W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America
Encyclopedia
The W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America was a national youth organization sponsored by the Communist Party USA
(CPUSA) and launched at a national convention held in San Francisco in June 1964. The organization was active in the American student movement of the 1960s and maintained a prominent presence on a number of college campuses including Columbia University
in New York City
and the University of California
in Berkeley
. The organization was dissolved by decision of the CPUSA in February 1970 and succeeded by a new organization known as the Young Workers Liberation League.
(CPUSA) and directed at young people. It bears mentioning that the DuBois Clubs were not the youth section of the CPUSA per se, but were rather designed as a separate party-sponsored and controlled organization which would help bring unaffiliated students and young workers into the CPUSA's orbit through their participation in a broader and less orthodox organization.
The direct forerunner of the DuBois Clubs was the Progressive Youth Organizing Committee (PYOC), established in April 1959, and Advance
, the New York City-based youth organization which the PYOC had sprung. Under the aegis of the PYOC, in 1961 a small group of radicals in San Francisco established themselves as the "W.E.B. DuBois Club." This small group proved the inspiration for sister DuBois Clubs across the bay in Berkeley
and at San Francisco State College. The next year, a campus chapter was organized at UCLA in Los Angeles
.
In June of 1963, the PYOC conducted a training school for young activists in New York City. Two separate courses were held, one for individuals which had never attended party training sessions before and another for those who had previously participated in similar programs.
By the fall of 1963, the Communist Party had clearly decided to proceed with the formation of a new mass organization of youth, with national secretary Gus Hall
announcing in October the intention of the party to create "a Marxist-oriented youth organization to attract non-Communists as the first step toward their eventual recruitment into the party." While the precise form of this new organization was as yet undetermined, this group would ultimately emerge as the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America. A publication was launched in preparation for the new organization, a newsletter called The Convener, edited by Carl Bloice.
A final determination was apparently made by the CPUSA in April or May 1964 to make the California DuBois Clubs the model for the new national organization. A founding convention was called for June 19-21, 1964 for Chicago
, but this location was quickly shifted to San Francisco, the place from whence the pioneer California groups had sprung.
The June 1964 founding convention of the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America was attended by about 200 delegates, including such leading communist activists as Bettina Aptheker
, Carl Bloice, Mickey Lima, and People's World editor Al Richmond. The gathering was called to order by Marvin Treiger and quickly divided itself into work groups on Organization, Civil Rights, Puerto Rico, Black issues, Farm Worker issues, Unemployment, Peace, Education and Culture, Political Action, Vietnam, and Socialist Youth Unity.
Acrimony erupted during the discussion of the group's constitution, specifically over a proposal that no person would be eligible for membership in the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America who was a member of another socialist organization. This section, specifically aimed to exclude members of the Trotskyist
Young Socialist Alliance
and the neo-Stalinist
Progressive Labor Party, inflamed members of those groups. One member of the National Committee of another organization loudly declared that the invitation to establish a broad youth organization at the San Francisco convention had been a hoax, and a series of walkouts commenced which removed about one-third of the delegates from the gathering.
The remaining delegates to the convention, about 139 in all, elected Phil Davis, a former field secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
as President and Eugene Dennis, Jr. as editor of the organization's publication, The Convener, which was renamed The Insurgent early in 1965.
, communist historian Herbert Aptheker
, and radical attorney William Kunstler
.
On August 27-28, 1966, the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America hosted a national conference in Washington, D.C.
under the slogan "for jobs, peace, and freedom." Over 125 people participated in the event, which included a mass meeting at the National Sylvan Theater
and a protest demonstration by nearly 200 people against poverty and the war in Vietnam
at the gates of the White House
.
The DuBois Clubs were active in demonstrations against military conscription and the free speech movement
throughout the latter half of the 1960s, high profile activity which lead the federal government to take action against the organization. In March 1966 U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach
petitioned the Subversive Activities Control Board
to issue an order to the DuBois Clubs ordering them to register with federal authorities as a so-called "communist front
." This action lead to a 1967 attempt at a legal challenge of the constitutionality of the Subversive Activities Control Board, a case which was lost in the U.S. Court of Appeals. The DuBois Clubs tried again in 1968, without success, to enjoin the government from forcing it to register as a "Communist front."
," including in particular the Students for a Democratic Society
. Membership in the DuBois Clubs plummeted to less than 100, prompting the Communist Party to rethink its commitment to a formally non-party mass organization of youth.
In March 1969, the CPUSA sponsored a West Coast Youth Conference which attempted to restructure the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America into a formal Young Communist adjunct of the adult party. This transformed organization originally intended to retain the "DuBois Club" moniker, but in February 1970, the CPUSA decided to dissolve the DuBois organization altogether in favor of an entirely new group.
This new organization was known variously as the Young Workers Liberation League or the Young Communist Liberation League, with state affiliates of the new organization adopting either name as local conditions warranted. Jarvis Tyner
, the last national chairman of the DuBois Clubs and a member of the National Committee of the adult CPUSA, was selected as the first national chairman of the new organization.
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
(CPUSA) and launched at a national convention held in San Francisco in June 1964. The organization was active in the American student movement of the 1960s and maintained a prominent presence on a number of college campuses including Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and the University of California
University of California
The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...
in Berkeley
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...
. The organization was dissolved by decision of the CPUSA in February 1970 and succeeded by a new organization known as the Young Workers Liberation League.
Forerunners
The W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America was a national mass organization conceived and sponsored by the Communist Party USACommunist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
(CPUSA) and directed at young people. It bears mentioning that the DuBois Clubs were not the youth section of the CPUSA per se, but were rather designed as a separate party-sponsored and controlled organization which would help bring unaffiliated students and young workers into the CPUSA's orbit through their participation in a broader and less orthodox organization.
The direct forerunner of the DuBois Clubs was the Progressive Youth Organizing Committee (PYOC), established in April 1959, and Advance
Advance
Advance may refer to:*Advance, an offensive push in sports, games, thoughts, military combat, or sexual or romantic pursuits*Advance payment for goods or services...
, the New York City-based youth organization which the PYOC had sprung. Under the aegis of the PYOC, in 1961 a small group of radicals in San Francisco established themselves as the "W.E.B. DuBois Club." This small group proved the inspiration for sister DuBois Clubs across the bay in Berkeley
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...
and at San Francisco State College. The next year, a campus chapter was organized at UCLA in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
.
In June of 1963, the PYOC conducted a training school for young activists in New York City. Two separate courses were held, one for individuals which had never attended party training sessions before and another for those who had previously participated in similar programs.
By the fall of 1963, the Communist Party had clearly decided to proceed with the formation of a new mass organization of youth, with national secretary Gus Hall
Gus Hall
Gus Hall, born Arvo Kustaa Hallberg , was a leader and Chairman of the Communist Party USA and its four-time U.S. presidential candidate. As a labor leader, Hall was closely associated with the so-called "Little Steel" Strike of 1937, an effort to unionize the nation's smaller, regional steel...
announcing in October the intention of the party to create "a Marxist-oriented youth organization to attract non-Communists as the first step toward their eventual recruitment into the party." While the precise form of this new organization was as yet undetermined, this group would ultimately emerge as the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America. A publication was launched in preparation for the new organization, a newsletter called The Convener, edited by Carl Bloice.
Formation
Prior to the formal establishment of a national organization known as the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America, a Conference of Socialist Youth was held in San Francisco over the weekend of March 21-22, 1964. This gathering was sponsored by the four California DuBois Clubs (San Francisco, USF, Berkeley, and Los Angeles) and by a Marxist group called the Youth Action Union. This gathering included a number of workshops on such topics as Automation and the Labor Movement, Civil Rights, Peace and Disarmament, and The Ultra Right. A standing proposal for a "National Youth Organization" (abbreviated as "NYO" in conference documents) was alluded to, and the gathering seems to have formally urged that "the NYO take the form of National DuBois Clubs."A final determination was apparently made by the CPUSA in April or May 1964 to make the California DuBois Clubs the model for the new national organization. A founding convention was called for June 19-21, 1964 for 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...
, but this location was quickly shifted to San Francisco, the place from whence the pioneer California groups had sprung.
The June 1964 founding convention of the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America was attended by about 200 delegates, including such leading communist activists as Bettina Aptheker
Bettina Aptheker
Bettina Fay Aptheker is an American activist, author, feminist, and professor.-Early years and education:Aptheker was born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina to the first cousins Fay Philippa Aptheker and Herbert Aptheker, a radical activist and Marxist historian. She was raised in Brooklyn, New York....
, Carl Bloice, Mickey Lima, and People's World editor Al Richmond. The gathering was called to order by Marvin Treiger and quickly divided itself into work groups on Organization, Civil Rights, Puerto Rico, Black issues, Farm Worker issues, Unemployment, Peace, Education and Culture, Political Action, Vietnam, and Socialist Youth Unity.
Acrimony erupted during the discussion of the group's constitution, specifically over a proposal that no person would be eligible for membership in the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America who was a member of another socialist organization. This section, specifically aimed to exclude members of the Trotskyist
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
Young Socialist Alliance
Young Socialist Alliance
The Young Socialist Alliance was a Trotskyist youth group of the Socialist Workers Party in the United States of America. It was founded in 1960, although it had roots going back several years earlier. It was dissolved in 1992...
and the neo-Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
Progressive Labor Party, inflamed members of those groups. One member of the National Committee of another organization loudly declared that the invitation to establish a broad youth organization at the San Francisco convention had been a hoax, and a series of walkouts commenced which removed about one-third of the delegates from the gathering.
The remaining delegates to the convention, about 139 in all, elected Phil Davis, a former field secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ' was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April 1960...
as President and Eugene Dennis, Jr. as editor of the organization's publication, The Convener, which was renamed The Insurgent early in 1965.
Development
In 1966 the headquarters of the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America was moved from San Francisco to Chicago. It was there that the 1966 convention of the organization was held, with speakers including Donna Allen of Women Strike for PeaceWomen Strike for Peace
Women Strike for Peace is a United States women's peace activist group.-History:Women Strike for Peace was founded by Bella Abzug and Dagmar Wilson in 1961, and was initially part of the movement for a ban on nuclear testing and to end the Vietnam war, first demanding a negotiated settlement,...
, communist historian Herbert Aptheker
Herbert Aptheker
Herbert Aptheker was an American Marxist historian and political activist. He authored over 50 volumes, mostly in the fields of African American history and general U.S. history, most notably, American Negro Slave Revolts , a classic in the field, and the 7-volume Documentary History of the Negro...
, and radical attorney William Kunstler
William Kunstler
William Moses Kunstler was an American self-described "radical lawyer" and civil rights activist, known for his controversial clients...
.
On August 27-28, 1966, the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America hosted a national conference in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
under the slogan "for jobs, peace, and freedom." Over 125 people participated in the event, which included a mass meeting at the National Sylvan Theater
National Sylvan Theater
The National Sylvan Theater — often simply the Sylvan Theater — is a public sylvan theater on the grounds of the Washington Monument, National Mall, in Washington, D.C., USA. It is located within the northwest corner of the 15th Street and Independence Avenue intersection, about 450 feet southeast...
and a protest demonstration by nearly 200 people against poverty and the war in Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
at the gates of the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
.
The DuBois Clubs were active in demonstrations against military conscription and the free speech movement
Free Speech Movement
The Free Speech Movement was a student protest which took place during the 1964–1965 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and...
throughout the latter half of the 1960s, high profile activity which lead the federal government to take action against the organization. In March 1966 U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach
Nicholas Katzenbach
Nicholas deBelleville Katzenbach is an American lawyer who served as United States Attorney General during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration.-Early life:...
petitioned the Subversive Activities Control Board
Subversive Activities Control Board
The Subversive Activities Control Board was a United States government committee to investigate Communist infiltration of American society during the 1950s Red Scare....
to issue an order to the DuBois Clubs ordering them to register with federal authorities as a so-called "communist front
Communist front
A Communist front organization is an organization identified to be a front organization under the effective control of a Communist party, the Communist International or other Communist organizations. Lenin originated the idea in his manifesto of 1902, "What Is to Be Done?"...
." This action lead to a 1967 attempt at a legal challenge of the constitutionality of the Subversive Activities Control Board, a case which was lost in the U.S. Court of Appeals. The DuBois Clubs tried again in 1968, without success, to enjoin the government from forcing it to register as a "Communist front."
Dissolution and legacy
As the 1960s came to a close, the DuBois Clubs were rendered virtually obsolete by various radical youth organizations of the so-called "New LeftNew Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
," including in particular the Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...
. Membership in the DuBois Clubs plummeted to less than 100, prompting the Communist Party to rethink its commitment to a formally non-party mass organization of youth.
In March 1969, the CPUSA sponsored a West Coast Youth Conference which attempted to restructure the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America into a formal Young Communist adjunct of the adult party. This transformed organization originally intended to retain the "DuBois Club" moniker, but in February 1970, the CPUSA decided to dissolve the DuBois organization altogether in favor of an entirely new group.
This new organization was known variously as the Young Workers Liberation League or the Young Communist Liberation League, with state affiliates of the new organization adopting either name as local conditions warranted. Jarvis Tyner
Jarvis Tyner
Jarvis Tyner is an American activist and the current Executive Vice Chair of the Communist Party USA. He is a resident of Manhattan, New York City. In 1972 and 1976, he ran for Vice President of the United States of the CPUSA.-Biography:...
, the last national chairman of the DuBois Clubs and a member of the National Committee of the adult CPUSA, was selected as the first national chairman of the new organization.
Additional reading
- California State Senate, Thirteenth Report of the Senate Fact-Finding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities. Sacramento: Senate of the State of California, 1965; pp. 36-53.
- US Senate Judiciary Committee, Gaps in Internal Security Laws: Hearings, Eighty-ninth Congress, Second Session. Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1966. LoC number 66062152.
See also
- Young Communist League, USAYoung Communist League, USAThe 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...