Black and Red: Untold History of Black Communists

 History has segregated the fight against racism and the fight for an egalitarian system, communism. In reality, the two were connected like flesh and bone. Many Black fighters were dedicated communists and pro-communists of their time. Below are quotes from a few of the antiracist Marxist women and men who fought in the interest of the working class.

Lucy Parsons (1853—1942)
Labor Organizer, Communist
Texas

"So many able writers have shown that the unjust institutions which work so much misery and suffering to the masses have their root in governments, and owe their whole existence to the power derived from government we cannot help but believe that were every law, every title deed, every court, and every police officer or soldier abolished tomorrow with one sweep, we would be better off than now."

Chicago Police Department description of Lucy Parsons: "More dangerous than a thousand rioters..."

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868—1963)
Journalist, Educator, Communist
Massachusetts 

“In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no 'two evils' exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.”

Paul Robeson (1898 - 1976)
Singer, Athlete, Actor, Communist
New Jersey

“In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being…This is the basis, and I am not being tried for whether I am a Communist, I am being tried for fighting for the rights of my people, who are still  second-class citizens in this United States of America.” 

Hosea Hudson (1898—1988)
Labor Leader, Communist
Florida

"The Communist Party taught me that the masses of people must be educated politically through struggle -- even the struggle to write a postcard, a letter, sacrificing to buy reading material and struggling to read it. Struggles to achieve people's day-to-day needs are the basis of political education"

A. Phillip Randolph (1889—1979)
Labor Organizer
pro-communist

"Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship."

Harry Haywood (1898—1985)
Political Activist, Communist
Nebraska

"“Throughout this whole struggle, we Black students at the school had been ardent supporters of the position of Stalin and the Central Committee. Most certainly we were Stalinists – whose policies we saw as the continuation of Lenin’s. Those today who use the term “Stalinist” as an epithet evade the real question: that is, were Stalin and the Central Committee correct? I believe history has proven that they were correct.”

Langston Hughes (1902—1967)
Poet, Writer, Communist
Illinois

“Put one more s in the U.S.A. / To make it Soviet. / One more s in the U.S.A. / Oh, we'll live to see it yet. / When the land belongs to the farmers / And the factories to the working men — The U.S.A. when we take control / Will be the U.S.S.A. then.

Now across the water in Russia / They have a big U.S.S.R. / The fatherland of the Soviets — But that is mighty far / From New York, or Texas, or California, too.

So listen, fellow workers, / This is what we have to do. / Put one more S in the U.S.A.” - One More "S" in the U.S.A

Angelo Herndon (1913—1997)
Labor Organizer, Communist
Ohio

"I wish I could remember the exact date when I first attended a meeting of the Unemployment Council, and met up with a couple of members of the Communist Party. That date means a lot more to me than my birthday, or any other day in my life." - You Cannot Kill The Working Class

Claudia Jones (1915—1964)
Organizer, Communist
Trinidad, Harlem

“It was out of my Jim Crow experiences as a young negro woman, experiences likewise born of working-class poverty that led me to join the Young Communist League and to choose the philosophy of my life, the science of Marxism-Leninism – that philosophy not only rejects racist ideas, but is the antithesis of them.”

Ousmane Sembène (1923—2007)
Director, Producer, Writer, Communist
Senegal

“…To act so that no man dares to strike you because he knows you speak the truth, to act so that you can no longer be arrested because you are asking for the right to live, to act so that all of this will end, both here and elsewhere; that is what should be in your thoughts. That is what you must explain to others, so that you will never again be forced to bow down before anyone, but also so that no one shall be forced to bow down before you. It was to tell you this that I asked you to come, because hatred must not dwell with you.” ― God's Bits of Wood 

Frantz Fanon (1925—1961)
Psychiatrist, Philosopher, Revolutionary
Martinique

“And it is clear that in the colonial countries the peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The starving peasant, outside the class system is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms; colonization and decolonization is simply a question of relative strength.” ― The Wretched of the Earth

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (1930—1965)
Playwright, Director, Communist
Illinois

“…[We] must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non- violent.... They must harass, debate, petition, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps--and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities.... The acceptance of our condition is the only form of extremism which discredits us before our children…”