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The Black and Red Scare in the Twentieth-Century United States

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The Palgrave Handbook of Anti-Communist Persecutions

Abstract

The anticommunist network that began in the World War I era shaped a long, pervasive black and red scare. It took aim at African Americans who challenged discrimination, segregation, and inequality but singled out those who brought these issues to an international audience or connected them to foreign policy. As African Americans promoted peace and asked why they should fight on behalf of a country that denied them basic rights, anticommunists and white supremacists charged them with subversion. While attentive to foreign affairs, the chapter also recognizes how the “slow” violence of racism and inequality that structured black people’s lives in the United States fueled anticommunism and contributed to explosions of mass violence.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Political Action Statement: Martin Luther King at Communist Training School, The Independent American, 28 February 1965. King Encyclopedia, Stanford University. http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/political_action_statement_martin_luther_king_jr_at_communist_training_scho/index.html. Accessed 15 February 2018.

  2. 2.

    Good starting points include M. J. Heale, American Anticommunism: Combating the Enemy Within, 1830–1970 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents (Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001), and Robert Goldstein, ed., Little Red Scares: Anti-communism and Political Repression in the United States, 1921–1946 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014). On race, communism and anticommunism, see Mark Solomon, The Cry Was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917–1936 (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1998), Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), Theodore Kornweibel, “Seeing Red”: Federal Campaigns against Black Militancy, 1919–1925 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998). Foreign affairs and anticommunist persecution are often addressed in biographies, such as Gerald Horne, Black Revolutionary: William Patterson and the Globalization of the African American Freedom Struggle (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2013), Carol Boyce Davies, Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).

  3. 3.

    Nick Fischer, Spider Web: The Birth of American Anticommunism (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2016), 204.

  4. 4.

    Nikhil Singh begins his new book with what he calls a “banal” but rarely acknowledged observation that “The United States developed its forms of democratic politics and capitalist economics from processes of imperial expansion, colonial dispossession, and racial domination.” Nikhil Singh, Race and America’s Long War (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017), ix.

  5. 5.

    Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 47.

  6. 6.

    Ibid.

  7. 7.

    Rebecca Hill, Men, Mobs, and Law: Anti-Lynching and Labor Defense in U.S. Radical History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 38.

  8. 8.

    Kornweibel, Seeing Red, 21.

  9. 9.

    Hill, Men, Mobs, and Law, 33–38, 119–128.

  10. 10.

    The first quote is from President Theodore Roosevelt, quoted in Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki, Paul Buhle, A People’s History of American Empire (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008), 69. The second quote is in Singh, Race and America’s Long War, xii.

  11. 11.

    Fischer, Spider Web, xvii, 29–30, 46, 54–69 and Zinn et al., People’s History, 54–69.

  12. 12.

    In the U.S., the phrase “race riot” often conjures up images of black people going on a rampage, but the consistent pattern described here is of white mobs attacking people of color. Even when African Americans began to fight back, it was more often as individuals, and the majority of victims in every case were black.

  13. 13.

    Allison Keyes, “The East St. Louis Race Riot,” Smithsonian.com, 30 June 2017. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/east-st-louis-race-riot-left-dozens-dead-devastating-community-on-the-rise-180963885/. Accessed 28 January 2018 and Kenneth Jolly, Black Liberation in the Midwest: The Struggle in St. Louis, Missouri, 1964–1970 (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2006), 143–144. The quote is from a sign carried by marchers in New York protesting the events in East St. Louis.

  14. 14.

    Kornweibel, Seeing Red, 156–159; Theodore Kornweibel, Investigate Everything: Federal Efforts to Compel Black Loyalty During World War I (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002), 4–7.

  15. 15.

    Michael Kazin, War Against War: The American Fight for Peace 1914–1918 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017), 234.

  16. 16.

    Kornweibel, Investigate Everything, Chapter 6.

  17. 17.

    Kenneth O’Reilly, “Racial Matters”: The FBI’s Secret File on Black America, 1960–1972 (New York: The Free Press, 1989), 12.

  18. 18.

    Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes, 52, 62.

  19. 19.

    Kornweibel, Seeing Red, 22.

  20. 20.

    Robert Whitaker, On the Laps of Gods: The Red Summer of 1919 and the Struggle for Justice That Remade a Nation (New York: Crown, 2008), 1–11, 77–79.

  21. 21.

    On the Tulsa riot and its effects, see Ronni Michele Greenwood, “Remembrance, Responsibility, and Reparations: The Use of Emotions in Talk About the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot,” Journal of Social Issues 71, no. 2 (2015), 338–339. See Kornweibel, Seeing Red, 28–29, 140–145; Minkah Makalani, In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917–1939 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 66, 83, 98, 225 for more on the ABB, Briggs, and the Crusader.

  22. 22.

    Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 124.

  23. 23.

    Ibid.

  24. 24.

    Ibid., 151.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., 153.

  26. 26.

    Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “What Was Black America’s Double War?” from The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/what-was-black-americas-double-war/. Accessed 18 January 2018.

  27. 27.

    Robbie Lieberman, “The Missing Peace: Charlotta Bass and the Vision of the Black Left in the Early Cold War Years,” in Lineages of the Literary Left, Howard Brick, Robbie Lieberman, and Paula Rabinowitz, eds. (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Publishing, 2015), 88–94.

  28. 28.

    Colleen Doody, Detroit’s Cold War: The Origins of Postwar Conservatism (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2012), Chapter 3.

  29. 29.

    John O. Killens, And Then We Heard the Thunder (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1983) and Kimberly Phillips, War! What Is It Good for: Black Freedom Struggles and the U.S. Military from World War II to Iraq (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 65.

  30. 30.

    Earl Ofari Hutchinson, “Feds Should Revisit America’s Most Heinous Lynching,” HuffPost, 25 May 2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/feds-should-revisit-ameri_b_3264.html. Accessed 4 December 2016.

  31. 31.

    Greg Bluestein, “FBI Investigated Ga. Gov in Old Lynching,” Associated Press, 15 June 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/15/AR2007061501356_pf.html. Accessed 4 December 2016.

  32. 32.

    M. J. Heale, McCarthy’s Americans: Red Scare Politics in State and Nation, 1935–1965 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 224.

  33. 33.

    Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes, 267–269. For more on anticommunism and the National Maritime Union, see John Munro, “Imperial Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Movement in the Early Cold War,” History Workshop Journal 79, no. 1 (Spring 2015), 59–62.

  34. 34.

    The full text of “We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government against the Negro People” may be found here: https://archive.org/stream/We-Charge-Genocide-1970/We-Charge-Genocide-1970_djvu.txt. See also, Horne, Black Revolutionary and Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Movement, Robbie Lieberman and Clarence Lang, eds. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), especially Chapters 1 and 3.

  35. 35.

    Robbie Lieberman, The Strangest Dream: Communism, Anticommunism, and the U.S. Peace Movement, 1945–1963 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 74–78.

  36. 36.

    Kevin Gaines, American Africans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 9.

  37. 37.

    Peter Kihss, “Senators Demand Pro-Castro Rolls: Chief of ‘Fair Play’ Group Says He Won’t Give List,” New York Times (1923–Current file); 6 May 1961; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times, pg. 16. https://search-proquest-com.proxy.kennesaw.edu. Accessed 23 January 2018.

  38. 38.

    H. Timothy Lovelace Jr., “William Worthy’s Passport: Travel Restrictions and the Cold War Struggle for Civil and Human Rights,” Journal of American History, June 2016, pp. 116–118, 122, 124, 126.

  39. 39.

    Worthy is quoted in Besenia Rodriguez, “‘De la Esclavitud Yanqui a la Libertad Cubana’: U.S. Black Radicals, the Cuban Revolution, and the Formation of a Tricontinental Ideology,” Radical History Review, no. 92 (Spring 2005), 69.

  40. 40.

    Quoted in John D’Emilio, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin (New York: Free Press, 2003), 346.

  41. 41.

    Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). On white supremacists’ alliance with the radical right, see Gerald Horne, “‘Race from Power’: U.S. Foreign Policy and the General Crisis of White Supremacy,” Diplomatic History 23, no. 3 (1999) and Thomas Noer, “Segregationists and the World,” in Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945–1988, Brenda Gayle Plummer, ed. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).

  42. 42.

    Noer, “Segregationists and the World,” 150–151.

  43. 43.

    See, for example, Athan Theoharis, The FBI and American Democracy: A Brief Critical History (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 123–124.

  44. 44.

    Quoted in a flyer in the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Freedom Summer Collection: Montgomery–Mississippi, Tribbett and Brick Factory; “Strike City” (Lucile Montgomery papers, 1963–1967; Historical Society Library Microforms Room, Micro 44, Reel 2, Segment 25). http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15932coll2/id/34414. Accessed 10 February 2017.

  45. 45.

    “McComb Project Comes Out Against the Vietnam War,” July 1965. SNCC Digital Gateway. https://snccdigital.org/events/mccomb-project-comes-vietnam-war/. Accessed 10 February 2017.

  46. 46.

    Roy Wilkins, “SNCC Does Not Speak for Whole Movement,” Los Angeles Times, 17 January 1966. http://www.crmvet.org/docs/660117_naacp_wilkins_viet.pdf. Accessed 10 February 2017.

  47. 47.

    Martin Luther King, Jr., “Beyond Vietnam,” 4 April 1967, New York, NY. The speech may be found in the King Institute Encyclopedia, Stanford University, available online at: http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_beyond_vietnam/. Accessed 10 February 2018.

  48. 48.

    The ongoing battle over Dr. King’s legacy and the substance of the black freedom movement is abundantly clear in Democracy for America’s response to a recent Fox News headline that objected to Martin Luther King Day being politicized. DFA quoted from a report King made to the SCLC staff in May 1967: “We must recognize that we can't solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power… this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together… you can't really get rid of one without getting rid of the others… the whole structure of American life must be changed. America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order.” Email from DFA, received 16 January 2018.

  49. 49.

    Louis Harris, “U.S. Program Could Avert Rioting, Public Tells Poll,” The Atlanta Constitution (1946–1984); 14 August 1967; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Atlanta Constitution, pg. 18. https://search-proquest-com.proxy.kennesaw.edu. Accessed 24 September 2017.

  50. 50.

    John Herbert, “Inquiry is begun on Negro rioting: Senators Study Subversive Impact …,” Special to The New York Times, New York Times (1923–Current file); 3 May 1967; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times, pg. 32. https://search-proquest-com.proxy.kennesaw.edu. Accessed 10 October 2017.

  51. 51.

    The phrase “Black Nationalist-Hate Groups” appears in the subject line of many FBI COINTELPRO documents from the late sixties. In addition to the FBI’s own website, these documents may be found here: https://archive.org/stream/FBI-COINTELPRO-BLACK/100-HQ-448006-02#page/n1/mode/2up/search/internal+security. Accessed 10 February 2018.

  52. 52.

    Quoted in the PBS series Eyes on the Prize II (1990), episode 12, “A Nation of Law?” A transcript of the show may be found here: http://wgbhprojects.s3.amazonaws.com/EYES%20ON%20THE%20PRIZE/Transcripts/EOTP-206-ANationofLaw_TRANSCRIPT.pdf. Accessed 10 February 2018. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/about/pt_206.html.

  53. 53.

    Black Panther Party. Part 1. Investigation of Kansas City Chapter; National Organization Data. Hearings before the Committee on Internal Security. House of Representatives. Ninety-First Congress, Second Session. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970, 2617.

  54. 54.

    Ibid.

  55. 55.

    Bobby Rush’s comments are from “A Nation of Law?” The breakfast program was so successful that the federal government created a similar one soon after destroying that of the Panthers. See Erin Blakemore, “How the Black Panthers’ Breakfast Program Both Inspired and Threatened the Government,” history.com, 6 February 2018. http://www.history.com/news/free-school-breakfast-black-panther-party. Accessed 10 February 2018.

  56. 56.

    Jeffrey Haas, The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2019).

  57. 57.

    James T. Wooten, “6 DEAD IN AUGUSTA WERE SHOT IN BACK: Examiner Finds One Negro Struck …,” Special to The New York Times, New York Times (1923–Current file); 14 May 1970; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times, pg. 1. https://search-proquest-com.proxy.kennesaw.edu. Accessed 15 September 2017.

  58. 58.

    Jon Nordheimer, “Anti-Negro Group Vexing Police in Wilmington, N.C.,” Special to The New York Times, New York Times (1923–Current file); 7 October 1971; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times, pg. 25. https://search-proquest-com.proxy.kennesaw.edu. Accessed 15 September 2017.

  59. 59.

    See mediamatters.org for these characterizations. See also David French, “What Would It Take for Progressives to Reject Black Lives Matter?” nationalreview.com, 22 December 2016. French concludes that “the new religion of anti-racism looks a lot like the older religions of Marxism and socialism, complete with hostility to capitalism and a destructive rejection of Judeo-Christian moral norms.” https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/12/black-lives-matter-progressives-radical-dangerous-movement/. Accessed 18 February 2017.

  60. 60.

    John Branch, “National Anthem Protests Sidelined by Ambiguity,” New York Times, 1 January 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/01/sports/nfl-national-anthem-protests.html?emc=edit_th_20180102&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=25342277. Accessed 1 January 2018.

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  1. Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA, USA

    Robbie Lieberman

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  1. Institute of History, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Christian Gerlach

  2. Department of History, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Clemens Six

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Lieberman, R. (2020). The Black and Red Scare in the Twentieth-Century United States. In: Gerlach, C., Six, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Anti-Communist Persecutions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54963-3_10

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