influence and interference...
(and other factors), these movements also contributed to heightened activity of the Civil Rights Movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
starting in the 1950s driven by the continuity of what historians are now calling "the long civil rights movement." The pressure of McCarthyism labeled the activity for civil rights as an automatic Communist threat. In the south, even the NAACP was outlawed as a Communist threat.
The Comintern documents are housed at the Tamimment Library at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
. Some books published using them as source documents are listed below under General Readings.
Expulsion from the CPUSA
Following the death of Stalin in 1953 and Nikita KhrushchevNikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
's rise to power, the CPUSA followed Krushchev's policy of destalinization and "peaceful coexistence
Peaceful coexistence
Peaceful coexistence was a theory developed and applied by the Soviet Union at various points during the Cold War in the context of its ostensibly Marxist–Leninist foreign policy and was adopted by Soviet-influenced "Communist states" that they could peacefully coexist with the capitalist bloc...
". Long an admirer of Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
, Harry Haywood was one of the pioneers of the anti-revisionist
Anti-Revisionist
In the Marxist–Leninist movement, anti-revisionism refers to a doctrine which upholds the line of theory and practice associated with Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, and usually either Mao Zedong or Enver Hoxha as well...
movement born out of the growing Sino-Soviet split
Sino-Soviet split
In political science, the term Sino–Soviet split denotes the worsening of political and ideologic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the Cold War...
. He was driven out of the CPUSA in the late 1950s along with many others who took firm anti-revisionist or pro-Stalin positions.
The CPUSA's decision to change its position on the African-American national question was a central factor in Haywood's expulsion. Though the CPUSA had not been as active in the South since the dissolution of the Sharecroppers Union, in 1959 the CPUSA officially dropped its demand for self-determination for African Americans there. (The demand had been dropped earlier when Browder liquidated the party in 1944.) The CPUSA instead held that as American capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
developed, so too would Black-White unity.
In 1957 he wrote "For a Revolutionary Position on the Negro Question" (later published by Liberator Press) but was unsuccessful at changing the direction of the Party. In 1959, Haywood, although no longer a functioning party member, attempted to intervene one last time. He wrote "On the Negro Question", which was distributed at the Seventeenth National Convention by and in the name of African Blood Brotherhood
African Blood Brotherhood
The African Blood Brotherhood for African Liberation and Redemption was a radical U.S. black liberation organization established in 1919 in New York City by journalist Cyril Briggs. The group was established as a propaganda organization built on the model of the secret society...
founder Cyril Briggs
Cyril Briggs
Cyril Valentine Briggs was an African Caribbean and African-American writer and communist political activist born in the West Indies. He was influenced by political ideas which emerged during and after the First World War.Briggs was born in 1888 in Nevis, a Caribbean island of the West Indies...
. This was not effective, however, as most of Haywood's potential allies had already been expelled from the CPUSA in the name of combatting "left"-sectarianism
Ultra leftism
The term ultra-leftism has two overlapping uses. It is used as a generally pejorative term for certain types of positions on the left that are seen as extreme or intransigent in particular ways...
and dogmatism.
In Haywood's view, "White chauvinism
Chauvinism
Chauvinism, in its original and primary meaning, is an exaggerated, bellicose patriotism and a belief in national superiority and glory. It is an eponym of a possibly fictional French soldier Nicolas Chauvin who was credited with many superhuman feats in the Napoleonic wars.By extension it has come...
" in the party, rather than an accurate analysis of the economic issues, had caused the change in position. He also argued that the change prevented the CPUSA from giving appropriate leadership as the Civil Rights Movement developed. He believed the Party was left behind actions of Dr. Martin Luther King and the NAACP. The Party was even more alienated from the militant Black Power
Black Power
Black Power is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies. It is used in the movement among people of Black African descent throughout the world, though primarily by African Americans in the United States...
Movement that was to follow.
Political Activities 1950s-1980s
Haywood and his wife Gwendolyn Midlo HallGwendolyn Midlo Hall
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall is a prominent historian and public intellectual who focuses on the history of slavery in the Caribbean, Latin America, and Louisiana , and the African Diaspora in the Americas...
were among the founders of the Provisional Organizing Committee for a Communist Party (POC), formed in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
in August, 1958 by 83 mostly Black and Puerto Rican and White trade unionists, mainly coal miners from Williamsport, PA and maritime workers including Al Lannon, Director of the Maritime Section of the CPUSA for many years, all delegates from the CPUSA. Its membership included Coleman Young
Coleman Young
Coleman Alexander Young served as mayor of Detroit in the U.S. state of Michigan from 1974 to 1993. Young became the first African-American mayor of Detroit in the same week that Maynard Jackson became the first African-American mayor of Atlanta.-Pre-Mayoral career:Young was born in Tuscaloosa,...
, later elected the first black mayor of Detroit, and Theodore W. Allen, best known later for his "White skin privilege" theory and widely acclaimed historical writings. According to Haywood, the POC rapidly degenerated into an isolated, dogmatic, ultraleft sect, completely removed from any political practice. Nevertheless, the (POC) did release many highly trained organizers from the dead hand of the CPUSA as the civil rights and the black power movement began to hit the streets. In 1964, Haywood worked in Harlem with Jesse Gray, leader of the Harlem Rent Strike and Tenants' Union later elected to the New York State Legislature from Harlem. Haywood worked with Malcolm X in 1964 until his assassination in 1965, and with James Haughton and Josh Lawrence in Harlem Fight-Back, then in Oakland California in 1966, then in Detroit, Michigan with the Detroit Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers
League of Revolutionary Black Workers
The League of Revolutionary Black Workers formed in 1969 in Detroit, Michigan. The League united a number of different Revolutionary Union Movements that were growing rapidly across the auto industry and other industrial sectors—industries in which Black workers were concentrated in Detroit in...
. Haywood then returned to Mexico for a short time and then to the United States permanently in 1970 invited by Vincent Harding, then Director of the Institute for the Black World in Atlanta, GA.
In 1964, Haywood began to become involved with the New Communist Movement, the goal of which was to found a new vanguard
Vanguard party
A vanguard party is a political party at the forefront of a mass action, movement, or revolution. The idea of a vanguard party has its origins in the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
Communist Party on an anti-revisionist basis, believing the CPUSA to have deviated irrevocably from Marxism-Leninism
Marxism-Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology, officially based upon the theories of Marxism and Vladimir Lenin, that promotes the development and creation of a international communist society through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary socialist state that represents a dictatorship...
. He later worked in one of the newly formed Maoist groups of the New Communist Movement, the October League, which became the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)
Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) (USA)
The Communist Party was a Maoist political party in the United States.- History :The Communist Party 's predecessor organization, the October League , was founded in 1971 by several local groups, many of which had grown out of the radical student organization Students for a Democratic Society when...
. In the CP(M-L) Haywood served on the Central Committee. He published his great autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
Black Bolshevik although some of his important writings and political life during the 1960s were edited out. For example,the manuscript he wrote with the acknowledged collaboration with Gwendolyn Midlo Hall and was dedicated to Robert F. Williams
Robert F. Williams
Robert Franklin Williams was a civil rights leader, the president of the Monroe, North Carolina NAACP chapter in the 1950s and early 1960s, and author. At a time when racial tension was high and official abuses were rampant, Williams was a key figure in promoting both integration and armed black...
was not mentioned. This work circulated in mimeographed form from early 1964 throughout California and the Deep South deeply influenced the armed self-defense movement against the Ku Klux Klan during 1964 and 1965 and projected a slogan widely picked up throughout the Deep South that we must pose our own challenge to order and stability to counter the challenge posed by "massive resistance" by southern politicians and racist terrorists. Black Bolshevik became an important book widely cited by scholars and read by the wider public as well. Through it and his other writings, Haywood provided ideological
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
leadership far beyond the New Communist Movement. Haywood's theoretical contributions had a substantial impact on the major, and numerous warring factions of the New Communist Movement well beyond his own CP(M-L), including, for example, the League of Revolutionary Struggle (Marxist-Leninist)
League of Revolutionary Struggle
The League of Revolutionary Struggle was a communist organization in the United States. It was formed in 1978 and was dissolved by the organization's leadership in 1990...
, the early Revolutionary Communist Party
Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA , known originally as the Revolutionary Union, is a Maoist Communist party formed in 1975 in the United States. The RCP states that U.S...
, the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters
Revolutionary Workers Headquarters
Revolutionary Workers Headquarters was a U.S. Marxist-Leninist organization that formed out of a split from the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1977...
and the Communist Workers Party
Communist Workers Party (U.S.)
The Communist Workers' Party was a Maoist group in the United States. It had its origin in 1973 as the Asian Study Group established by Jerry Tung, a former member of the Progressive Labor Party who had grown disenchanted with the group and disagreed with its...
. Nonetheless, lack of experience, sectarianism
Sectarianism
Sectarianism, according to one definition, is bigotry, discrimination or hatred arising from attaching importance to perceived differences between subdivisions within a group, such as between different denominations of a religion, class, regional or factions of a political movement.The ideological...
, and voluntarism
Voluntarism
Voluntarism is a descriptive term for a school of thought that regards the will as superior to the intellect and to emotion. This description has been applied to various points of view, from different cultural eras, in the areas of metaphysics, psychology, sociology, and theology.The term...
played a major role in keeping the young Maoist groups from taking a strong leading role. In his last published article, Haywood wrote that the New Communist movement spent too much time and energy seeking the "franchise" of governments and parties outside the United States without validating itself among the people of our own country.
Haywood's theoretical contributions to questions of African-American national oppression and national liberation remain highly valued by the Ray O. Light Group
Ray O. Light Group
Today, the Revolutionary Organization of Labor or Ray O. Light — a Maoist-oriented 1961 splinter group from the Communist Party USA — takes several different positions within the Marxist-Leninist movement....
, which developed out of an anti-revisionist split from the Communist Party USA in 1961, Freedom Road Socialist Organization
Freedom Road Socialist Organization
The Freedom Road Socialist Organization — known in Spanish as Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad — was formed in 1985 as many of the Maoist-oriented groups formed in the United States New Communist Movement of the 1970s were shrinking or collapsing...
, which was originally formed from the mergers of several New Communist Movement groups in the 1980s, and the Maoist Internationalist Movement
Maoist Internationalist Movement
The Maoist Internationalist Movement was a revolutionary communist organization based primarily in the United States. MIM claimed to adhere to a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology...
as well as by many black revolutionaries and activists today. Haywood's role in the black protest movements during the 1960s through the 1980s can be studied at the Harry Haywood Papers, Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City and Harry Haywood Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Marriage and family
In 1920 Haywood married a woman named Hazel, but they separated the same year.While he was in Los Angeles in the late 1930s or 1940, he married Belle Lewis, whom he had known for years. They divorced in 1955.
In 1956 Haywood married Gwendolyn Midlo
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall is a prominent historian and public intellectual who focuses on the history of slavery in the Caribbean, Latin America, and Louisiana , and the African Diaspora in the Americas...
, a White activist from New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The New Orleans metropolitan area has a population of 1,235,650 as of 2009, the 46th largest in the USA. The New Orleans – Metairie – Bogalusa combined statistical area has a population...
. She has been active in civil rights throughout her life. She also has developed as a prominent historian of slavery in the United States and Latin America, and the African diaspora. She made her academic career at Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
. They had three children, whom Midlo Hall mostly provided for alone. They are Dr. Haywood Hall (b. 1956), Dr. Rebecca Hall (b. 1963) and a third child from a previous marriage, Leonid A. Yuspeh (b. 1951) who has suffered from chronic mental illness for over 45 years.
Haywood and Midlo Hall remained married until his death in 1985. Between 1953-1964 they collaborated on numerous articles, including some published in Soulbook Magazine, founded in Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
in 1964. She did not follow him into the New Communist Movement and they mostly lived apart after late 1964. Shortly before Haywood's expulsion from the Communist Party, he moved with his family to Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
. During these years Midlo Hall earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in history at Mexico City College. She returned with Haywood to the United States in 1964 working as a temporary legal secretary, started teaching in North Carolina in 1965, enrolled in graduate school in 1966 and earned her doctorate in 1970 at University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
. From there she went to work as an assistant professor at Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
, where she made her academic career and advanced to full professor. Midlo Hall now teaches Africans in the Atlantic world at Michigan State University as Adjunct Professor of history.
Death
Haywood died in January 1985, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC. He had a service-related disability and spent the last few years of his life at a Veterans Administration medical facility. The Harry Haywood papers are housed at the Bentley Historical Library, University of MichiganUniversity of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County. The 2010 census places the population at 113,934, making it the sixth largest city in Michigan. The Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 344,791 as of 2010...
and at the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. New York City.
Popular representation
In Richard WrightRichard Wright (author)
Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries...
's autobiographical novel Black Boy
Black Boy
Black Boy is an autobiography by Richard Wright. The author explores his childhood and race relations in the South. Wright eventually moves to Chicago, where he establishes his writing career and becomes involved with the Communist Party....
(American Hunger), the character of Buddy Nealson is said to represent Haywood.
Selected writings by Harry Haywood
- Harry Haywood, The South Comes North in Detroit's Own Scottsboro Case. League of Struggle for Negro RightsLeague of Struggle for Negro RightsThe League of Struggle for Negro Rights was organized by the Communist Party in 1930 as the successor to the American Negro Labor Congress. The League was particularly active in organizing support for the "Scottsboro Boys", nine black men sentenced to death in 1931 for crimes they had not committed...
, New York: 1930s. - Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist. Liberator Press, Chicago: 1978.
- Harry Haywood, Negro Liberation. International Publishers, New York: 1948. 245 pages. (later edition from Liberator Press, Chicago: 1976.
- Harry Haywood, For a Revolutionary Position on the Negro Question. Liberator Press, Chicago: 1975. 38 pages. (Written in 1957)
- Harry Haywood, On the Negro Question. 1959 (Under the name of Cyril Briggs). Available in: Towards Victorious Afro-American National Liberation: A Collection of Pamphlets, Leaflets and Essays Which Dealt In
- Timely Way With the Concrete Ongoing Struggle for Black Liberation Over the Past Decade and More. A Ray O. Light Publication, Bronx: 1982. pp. 383–403
See also
- Communists in the U.S. Labor Movement (1919-1937)Communists in the U.S. Labor Movement (1919-1937)The Communist Party and its allies played an important role in the United States labor movement, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s, but never succeeded, with rare exceptions, either in bringing the labor movement around to its agenda or in converting their influence in any particular union into...
- Communists in the U.S. Labor Movement (1937-1950)Communists in the U.S. Labor Movement (1937-1950)The Communist Party and its allies played an important role in the United States labor movement, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s, but never succeeded, with rare exceptions, either in bringing the labor movement around to its agenda or in converting their influence in any particular union into...
- The Communist Party USA and African-Americans
- American Civil Rights Movement (1896-1954)American Civil Rights Movement (1896-1954)The Civil Rights Movement in the United States was a long, primarily nonviolent struggle to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans...
- Timeline of Racial Tension in Omaha, NebraskaTimeline of racial tension in Omaha, NebraskaThe timeline of racial tension in Omaha, Nebraska lists events in African-American history in Omaha. These included racial violence, but also include many firsts as the African- American community built its institutions. Omaha has been a major industrial city on the edge of what was a rural,...
- Black Belt (U.S. region)Black Belt (U.S. region)The Black Belt is a region of the Southern United States. Although the term originally described the prairies and dark soil of central Alabama and northeast Mississippi, it has long been used to describe a broad agricultural region in the American South characterized by a history of plantation...
- Black nationalismBlack nationalismBlack nationalism advocates a racial definition of indigenous national identity, as opposed to multiculturalism. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all African nationalist ideologies are unity, and self-determination or independence from European society...
- Black separatismBlack separatismBlack separatism is a movement to create separate institutions for people of African descent in societies historically dominated by whites, particularly in the United States. Black separatists also often seek a separate homeland...
Other sources consulted
- Hill, Lance. Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement. University of North Carolina Press, 2004. History of the Deacons' civil rights activity and organizing in Louisiana and elsewhere. In contrast to the non-violent strategies and tactics of most other civil rights organizations, the Deacons were committed to armed self-defense.
- William Eric Perkins, "Harry Haywood (1898-1985)", Encyclopedia of the American Left. Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, Dan Georgakas, Eds. Garland, New York: 1990. 928 pages.
- Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist. Liberator Press, Chicago: 1978. 700 pages.
- Robin D.G. KelleyRobin D.G. KelleyRobin Davis Gibran Kelley is a professor of History and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. From 2003 to 2006 he was the William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural and Historical Studies at Columbia University...
, Hammer & Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill: 1990. 392 pages. - William Z. FosterWilliam Z. FosterWilliam Foster was a radical American labor organizer and Marxist politician, whose career included a lengthy stint as General Secretary of the Communist Party USA...
, History of the Communist Party of the United States. International Publishers, 1952. 600 pages. - Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill: 480 pages.
- Max ElbaumMax ElbaumMax Elbaum is an American historian, author, and social activist. He has written extensively about the New Left, Civil Rights and anti-war movements. Max's book Revolution In The Air was praised by Pultizer Prize-winning historian David Garrow as "an absolutely first-rate work of political...
, Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao, and Che. Verso, New York: 320 pages. - "Harry Haywood", University of Michigan Library
Books
- Dawson, Michael C. Black Visions. The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies. University of Chicago Press, Chicago: 2001. 410 pages.
- Foster, William Z. History of the Communist Party of the United States. International Publishers, New York: 1952. 600 pages.
- Foster, William Z. The Negro People in American History. International Publishers, New York: 1954. 608 pages.
- Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth. Defying Dixie. The Radical Roots of Civil Rights 1919-1950. W.W. Norton & Company, New York 2008. 642 pages.
Howard, Walter T. Black Communists Speak on Scottsboro. A Documentary History. Temple University Press, Philadelphia: 2008. 197 pages.
- Kelley, Robin D. G. Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill: 1990. 369 pages.
- Kelley, Robin D. G. and Betsy Esch, "Black Like Mao: Red China and Black Revolution", in Afro-Asia: Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connections Between African Americans and Asian Americans. Fred HoFred HoFred Ho is an American jazz baritone saxophonist, composer, bandleader, playwright, writer, and social activist....
and Bill V. Mullen, Eds. Duke University Press, Durham: 2008. pp. 97–155. (also available online) http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccbh/souls/vol1no4/vol1num4art1.pdf - Solomon, Mark.The Cry Was Unity. Communists and African Americans, 1917-1936. University of Mississippi Press, Jackson: 1998. 403 pages.
- "Gwendolyn Midlo Hall", Bentley Historic Library, University of Michigan.
External links
- Harry Haywood Internet Archive
- Documents from School on Afro-American National Question. Important texts from New Communist Movement groups based on theories put forward by Haywood.
- The Third International and the Struggle for a Correct Line on the African American National Question. May 2006 text presented by Freedom Road Socialist Organization to the Workers Party of BelgiumWorkers Party of BelgiumThe Workers' Party of Belgium is a Marxist political party in Belgium. It is one of the few parties that operates as a single Belgian party...